The Strategizing Activities and Practices (SAP) interest group invites creative and forward looking proposals for the professional development workshops (PDWs) to be held during the 2019 AOM conference at Boston, USA.
The key questions for the SAP interest group are what, when, why, and how organizational members carry out strategic work –and how this work matters. SAP research has thus great potential to speak to the theme of the AoM 2019: “Understanding the Inclusive Organization.”As the workforce of any organization is becoming more diverse and heterogeneous and employee’s sense of belonging to the organization diminishes due to shorter employment and virtual ways of working, the creation of inclusive organizations and practices is on the top of the agenda of many international development organization (e.g., UN, IMF, G20) as well as global companies. In strategy-making, these efforts are reflected in a growing trend towards “open strategy” that encourages participation in strategic work by all organizational members, not just top management. An important enabler of open strategy are new digital technologies that allow employees to contribute their ideas and concerns and strategic leaders to engage with these concerns on a wider scale than in traditional ways of communicating and participating. These changes are challenging our existing conceptions of strategy work and call for the development of new concepts, frameworks and new methodologies.At the same time, the theme of the “Inclusive Organization” also invites us as academics to reflect on our own practices and how they can become more inclusiveby paying greater attention to and engaging with ways of doing research in developing countries and the concerns of minority groups. The thematic stance of AOM 2019 therefore, offers a particularly exciting opportunity to develop and design PDWs that help in exploring both inclusiveness in strategy work and in academic research. Some possible themes include:
- Developing new conceptual and methodological tools to explore and theorize open strategy, participation in strategy making and power relations that marginalize certain voices in strategy making
- Exploring ways for academics to create and foster more inclusive practices
- Providing doctoral students and early career scholars with tools to navigate the changing academic environment
PDWs at AOM conferences offer a fertile platform for explorations outside the traditional presentation formats in the main conference. These workshops can take on various forms such as paper development sessions, career networking and development meeting, methodological bootcamps or group discussion sessions. As such, ground for generative dialogues and collective knowledge creation and sharing, among the participants, is offered.
The PDW sessions will be held between 8:00am Friday, August 9th, and 8:00pm Saturday, August 10th2019. Keeping the importance of the “Inclusive Organization” in mind, we strongly encourage PDWs that appeal to a wide range of audiences beyond the SAP community by building linkages with other divisions and interest groups. Please indicate potential co-sponsors in the submission document (e.g., OMT, BPS, ODC, MC, RM, TIM). The minimum duration of a PDW is 2 hours, but submitters are welcome to request a duration of 1.5 hours if they feel it would better serve the workshop, session flow, and attendee engagement. The 1.5 hour duration request must be documented in the uploaded proposal document itself at the time of submission and the PDW Chair will subsequently reduce the duration to 1.5 hours on the submitter’s behalf.
The deadlines for submission is Tuesday, January 15, 2019 at 5:00 PM ET (NY Time). All submissions must be made through the AOM submission web-site at http://aom.org/annualmeeting/submission/(submission system opens on November 27th). Please carefully review all the submission guidelines and formattinginstructions before submitting and indicate potential co-sponsors (e.g., STR, OMT, ODC, RM, MOC, TIM etc.) in the submission document.
Submitters are strongly encouraged to discuss potential PDWs with SAP PDW chair, Katharina Dittrich (Katharina.dittrich@wbs.ac.uk).
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