MED Practice PDW in Anaheim!! We look forward to seeing you there!!

Thank you for visiting this site! The following Professional Development Workshop (PDW) is the result of the efforts put forth by the "Practice Committee:"

Does our work matter? Has your research made an impact? What about your teaching? Are you confident that your classes are providing your students with relevant, evidence-based tools for their professional careers? What do businesses expect of us to consider our work more relevant?

If you are willing to give some serious thought to these questions, please join us in “Questioning for Relevance, A Dialogue of Scholarship and Practice;” a PDW that will take place on Sunday, August 10 from 9:00AM to 12:00PM at Anaheim Convention Center in the 210B room (pre-registration is NOT required but strongly encouraged; please email drolivaslujan@gmail.com to pre-register).

We will critically reflect on the recent initiatives to bridge the research-practice gap, and to inspire extensions of current efforts to increase the relevance of academic work. Presenters have volunteered based on their work, recent experience and research interests. We approach the research-practice gap from several perspectives, including those of the CEO of NSHMBA (a non-profit that has recently sponsored a journal and increased its focus on business research), researcher, teacher, and practitioner perspectives. We seek to interactively explore with participants how each role contributes to the creation, translation, and dissemination of research that achieves relevance. Reports from founding participants in the Evidence Based Management Collaborative will be included. The panelists include the following:

Lourdes Hassler, Chief Executive Officer of the National Society of Hispanic MBAs (NSHMBA). The organization is increasingly focusing on business research partly as a reaction to the dearth of research on Hispanics and businesses. Since 2007, the Business Journal of Hispanic Research has been sponsored by NSHMBA in response to this gap. Lourdes will share her perspective on relevant research for the business community.

David Denyer (Cranfield U, School of Management) is also a Scholar of the Advanced Institute for Management (AIM); he will discuss the ways that evidence-informed management bridges the gap. He is an associate of the Research Methods Group of the Evidence Network (funded by ESRC and based at Queen Mary College, University of London), a multi-disciplinary community of senior scholars from the natural sciences (medicine) and social sciences to promote and investigate Evidence-based policy and practice in the UK. David was one of only two management scholars invited to attend a series of seminars funded by the health development agency (HDA) and delivered under the auspices of the Evidence Network Research Methods Group.

Melanie P. Cohen spans the boundary of the academic and practitioner worlds, in her roles as the Information Technology Strategist for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD); and as an adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland (University College Graduate School of Management and Technology). Previously, she was the Chief of the Strategic Planning Unit at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Her experience includes organizational restructuring, change, and culture and her research focuses on public management and the 21st century organization. She will share her observations on the connection between theory and practice, specifically how theory informs practice and practice implements theory.

Joy Beatty (U of Michigan – Dearborn) reflects on the relationship between our research questions and teaching. If we are looking at having direct impact on practice, how does teaching serve that in relation to discipline-based research? Are we there to translate or transmit the “real” work from other areas into plain English? Or are we preparing the students to receive new ideas by opening their minds and teaching topics like critical thinking? And whose needs do we serve when we form our research questions?

Chad Smith (Clarion U of Pennsylvania) sold his manufacturing company –a firm in ten industries with annual sales of ten million dollars that employed eighty individuals within three different internal divisions and two distributorships in Florida and Texas. Chad has been in the manufacturing industry for the past fourteen years and owned his business throughout the latter twelve years. Simultaneously, he earned his Doctorate of Science in Information Systems and Communications and entered academia as a member of the Business Faculty at Clarion’s College of Business Administration. His presentation will highlight differences that these worlds present.

Josetta Mclaughlin (Roosevelt U) addresses the problem of translating research, based on her work with journalists. She has studied how psycho-metricians are presenting the data associated with standardized testing and the problems the journalists face in interpreting the numbers. Her perspective about these professionals will encourage the audience to ask the questions that make their work more translatable for non-specialists.

Miguel R Olivas-Luján (Clarion U of Pennsylvania and Tecnológico de Monterrey –Mexico) is Liaison to Practice for the MED division in 2007-08 and organizer of this session. He represents MED in the Evidence-Based Management Collaborative (EBMC) convened by Denise Rousseau since 2007. Miguel’s contribution is twofold: report on the progress of the EBMC and make a presentation on “Holographic writing,” a writing style suitable for reporting research to non-technical audiences in layers of gradual and increasing complexity.

After a first set of presentations, a 45-min discussion period has been scheduled to allow exercises facilitated by the presenters to engage the audience through discussions in round tables. The second set of presentations is scheduled to think about concrete ways in which our research can be made more accessible and relevant to practitioners.

This Professional Development Workshop was organized on behalf of the MED division and is sponsored by PTC, OB, TIM, MOC, PNP, MEN, and CM.

For more information and to pre-register, contact Miguel R. Olivas-Luján (drolivaslujan@gmail.com).