Call for Papers: “Inconsistency, Ambivalence, and Ambiguity: Advancing the Understanding, Antecedents, and Outcomes of the ‘Gray Side of Organizations’

Focus of the Topical Issue, Aims, and Scope

The so-called VUCA world, characterized by its volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, presents significant challenges for individuals and organizations. In a dynamic environment, traditional strategies often fall short, necessitating flexibility, adaptive thinking, and agile decision-making. Organizations are required to foster resilience and innovation while navigating unpredictable market fluctuations, organizational disruptions, and rapidly changing technological landscapes.

A likely result will be that individuals and organizations will often be surprised, irritated, or even overwhelmed by these sudden changes and developments, increasing perceptions of ambivalence, ambiguity, and inconsistency for organization members. This general situation offers both opportunities but also poses threats for employees and companies resulting in mixed experiences, emotions, attitudes, and behaviors.

The focus of this topical issue of the Zeitschrift für Psychologie aims to advance our understanding of situations, behaviors, traits, and experiences that are unclear and ambiguous with regard to their impact. In a business world, which is rapidly changing, employees often have experiences with organizations and people who are neither just positive nor only negative, but rather inconsistent, incoherent, or reveal discrepancies between aspiration and reality.

Exemplary research questions that could be addressed in this topical issue include, but are not limited to:

• Which social and technological factors lead to the emergence of inconsistency, ambivalence, and/or ambiguity in organizations?
• How does the impression of being inconsistent, ambivalent, and/or ambiguous emerge for situations, teams, organizations, and the organizational environment? How do people understand or attribute inconsistency, ambivalence, and/or ambiguity in organizations
• How exactly do inconsistency, ambivalence, and/or ambiguity affect organizations and their employees?
• How can the impact of inconsistency, ambivalence, and/or ambiguity be explained in terms of psychological mechanisms involved? Which mediators and moderators are involved in determining the strength and valence of their impact on organizations and employees?
• How do situational and cultural differences influence how organizations and employees cope with inconsistency, ambivalence, and/or ambiguity?
• What personal factors can be resources to cope with inconsistency, ambivalence, and/or ambiguity?
• How does leadership, HR, and organizational practices impact how organizations and employees cope inconsistency, ambivalence, and/or ambiguity?
• How can potential unwanted effects of inconsistency, ambivalence, and/or ambiguity be mitigated and potential positive effects be harnessed?

For this topical issue, we are looking for original empirical articles as well as review-type articles or theoretical contributions that outline novel ways of thinking about inconsistency, ambivalence, and ambiguity in organizations.

How to Submit

There is a two-stage submission process. Initially, interested authors are requested to submit only abstracts of their proposed papers. Authors of the selected abstracts will then be invited to submit full papers. Please note that the invitation to submit does not guarantee acceptance/publication in the topical issue. Invited manuscripts will be subject to the Zeitschrift für Psychologie’s usual review standards, including a rigorous peer-review process.

Stage 1: Structured Abstract Submission

Interested authors should submit a letter of intent including (1) a working title for the manuscript; (2) names, affiliations, and contact information for all authors; and (3) an abstract of no more than 1,000 words detailing the content of the proposed manuscript to the guest editors Jan Schilling (jan.schilling@hsbi.de), Daniel May (daniel.may@fu-berlin.de), and Kimberley Breevaart (breevaart@essb.eur.nl).

The deadline for submitting structured abstracts is

April 15, 2026

Stage 2: Full Paper Submission

Those who have been encouraged to submit a full paper must submit their manuscripts by August 15, 2026, through the online submission system of the journal at https://www.editorialmanager.com/zfp.

The journal seeks to maintain a short turnaround time, with the final version of the accepted papers being due by November 15, 2026. The topical issue will be published as an issue in 2027.

For additional information, please contact:

Jan Schilling (jan.schilling@hsbi.de)

Daniel May (daniel.may@fu-berlin.de)

Kimberley Breevaart (breevaart@essb.eur.nl)

Guidelines for Article Preparation

• Only English-language submissions can be considered.
• Contributions must be original (not published previously or currently under review for publication elsewhere).
• Review and original articles should not exceed 45,000 characters and spaces in length, including references, figures, and tables (allowances for figures and tables should be deducted on the basis of size – approximately 1,250 characters for a quarter-page figure/table).
• Reference citations in the text and in the reference list should be in accordance with the principles set out in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.) – see also any recent issue of the journal.
• For detailed author guidelines, please see the journal’s website at https://www.hogrefe.com/eu/journal/zeitschrift-fuer-psychologie. Note also the Ethics and Research Transparency Form that all authors are expected to complete and submit with their manuscript: https://www.hogrefe.com/eu/journal/zeitschrift-fuer-psychologie#author-text.

Timeline

• Deadline for submission of abstracts is April 15, 2026.
• Invitation to submit full papers by May 15, 2026.
• Deadline for submission of full papers is August 15, 2026.
• Feedback on full papers to be provided by October 15, 2026.
• Revised papers due by November 15, 2026.
• Editorial decision about acceptance of revised paper by November 30, 2026
• Publication in Issue 2/2027

About the Journal

The Zeitschrift für Psychologie, founded in 1890, is the oldest psychology journal in Europe and the second oldest in the world. One of the founding editors was Hermann Ebbinghaus. Since 2007, it is published in English and devoted to publishing topical issues that provide state-of-the-art reviews of current research in psychology.