Technology and Social Justice in Management: Power, Equity, and Ethics
March 6- 8, 2025 in person, online & Virtual Wednesdays
Organizing Committee:
- Latha Poonamallee, The New School (Chair)
- Simy Joy, Independent Scholar, formerly with University of East Anglia & IIM – Kozhikode, India.
- Anita Howard, Case Western Reserve University
- Joanne Scillitoe, California State University, Northridge
Download the conference program
Keynote Speakers
Param Srikantia, Baldwin Wallace College
John Gershenson, Penn State University Humanitarian Engineering Program
Mischak Gumbo
Register for Virtual Wednesdays
AI Startups in Africa: Leapfrogging Voids with Smart Solutions, March 12, 2025
This panel explores the potential of AI to drive sustainable development and enhance public service delivery by addressing the gaps within governance structures often caused by institutional voids—scenarios where formal institutions are weak or absent. This exploration highlights Bangladesh and other developing nations that are leveraging South-South cooperation to share AI-driven solutions and strategies for overcoming governance challenges. By integrating AI into governance, these countries can address institutional voids more effectively, building adaptive, responsive systems even in regions with fragile institutions.
Designing the Future: Leveraging Technology for 1.5°C Lifestyles: Raz Godelink, March 19, 2025
This workshop addresses the urgent need for transformative shifts in lifestyles, particularly in the Global North, to limit global warming to 1.5°C. It explores how companies can harness technology-driven innovation and sustainable design to facilitate this transition. Drawing on Raz Godelnik’s Business-Driven 1.5°C Lifestyles Framework (BD1.5LF), participants will work on industry-specific scenarios to tackle real-world challenges, with a focus on the Innovation and Sustainable Design opportunity area. The session will emphasize the importance of balancing radical thinking with innovation and demonstrate how businesses can redesign their approach to climate action. By harnessing technological innovation through a designerly approach, companies can support the shift to 1.5°C lifestyles, which, in turn, will advance their efforts to meet climate targets.
Organizational Design Workshop: A Design Exercise to Dismantle the Google Search Engine, Koray Caliskan, March 26, 2025
In an era where digital platforms dominate the economic and social landscapes, understanding and critically engaging with these platforms is more important than ever. Platforms like Google have become gatekeepers of information, wielding unprecedented influence over what we see, how we learn, and how economies function. While these platforms often claim transparency and neutrality, their inner workings are typically opaque, leaving users and scholars in the dark about the algorithms and policies that shape our digital experiences.
This Organizational Design Workshop aims to bridge that gap by empowering management scholars and social scientists to use design as a method for critical social science scholars and social scientists to use design as a method for critical social science research and innovation. By dismantling the Google Search Engine—a cornerstone of digital economies —we will explore its underlying structures, supply chains, nodes and relations of power, as well as question its societal impacts, and collaboratively design alternative models that prioritize social justice and transparency.
The use of technology in social justice organizations has advanced our digital connectivity and unlocked possibilities for collaboration., while also deteriorating our capacity to work together honestly, inclusively, and effectively in real-time. This training will explore how sociocracy – a governance system designed to promote inclusion, transparency and shared power – offers powerful tools to address these challenges and and make working together more strategic and enjoyable. This training will also address how we might selectively use tech to support, rather than undermine these goals
At its core, domestic violence is a social justice issue that disproportionately impacts marginalized groups. Using tech and social media platforms, when used properly, can be a powerful tool in advancing social justice in the context of domestic violence. This panel from the Jersey City, New Jersey will share their approach to building peaceful families and outcomes in holding perpetrators accountable but also provide educational support programs for the perpetrators who are often not viewed by society as victims of abuse themselves.
RESEARCH PRESENTATION VIDEOS (WHERE AVAILABLE)
The Management & Social Justice© Collective 