International Journal of Organizational Analysis: Special Issue of the Shaping Our Unscripted Future with Service-Learning A Non-APSA Publication

Call for Papers

Special Issue of the Shaping Our Unscripted Future with Service-Learning: When Technology, Globalism, and Community Engagement Collide

Technological advances are increasing global communications and fuelling paradigm shifts. They are influencing all aspects of organizational life. As environments change, many organizational members are left with only what is familiar to them - data reflecting the scripts of the past. However, these familiar understandings typically provide limited guidance on how to proceed into the future.

To move forward most productively, organizational members need to acknowledge and embrace the increasingly unscripted future - a shared, unpredictable, and dynamic future comprised of both known and unknown consequences of global, technological, and economic change. With this step, the important task of shaping the future can be addressed. This, our unscripted future, is all-encompassing. The consequences for higher education will affect students, faculty members, and administrators alike. Paradigmatic shifts are already in motion. As accrediting bodies, international competitors, and new technologies prescribe factors for success, major curricula changes are occurring across all degree structures. One of the most dramatic changes in educational practice that has been accelerated, if not caused, by the shifts in technological innovation and globalism can be seen in the international expansion of service-learning. Service-learning is an educational initiative that assists in the development of human intellectual capital via real-world, course-based student community engagement experiences. Service-learning programs offer students the opportunity to foster sensemaking in unpredictable environments.

The goal of this special issue is to provide IJOA readers, as well as service-learning authors and practitioners, with an overview of the application and outcomes of service-learning as a teaching tool in today's rapidly changing environment. This special issue will explore the strengths and challenges of service-learning practice in the context of our unscripted future - with a specific focus on the interrelationships between technological advances, global access and interest, and community engagement.

Topics will include not only how service-learning is being applied as a tool to explore and understand complex environments but also why service-learning is being used in terms of leveraging educational opportunities into desired outcomes for students, universities, and community members. Our goal is to expand the current literature in directions that reflect today's global, diverse, interconnected, and uncertain organizational environments. 

We encourage submissions from:

* Organizational researchers and practitioners from across the disciplines who are actively engaged in cutting edge service-learning applications with a focus on new technological and/or international applications - encompassing both stand-alone programs and those involving partners from different global locations.

* Practitioners who work in non-traditional organizational disciplines and from those who are using advanced technological applications to heighten the quality of service-learning programs.

Articles should be 4,000 - 6,000 words in length with an appropriate title.
Manuscripts should be set out using 12-point Times New Roman font, double-line spacing throughout, with single-spaces between sentences, and 1 inch (25mm) margins. A brief autobiographical note should be supplied including full name, affiliation, e-mail address and full international contact details. For manuscript submission guidelines, see:
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/info/journals/ijoa/notes.jsp

The submission deadline is September 26, 2008. Authors are strongly encouraged to contact either of the two guest editors, Amy Kenworthy-U'Ren
(akenwort@bond.edu.au) or Laurie DiPadova-Stocks (ldipadovastocks@park.edu), to discuss possible submissions. Early submissions are encouraged.

Amy Kenworthy-U'Ren
Bond University, Australia
Special Issue Guest Editor
akenwort@bond.edu.au

Laurie DiPadova-Stocks
Park University, USA
Special Issue Guest Editor
ldipadovastocks@park.edu