Estonia is hosting the largest science conference of all times

TALLINN - From 2 through 7 July, Estonia will be hosting the international science conference EGOS, which will bring almost 2,000 scientists, who research the development of organization in the environment of changes and surprises, to Tallinn. 

Digital transformation and ever-increasing competition have lead the globalizing world to the situation when one needs to be ready to daily surprises in society, the surrounding environment and the smallest of organizations alike. Each surprise, for example, the implementation of a new invention, automatically initializes a chain of obstacles and challenges but also always opens new opportunities for learning and development.  Surprises and unexpected turns of events have become a daily routine for entrepreneurs and organizations, and one needs to be prepared for it in the smartest way possible.  This exactly the purpose of 2,000 organization researchers from different countries coming to the 34th EGOS Colloquium to be held in Tallinn in order to analyze the role of surprises in the functioning of organizations. 

“The more the environment under your management changes, the simpler the management needs to become,” Arno Almann, the rector of Estonian Business School, which is the Estonian partner in the organization of the conference, comments on the importance of the theme. EGOS is the largest science conference ever held in Estonia and the entire Eastern Europe so fat, and the budget for its organization reaches a million euros.  “The fact that the EGOS board selected Estonia and EBS as the venue for its annual colloquium is a great sign of acknowledgement for our researchers because management science is one of the few fields of science in which Estonian researchers are involved in such high-level and recognized collaboration that the organization of such a conference in Estonia is possible.” 

“Expansion to eastern Europe will also foster further development of EGOS’s scholarly endeavor as local organizations differ from the countries of “Old Europe” due to their valeu culture and are better adjusted to changes and surprises,” added Kätlin Pulk, head of the Department of Management at EBS and the academic director of the conference. “Surprises form an important part of the organization’s development: the ability to surprise, the experience of being surprised and the ability to adequately handle unexpected and surprising situations play a major role, especially when the organization faces massive changes.”

The conference keynote speaker is Tor Hernes, professor of organization theory and director of the Center for Organizational Time, who specializes in researching time, temporality and their significance in organizations. One of the most exciting of Hernes’s projects is, for example, the biodegradable beer bottle: the researcher studied the possibility of taking it into use in the research laboratory of Carlsberg brewing company. 

Another fascinating speaker is Mark de Rond, professor at Cambridge University, who researches the functioning of organizations in extreme circumstances. For example, de Rond carried out a study into ethnography, spending six weeks as an observer in a military hospital in Afghanistan. The translation of Rond’s book There is an I in Team into Estonian was published in 2013. During the conference in Tallinn, he will be chairing a plenary on the development of institutions in difficult times and circumstances.  

The Tallinn event will also feature speeches by numerous other prominent scientists, including William Ocasio, Ann Langley, Renate Meyer, Nelson Phillips, Paul Adler, David Ravasi.