Field-Configuring Events: Time, Space, Relations

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Guido Möllering, since 11/2016
• Subject Area: Accounting and Finance
• Term: from 2012 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 234403001

So-called field-configuring events like conferences, trade fairs or festivals allow their participants to meet in a bounded space and time and thereby provide them with unique opportunities for sharing information and for coordinating activities. Different research disciplines have studied such events and their potential for facilitating creative processes, supporting market formation, and providing arenas for institutional work. At the same time, most of these efforts lack a precise theoretical foundation of the observed processes. The proposed scientific network aims to bring together management researchers, sociologists, and economic geographers to analyze field-configuring events and their associated mechanisms in an effort to better theorize this phenomenon. Field-configuring events also provide an attractive entry point for empirical social research, because they bring otherwise dispersed actors together in a restricted space and time so that their interactions can be observed and numerous interviews can be conducted. Events are furthermore typically well-documented and, if they take place periodically, allow for process analyses over longer periods of time. These methodological aspects are particularly important in increasingly complex and fragmented global economic and social processes and their deeper exploration is a second aim of this scientific network.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks
• Ehemalige Antragstellerin: Professorin Dr. Elke Schüßler, until 11/2016