Highlights of IACMR Events at AOM 2017

Taking the opportunity of scholars gathering at the AOM annual meeting, IACMR organized the IACMR Board meeting, business meeting and a reception on the AoM meeting site of the Atlanta Marriott Marquis in Atlanta, USA. Here are the reports on the events held on Sunday Aug. 6.

I. IACMR Board Meeting

The following 18 people attended that Board meeting on the afternoon of Aug. 6.

1) IACMR officers and incoming officers

Neng Liang, IACMR President
Ray Friedman, IACMR President Elect
Runtian Jing, Incoming IACMR Vice President
Chris Marquis, IACMR Representative-at-Large, Americas
Aichia Chang, IACMR Representative-at-Large, Asia Pacific
Samuel Aryee, IACMR Representative-at-Large, Europe
Jian Liang, IACMR Representative-at-Large, Mainland China
David Zhou, incoming IACMR Representative-at-Large, Americas
Yi Tang, incoming IACMR Representative-at-Large, Asia Pacific
Jingjing Yao, incoming IACMR Representative-at-Large, Europe

2) IACMR past presidents and MOR EIC

Anne Tsui, IACMR Founding President
Xiao-Ping Chen, IACMR Past President, Editor-in-Chief, Management Insights
Arie Lewin, Editor-in-Chief, Management and Organization Review (MOR)

3) PhD representatives

Carys Chan, Ph. D. Student Representative, Overseas
Siyu yu, incoming Ph. D. Student Representative, Overseas
Eryue Teng, incoming Ph. D. Student Representative, Mainland China

4) IACMR Secretary/Treasurer candidate
Lerong He, Associate Professor of Management, State University of New York at Brockport

1. Voting on appointment proposals

The voting Board members first voted and approved the following proposals of appointing Prof. Lerong He as next Secretary/Treasurer of IACMR and Prof. Anne Tsui as Special advisor to the board and Co-treasurer of IACMR.

2. Report on Management and Organization Review (MOR)

Prof. Arie Lewin, Editor-in-Chief of MOR, reported on the MOR progress and the CUP analysis on MOR impactor factor, plans and actions for future development.

3. Report on Management Insights (MI)

Prof. Xiao-Ping Chen, Editor-in-Chief of MI reported on the MI progress and the challenges and options to further enhance the quality of distribution of the magazine.

4.  “Responsible science” Movement

Prof. Anne Tsui brought a brief introduction of the “Responsible science” movement. The Board members discussed her proposal to establish “Responsible Research Award”.

II. IACMR Annual Business Meeting

1. Welcome New Board Members

The IACMR held its annual business meeting on Aug. 6, 2017 at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management in Atlanta, Georgina, USA. Prof. Neng Liang, President of IACMR, introduced and welcomed the newly elected IACMR board members to the audiences, including Prof. Runtian Jing, incoming IACMR Vice President and Program Chair 2020; Prof. David Zhu, incoming Representative-at-Large, Americas; Prof. Jingjing Yao, incoming Representative-at-Large, Europe; Prof. Yi Tang, incoming Representative-at-Large, Asia Pacific, and Prof. Xiaotao Yao, incoming Representative-at-Large, Mainland China; plus two doctoral student representatives, Siyu Yu (Overseas) and Eryue Teng (Mainland China). For details about the incoming Board members, please visit here .

2.  2017 Kwok Leung Memorial Dissertation Grant Award Presentation Ceremony

Prof. Ray Friedman, IACMR President-elect, announced winners of the 2017 Kwok Leung Memorial Dissertation Grant Award. These winners were selected after evaluation of their proposals by the IACMR Research Committee co-chaired by Prof. Chris Marquis and Prof. Aichia Chuang. The 2017 winners are Mingyun Huai of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) for her proposal of “Impulsive and Strategic Abuse: Differentiation, Scale Development, and Examination on their Different Outcomes”, Jiping Li of HKUST, for “How to Construct Desirable Images in Diverse Teams: Examining the Dual-Path Self-Regulation Mechanism”, Yen-hung (Steven) Liu of Georgia State University for “Global Identity and Trust-Building with Western Stakeholders for Chinese Multinational Enterprise”, Lusi Wu of Purdue University for “The Dark Side of High-Quality LMX: Relational Tensions and Their Impacts on Leaders and Members”, and Wei Zheng of Peking University for “The Influence of Political Ties on Firm Growth’.

The five winners were presented the award certificates from Prof. Friedman. Each of them will receive a grant of RMB10,000 or an equivalent in USD.

3. New Initiative of Joint PhD Program

Prof. Anne Tsui, the founding president of IACMR announced a new IACMR initiative to launch a joint PhD program in an attempt to “train bright Chinese PhD students for China and the world”. Generally speaking, each participating Chinese university will nominate 1 to 2 second-year PhD students per year as potential candidates. These candidates will participate in a winter camp organized by the IACMR to interact with renowned scholars in the management field. The most qualified top six candidates will be chosen to participate in this joint PhD program. Each of them will be paired with an overseas co-advisor who is a top scholar in their respective fields. The students will spend two years in these overseas co-advisors’ institutions to work on their dissertations under the guidance of co-advisors. At the end of their first year abroad, all students will also have opportunities to conduct a field research in a major company in the host nation to better immerse in the local culture, understand the business practice, and master the ethnographical approach. At the end of their second year’s study, these students will participate in an intensive summer camp to discuss important business problems of China with a group of renowned scholars in Chinese management studies led by Prof. Anne Tsui. This joint PhD program will be funded by students’ home institutions in China and the Chinese government. Upon completion, students will receive PhD degrees from their home institutions. Their two-year study abroad experiences as well as collaborations with renowned scholars in the management field are expected to brighten up their job opportunities in China and abroad.

4. President Report about IACMR Development

Prof. Liang then reviewed that key events organized by IACMR in the past year, including the 2016 Hangzhou conference hosted by Zhejiang University with a record-breaking attendance of 1350 participants, the Research Methods Workshop recently held in Huazhong University of Science and Technology, construction of the new IACMR websites and conference systems which have recently been launched, and new initiatives in the past year such as the first Teaching & Learning Conference held at the 2016 Conference with 100 participants, the Philosophy of Management Research (PMR) Teacher Training Workshop held at Guanghua School of Management in December 2016; two panels on Chinese management research and Chinese MNEs at the annual meeting of Academy of International Business (AIB) 2017 in Dubai and a joint China Management Research Frontier Conference with Lancaster University in July 2017.

5. Keynote Panel on Responsible Research in China

The business meeting was followed by a keynote panel moderated by Prof. Anne Tsui on “Responsible Research in China” with three other distinguished speakers including Prof. Gerry Georgy, Dean of the Singapore Management School and the former editor of the Academy of Management Journal, Prof. William Glick, Professor of Rice University and the past Board Chair of AACSB International, and Prof. Neng Liang, professor of CEIBS China and the IACMR president.

Prof. Tsui started the panel by providing an overview of the white paper on “A Vision of Responsible Research in Business and Management”. The white paper discusses what responsible research is, how to engage in responsible research, what actions are necessary, who the relevant actors are, why responsible research is necessary, and what would happen if we do not engage in responsible research. The white paper is jointly crafted by 24 senior scholars including 8 business school deans. These scholars represent 5 business disciplines, and 23 universities in 10 countries. The draft was completed in March 2017 and is currently under consultation. The white paper starts with vision 2030, an aspiration date in alignment with UN’s Agenda 2030 for the implementation of its sustainable development goals. Broadly speaking, these scholars advocate a change in the current ecosystem in management and business research to not only produce credible and reliable research results, but also create and distribute knowledge which is relevant and useful for practice. More specifically, responsible research produces credible and reliable knowledge with either direct or indirect usefulness for addressing problems important to both business and society based on the belief that “business should be a means for a better world”. Responsible research is guided by 7 essential principles: 1) Service to society; 2) Stakeholder involvement; 3) Impact on diverse stakeholders; 4) Value both basic and applied contributions; 5) Value plurality and multidisciplinary collaboration; 6) Reliable knowledge with sound methodology; and 7) Broad dissemination of discoveries. Unfortunately, our current research ecosystem falls short on all these dimensions. Achieving this vision needs efforts of all actors in the research ecosystem, including journal editors and publishers, scholarly association leaders, scholars and doctoral students, university leaders and deans, business school associations and accreditation agencies, funding agencies and government, as well as business alumni, NGOs and the broad society. According to Prof. Tsui, “contributing to a better world is the ultimate goal of science. Research in business and management can and must live up to its obligation and realize its potential through engaging in responsible research that we humbly propose.” She thereby called to the action of “Responsible research for better business and a better world.”

Prof. William Glick discussed new initiatives to increase useful knowledge in China. Prof. Glick started his discussion with a quote from his 2017 article on “Why Care about Impact?” published on the EFMD Global Focus Magazine. He discussed that the current research ecosystem is actually a closed-loop system that “is a self-centered, self-serving, self-feeding process, a form of academic narcissism that parallels the salons of Marie Antoinette.” Although a systematic change requires initiatives at multiple levels and is a long-term process, he is optimistic about the future. For example, he pointed out the AACSB’s strong and long-term support for peer reviewed research. Importantly, the AACSB 2013 accreditation standards have embraced impact as an important evaluation criterion. The 2017 standard updates further clarify that impact does not just mean citation counts of publications, but societal impact. In addition, more than a dozen presentations have been conducted in a variety of academic meetings in 2017 to promote responsible research in business & management, including AACSB Deans, IBSSC Deans, EURAM, AIB, AMA, AoM, AAA, INFORMS, etc. Several funding agencies including U.S. NSF, U.S. NIH and U.K. Research Excellent Framework have set explicit criteria to encourage rigorous and relevant research. He then discussed Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) guidelines that encourage open science with open data, open materials, and pre-registered reports. He pointed out that more than 2,900 journals mainly in the science field have followed these guidelines with Management & Organization Review (MOR) being one of the pioneers in the business field to adopt the pre-registered report. He also discussed several school initiatives including resource commitments and appointments of vice-deans to encourage societal impacts from faculty research.

Prof. Gerry George approached the responsible research topic from the angle of “Asking Questions that Matter: Grand Challenges in Management Research”. He used his own 2011 editorial published in the Academy of Management Journal to initiate the discussion on what make research important and useful. That article suggests the following eight important research topics, namely big data, climate change, digital money, natural resources, resilience, ageing societies, digital workforce, and gender issues. He stated that grand challenges are “specific critical barrier(s) that, if removed, would help solve an important societal problem with a high likelihood of global impact through widespread implementation”. He advocated that business and management research shall focus on solving important societal problems with a global impact through widespread implementations. He then used the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals to illustrate grand societal challenges such as poverty, inequality, environment, infrastructure and innovation. He next used articles published in the Dec. 2016 issue of AMJ to elaborate how to design research to address these grand societal challenges. Finally, he used his own Kenya project to explain how management scholars could choose big ideas and conduct research addressing important social issues, in this case short of electricity in Africa.

Prof. Neng Liang discussed his understanding on research that matters most to Chinese entrepreneurs and executives. He suggested that current research overemphasizes rational analysis, while pays insufficient attention to the political, human and symbolic dimension of organizations and management. Using a survey of MOR papers published in recent 3 years, he noticed that EMBA students found that research addressing relationships, leadership, cultural obstacles as well as other human, political, and symbolic dimensions is more valuable for their business practice than studies related to the rational dimension such as CSR. In addition, his personal observations on his EMBA students’ Reflection on Life presentations also indicated that business professionals and leaders are more interested in seeking answers on how to address challenges in life instead of making better business decisions. He subsequently suggested that the following four topics may be valuable future research avenues for scholars conducting research on Chinese business. These are 1) Governance alternative beyond public firms? 2) The political dimension of the growth of the firm: professionalization and in-fight at the top; 3) How successful entrepreneurs develop learning capabilities? and 4) The spiritual aspects of business research: from managerial “Job” to managerial life.

In the follow-up Q&A session, audiences raised questions on the research ecosystem that creates obstacles for responsible research. For example, the tenure system and the annual faculty performance evaluation system both overemphasize short-term deliverables. Most universities reward faculty based on publications in top journals instead of research books. The ranking agency and accreditation agencies also rank universities based on top journal publications instead of societal impact. Audiences also discussed implementation issues and practical feasibility of addressing grand challenges. Prof. Tsui concluded the forum by inviting all participants to attend the AOM discussion panel on sustainable developmental goals.

III.  IACMR/MOR and Wuhan University Joint Reception

The IACMR business meeting was followed by a highly popular IACMR & MOR joint reception that attracted about 200 participants.

Prof. Neng Liang, President of IACMR, announced that the 2018 IACMR biennial conference with the theme of “Meeting Challenges of Continuous Transformation” will be held in Wuhan, China between on June 13-17, 2018. The conference is to be hosted by the School of Economics & Management, Wuhan University and will be held in the gorgeous East Lake Hotel & Resort of Wuhan, where former Residence Museum of Chairman Mao is located. Prof. Liang encouraged all members to participate in this biennial meeting to keep up with the encouraging upward participation trend in IACMR biennial conferences.

A reception is always a good place to meet old friends and get to know new friends. With tempt of tasty food, more people joined the reception. Either saying ‘hello’ to a new friend or talking on academic topics in depth, many people kept on chatting excitedly. They had an enjoyable evening at the reception.

Pursuit of Excellence • Source of Inspiration • Responsible Scholarship • Spirit of Service

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Highlights of IACMR Events at AOM 2017