À Table! Hospitality, Food & Wine Conference, Lyon, 18-19 May 2026

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The aim of this conference is to bring together scholars (as well as practitioners, policy makers, artists, etc.) interested in contributing towards an organizational perspective on the hospitality, food, and wine industries. We specifically welcome empirical papers at different stages of development, discussing different phenomena, and employing different methodological approaches as long as they can ignite a dialogue that goes beyond analytical categories and focuses on some of the current challenges and opportunities faced by organizations in this industry. The 2026 conference follows up on the highly successful (and fun!) “A Tavola!” sub-theme at EGOS in Milan.

Hospitality, food and wine compose a microcosm of our socioeconomic landscape. Organizations populating it witness, host, go through, and bear consequences of most phenomena of interest to organizational scholars. No wonder it is an empirical setting that has inspired a wealth of research focusing on intra-organizational, organizational, and interorganizational phenomena, and leveraging qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods. The setting has attracted the attention of scholars studying culture (Van Maanen, 1991; Fine, 1996), knowledge transfer (Di Stefano et al., 2014), innovation (Feuls, 2018), institutional change (Rao et al., 2003), social movements (Lander et al., 2023), institutional entrepreneurship (Svejenova et al., 2007), status (Benjamin & Podolny, 1999; Favaron et al., 2022), symbolic boundaries (Lockwood et al., 2021), social codes (Durand et al., 2007), authenticity (Kovács et al., 2014; Schifeling & Demetry, 2021), categories (Slavich et al., 2020), localized competition (Baum & Haveman, 1997), market identity (Wang et al., 2016), community cohesion (Simons et al., 2016), practice emergence (Gomez & Bouty, 2011), organizational uses of the past (Cappelen & Strandgaard, 2021), and much more.

Unfortunately, like ships that pass in the night, those excellent pieces of research have largely ignored one another. And yet, from the focal organizations’ perspective, the issues they face, responses they attempt, dynamics they go through seem to overlap and feed into one another. Organizations in the hospitality, food and wine industries confront complex situations for which scholars are lacking a dialogue: it is time to enrich our research beyond our own analytical categories, so as to contribute towards an organizational perspective (Moser et al., 2021). This dialogue is what this conference aims at nurturing. Our idea is to welcome scholars (as well as practitioners, policy makers, artists, etc.) who share curiosity and passion for, as well as expertise on, the hospitality, food and wine industries, yet differ in their perspectives and methods. Instead of repeated calls for interdisciplinary research, which are at best challenging, we want to offer a space for engaging in a dialogue and reflection that brings different perspectives (established and new, core and peripheral, insider and outsider) to the table.


We welcome empirical papers on the hospitality, food, and wine industries. We are open to contributions at various stages of advancement, and to any theory, topic and method that could contribute to the joint development of an organizational perspective on food. Some examples of potential directions include, but are not limited to, the following:

• How do people and organizations in the restaurant, and more broadly hospitality industry engage with grand challenges (e.g., sustainability, climate change, hunger), by developing new practices and forms (e.g., regenerative practices)?
• What about new forms of collaboration across actors (entrepreneurs, policy makers, activists) and local (and global) communities (e.g., chefs-led food relief and social kitchens)? How can the hospitality industry shift tastes and behaviors towards sustainable consumption?
• How is the hospitality industry addressing its own challenges (e.g., labor precarity, harassment culture), while sustaining its creativity and impish sense of fun?
• How are food- and hospitality-related technologies (e.g., cultivated meat, AI, augmented reality, immersive worlds) influencing organizations? What new categories are emerging?
• How are the traditional forms of hospitality being challenged and changed?
• What new frontiers and meanings are being developed in relation to the hospitality industry in relation to technology, science, and art? (e.g., culinary genomics, space hotels; restaurants as essential infrastructures for food security)
• How are interactions with various third parties (critics, suppliers, customers, platforms) shaping behaviors for organizations in the restaurant, and more broadly hospitality industry?
• What about other trends and dynamics that affect the behavior of organizations in the restaurant, and more broadly hospitality industry?


We are looking forward to your cool research and are cooking up secret recipes to make this conference a productive and fun experience of encounters, discussions, and not least meals.
À table!

Venue

The conference will be held at iaelyon and emlyon business school.
Lyon, French Capital of Gastronomy and home to emblematic chefs such as Paul Bocuse, has much to offer. Situated at the crossroads of trade and travel routes since Roman times, the city enjoys a rich and long-standing tradition of hospitality. From “mères lyonnaises” (female cooks who ran accommodation facilities renowned for outstanding home cooking) to world-class chefs; from authentic “bouchons” restaurants to exclusive fine dining; from the UNESCO World Heritage listed old city to the vast vineyards of Beaujolais and Côtes-du-Rhône, this conference does not only invites participants to an exciting reflective journey into hospitality but enables them to personally experience its multiple facets.

Scientific and Organizing Committees

Natalia Agrel (Lyfe), Marco Bottura (Lyfe), Giada Di Stefano (Bocconi), Bernard Forgues (emlyon), Isabelle Royer (iaelyon), Jesper Strandgaard Pedersen (CBS), Silviya Svejenova (CBS).

References

• Baum, J.A.C., & Haveman, H.A. (1997). Love thy neighbor? Differentiation and agglomeration in the Manhattan hotel industry, 1898-1990. Administrative Science Quarterly, 42 (2), 304-338.
• Benjamin, B. A., & Podolny, J. M. 1999. Status, quality, and social order in the California wine industry. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(3): 563–589.
• Cappelen, M., & Strandgaard Pedersen, J. (2021). Inventing culinary heritage through strategic historical ambiguity. Organization Studies, 42 (2), 223-243.
• Di Stefano, G., King, A.A., & Verona, G. (2014). Kitchen confidential? Norms for the use of transferred knowledge in gourmet cuisine. Strategic Management Journal, 35 (11), 1645-1670.
• Durand, R., Rao, H., & Monin, P. (2007). Code and conduct in French cuisine: impact of code changes on external evaluations. Strategic Management Journal, 28 (5), 455-472.
• Favaron, S.D., Di Stefano, G., & Durand, R. (2022). Michelin is coming to town: organizational responses to status shocks. Management Science, 68 (9), 6925-6949.
• Feuls, M. (2018). Understanding culinary innovation as relational: insights from Tarde’s relational sociology. Creativity and Innovation Management, 27 (2), 161-168.
• Fine, G.A. (1996). Kitchens: the culture of restaurant work. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Gomez, M.-L., & Bouty, I. (2011). The emergence of an influential practice: food for thought. Organization Studies, 32 (7), 921-940.
• Kovács, B., Carroll, G.R., & Lehman, D.W. (2014). Authenticity and consumer value ratings: empirical tests from the restaurant domain. Organization Science, 25 (2), 458-478.
• Lander, M. W., Roulet, T. J., & Heugens, P. P. M. A. R. 2023. Tempering temperance? A contingency approach to social movements’ entry deterrence in Scottish whisky distilling, 1823–1921. Academy of Management Journal, 66(5): 1384–1410.
• Lockwood, C., Glynn, M.A., & Giorgi, S. (2023). Polishing the gilt edge: elite category endurance and symbolic boundaries in U.S. luxury hotels, 1790-2015. Academy of Management Journal, 66 (1), 9-42.
• Moser, C., Reinecke, J., den Hond, F., Svejenova, S., & Croidieu, G. (2021). Biomateriality and organizing: towards an organizational perspective on food. Organization Studies, 42 (2), 175-193.
• Rao, H., Monin, P., & Durand, R. (2003). Institutional change in Toque Ville: nouvelle cuisine as an identity movement in French gastronomy. American Journal of Sociology, 108 (4), 795-843.
• Schifeling, T., & Demetry, D. (2021). The new food truck in town: geographic communities and authenticity-based entrepreneurship. Organization Science, 30 (1), 133-155.
• Simons, T., Vermeulen, P.A.M., & Knoben, J. (2016). There’s no beer without a smoke: community cohesion and neighboring communities’ effects on organizational resistance to antismoking regulations in the Dutch hospitality industry. Academy of Management Journal, 59 (2), 545-578.
• Slavich, B., Svejenova, S., Opazo, M.P., & Patriotta, G. (2020). Politics of meaning in categorizing innovation: how chefs advanced molecular gastronomy by resisting the label. Organization Studies, 41 (2), 267-290.
• Svejenova, S., Mazza, C., & Planellas, M. (2007). Cooking up change in haute cuisine: Ferran Adrià as an institutional entrepreneur. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 28 (5), 539-561.
• Van Maanen, J. (1991). The smile factory: work at Disneyland. In: P.J. Frost, L.F. Moore, M.R. Louis, C.C. Lundberg & J. Martin (eds.): Reframing organizational culture. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE Publications, 58-76.
• Wang, T., Wezel, F.C., & Forgues, B. (2016). Protecting market identity: when and how do organizations respond to consumers’ devaluations? Academy of Management Journal, 59 (1): 135-162.