August report -now from your Liaison to Practice, no longer "elect"

Let's continue this blogging experiment... The highlights in this report are:

- We have a "Practitioner Liaison Committee" for 2008 -volunteers, suggestions, etc. are still welcome!
- The EBMgmt Collaborative keeps making progress -please help us find sponsors and exemplars of "systematic reviews"


I am now writing this report for all members of the MED division in my capacity as the new "Liaison to Practice" (last year I was elected "Liaison to Practice Elect," a position that MED's constitution contemplates to "learn the ropes" so that the following year the incumbent may replicate or improve what was done previously). Well, as all MED members that attended either this or last year's MED business meeting know, not much has been done at MED to fulfill this role, partially because there are no funds earmarked to support its activities...

I guess that the first thing I thought of when I was elected was to organize a panel with executives, but my predecessor and I learned that we had no means to bring them to Philadelphia; in fact, according to AOM regulations, they would even have to pay their own registration (unless, I recently found out, we use the five complementary registrations that the annual conference organizers provide for each division). Still, when I have invited executives to academic conferences in the past, they have not had to pay their accommodations; either the event budget or a sponsor covers their expenses as a token of appreciation for their investment of time and effort. Quite frankly, it seems that I was not doing things in the most efficient manner, as our newly elected Liaison to Practice Elect, Joel Harmon, from Farleigh Dickinson University suggested after the business meeting in Philadelphia that there are ways to bring managers to the Academy without having sponsors secured. I am certainly thankful for his volunteering for this position, I believe that I will be the one learning from his experience, instead of the other way around!

In addition to Joel, V. Seshan (from Pepperdine U.) and Joy Beatty (from U of Michigan - Dearborn) have contacted me to volunteer for the Practitioner Liaison Committee. And, lastly (certainly not least!) Elena Antonacopoulou from the U of Liverpool (UK) has a similar position but at the Academy level and I am trying to coordinate with her so that our divisional efforts to coordinate with practitioners have a larger and more efficient impact. Gayle Porter (from Rutgers U.; she represented the Careers division before the EBM Collaborative in Pittsburgh) and Darlene Alexander-Houle (from the U of Phoenix and Hewlett-Packard) also expressed their interest in joining efforts, so... it looks like we are moving in the right direction! As I stated above, volunteers, suggestions, ideas are still quite welcome. I hope that we can create a most interesting program for the meeting in 2008, and maybe have an even larger impact in our future work...

Now, with respect to the Evidence-Based Management collaborative for which I originally titled this "blog," there is not much to report at this point. We are still looking for sponsors to help us cover the expense of bringing as many AOM division representatives as possible to the meetings of the Collaborative that are scheduled for January and June of 2008 (please contact me at your earliest convenience if you are have any leads to share) and there is a sub-committee that is currently looking for "systematic reviews" that would help us design a review format for the EBMgmt effort. If you have suggestions for the new review format, please contact David Denyer (I am not posting his email address to prevent spammers' "web-bots" from adding his email to the zillion lists that we all get so bothered about; if you cannot find his email in the Academy website or in his institutional page, please email me and I will gladly forward your message).

This is all for now! I look forward to your suggestions, ideas, and participation now and during our meeting in Anaheim for 2008. Best regards,

Miguel