The OMT artifact has a long and honorable history. It is the ultimate material manifestation of our shared identity as organization and management scholars; a mythical emblem of belonging to this scholarly community. Some may think that social status is about professional titles, top publications and thousands of citations, but no, it is really about possessing the greatest number of authentic OMT artifacts, collected personally at the OMT Business Meeting at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, year after year, and safeguarding them in locked drawers around the world. OMT artifacts have become collectors’ items; they are traded in underground communities at prices never to be revealed. We secretly whisper to one another how many of these valuable artifacts we each possess, but never do we show any evidence of our claims.
And now Covid-19 has jolted our field. The true tragedy of Covid-19 is the disruption of the sacred, unbroken lineage of OMT artifacts. Dear colleagues, we cannot let this proud tradition wither. There is too much at stake for all of us, we must stand together in maintaining the institution of the OMT artefact. As a scholar of institutional entrepreneurship, I feel compelled to recognize that even the most hyper-muscular institutional ‘entrepreneuress’ cannot accomplish such a daunting mission by herself. Time has come to recognize distributed agency. The 2020 Artifact will not be my individual creation, we will co-create it together. Please join in the creative co-construction of the 2020 OMT Digital Artifact to protect the ultimate symbol of our collective identity in the Digital Era.
This creative process will take place during the OMT Social Hour in a few minutes. We promise to stimulate your scholarly passions in the process. You can engage with time - OMT artifacts from the past will be at your digital disposal, offering you an opportunity to draw from the past to shape the present and co-create the future. You can play with networks – you get to co-create with other randomly selected nodes in the OMT network. You can also experiment with multimodality by combining your own material OMT artifacts with visual representations. If you are into the circular economy and sustainability, you may appreciate the recycling of plastic devices and value creation that does not produce material waste. And if you are passionate about performativity, you will enjoy the challenge of enhancing the perceived value of OMT Artifacts.
Machine 1. OMT selfies. The input for this slot machine was produced during the 2020 OMT Digital Social Hour. The OMT community creatively engaged with past OMT artifacts to take group selfies on Zoom. We broke those group selfies down into individual selfies and mixed up. You win when getting three images from the same group selfie.
Machine 2. Words. This slot machine also uses input from participants in the 2020 OMT Digital Social Hour. Participants creatively proposed words to complete the sentence “OMT the place to be...” We generated themes through inductive coding. You win when you get three words that have the same theme.
Machine 3. OMT artifacts. This slot machine uses pictures of OMT Artifacts from the past three decades as input. In the absence of a picture, we replaced an artifact by words. If one of these missing artifacts should happen to be in your drawer, we invite you to take a picture of it and send it to us so that we can fill the gaps in the slot machine.
Credits. Eva Boxenbaum, Melodie Cartel, Jean Gregoire, Renate Meyer, Davide Ravasi and the OMT Community.
