Individual skill
orgstud-topic-selection
Use when choosing or sharpening the phenomenon and research question for an Organization Studies (OS) manuscript — testing whether it is theoretically generative for OS's European organization-theory audience. Diagnoses fit and scope; it does not build the theory or run analysis.
Organization-Studies-Skills/skills/orgstud-topic-selection/SKILL.md
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# Topic Selection (orgstud-topic-selection)
## When to trigger
- You have a phenomenon (a merger, a profession, an institutional disruption, a digital practice) but are unsure it can yield an OS-grade *theoretical* contribution
- The question is interesting empirically but reads as "describing a case" rather than advancing organization theory
- The paper could plausibly go to ASQ, Organization Science, JMS, or AMR and you need to decide which conversation it joins
- A coauthor wants a managerial-implications paper; OS wants a theory paper
## What OS actually rewards
OS is a **theory-first European** journal: the unit of contribution is **a move in an ongoing theoretical conversation about organizing**, not a clean effect or a managerial fix. The strongest OS topics share three properties. (1) They are **theoretically generative** — the phenomenon is a window onto a mechanism, process, or tension that organization theory has not yet seen clearly (e.g., how institutional logics are reconciled in practice; how sensemaking breaks down; how power is reproduced through routines). (2) They are **processual or relational** — OS leans toward how organizing *unfolds, becomes, is contested*, which is why ethnographic, longitudinal, and historical designs thrive here. (3) They **engage social theory** — institutional theory, practice theory, Foucauldian power, Bourdieu, narrative/discourse, Weick — as a live interlocutor, not decoration.
A useful litmus test: write the sentence "This paper changes how we think about ____ in organizations." If the blank is a *phenomenon* ("AI adoption") rather than a *theoretical object* ("how organizations sustain control when expertise becomes machine-readable"), the topic is not yet OS-shaped.