Every year in May, the Organization Studies Summer Workshop takes place on a Greek island. It is a forum for intimate discussions around a specified theme that is tied to a Special Issue in the leading journal Organization Studies. This years' theme is "Organizing Sustainably, opens an external URL in a new window", and Elke Schüßler acts as a co-organizer and co-editor of the Special Issue together with colleagues from Australia, Germany, the US and the UK.

After many discussions up front about how the workshop can be organized in a more sustainable manner, including selecting a venue with high sustainability credentials and supporting a local sustainability initiative through a carbon offsetting scheme, the Covid-19 crisis forced the team to cancel the in-person meeting entirely and to shift to a fully virtual format.

Out of the 140 papers that were accepted for presentation at the workshop (from an original pool of almost 200 submissions), 81 decided to attend the virtual conference. All authors were asked to record their presentations online so as to keep the synchronous time focused on discussion. With the great help of some volunteers and tech support by the Penn State University, three intensive days of virtual discussion and exchange comprising 27 paper sessions, two keynote speeches by Professors Charlene Zietsma (Penn State University) and Andy Crane (University of Bath), and several sessions for socializing and informal exchange were set up. While an experiment for all participants and convenors, the chosen path presents a possible way for organizing academic exchange more sustainably in the future.

For this purpose, the organizers have conducted a survey among the participants about their experiences at the virtual workshop and have made their “lessons learned, opens an external URL in a new window” public in a blog post. Anyone organizing a virtual workshop or conference can now benefit from this experience. The call for papers, opens an external URL in a new window for the Special Issue is still open until November 30th.