By: Phil Cola
I recently had the honor and privilege of serving on the Organizing Committee for the above referenced international conference that took place in Antwerp, Belgium on September 5-7, 2019. I also served in the role of the Co-Chair for the Doctoral Consortium portion of this event. This was very exciting, a good deal of work, and anxiety inducing as well. The reason for the later was twofold: 1) that it was going to be a good deal of work in something that I have had limited experience in executing (i.e., conference planning); and 2) because it dawned on me early on that I would be travelling to Belgium on my own. Those of you who know me, generally understand that I prefer to be in my office here at the school writing, reading, or preparing for teaching classes. So the thought of flying to Amsterdam to take a train to Antwerp without my wife Diane navigating the details was indeed daunting. I was trying to get Diane to go with me and figured “who would not want to travel to Europe and visit a beautiful city in Belgium”, right? Well it turns out that an elementary school teacher in her third week of classes for a new school year did not want to make such a journey. She told me that “since I was part of the organizing committee that I should change the dates to mid-August or prior to the start of the school year.” Of course, I had no pull for the timing of the 9th Annual EMS International Conference. Therefore, I was on my own for travel, but Kalle told me not to worry, as the travel would be no issue (so says our leader who is from Finland and has traveled the world extensively).
 |
| Left to right: Elke Tweepenninckx, Hugo Marynissen, Bart Cambré and Eline Maes |
I remember vaguely hearing of this conference a long time ago (turns out to be 10 years ago) when it was held in Cleveland for the first time and I was working adjacent to campus in academic medicine. This was also a year before I enrolled in the Doctor of Management (DM) Program. I had no idea what Engaged Management Scholarship was nor did I understand practitioner-scholarship.
After joining the DM Program, I do remember hearing more about this conference that was being held all over the world each September after Labor Day. Some of my friends and colleagues in the program started to attend and were off to London, Paris and other destinations in the United States. I was reserving my limited travel time for more traditional academic conferences like the Academy of Management (AoM) or the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA). Remember, I am not big on travelling too much, and I could not afford to go to non-work conferences unless my research was accepted for presentation. Therefore, I had not attended any of the first seven EMS conferences. Once appointed to the faculty at Weatherhead, I asked Kalle for more details on the EMS conferences. He, as usual was very succinct, and said, “Phil, it’s all about building an international community of practitioner scholars”. This resonated with me and my research on relationship building. So shortly thereafter, I planned to attend the EMS conference at the University of South Florida in 2017, which was being organized by my friend and colleague, Joann Farrell Quinn, PhD ‘13. That conference was cancelled due to a hurricane. I finally got to attend the 2018 EMS conference that was hosted by Temple University in Philadelphia. Soon after arriving at Temple (via yellow school buses from the hotel with DM Programs’ students, Alexis Rittenberger and John Schaffner, – a story for another day), I was approached by a gentleman, who would soon become a good friend, Hugo Marynissen. Hugo introduced himself to me and promptly told me that he was looking forward to meeting me because I was going to be his co-chair for the EMS 2019 conference to be held at the Antwerp Management School (AMS). This was an interesting revelation because as it turns out the co-chair is from the site of the following year’s host site. It was also at that moment that I realized that the conference in 2020 was going be held again at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the event.
 |
| J. Bart Morrison, DM '02, presenting at EMS 2019 in Antwerp, Belgium |
Hugo and his team of colleagues (i.e., Elke Tweepenninckx, Eline Maes, Bart Cambré, and Steffi Weil) at AMS were wonderful to work with in the intervening year. They also were extremely welcoming as hosts to their beautiful city. It was a great deal of work as we put together a doctoral consortium, but it was an excellent day for all involved. There were 39 students, from 14 different EDBAC institutions, that presented their research to faculty in 8 small groups in search of faculty and peer feedback. I very much enjoyed working with a colleague from Georgia State University, Karen Loch, to provide our five students with detailed feedback and to ensure that they had a relevant “conversation about practitioner scholarship” to join. I remain in touch with a number of doctoral consortium students and continue to try my best to offer them a community for discourse on their work. There were 5 students from the DM Programs that were accepted to participate in the doctoral consortium. Four of them were able to attend and they also had accompanying posters on display the next day for their research. Below is a summary of the research they presented in the Doctoral Consortium:
- Samira Askarova - Adaptation For Organizational Turnaround: Building Adaptive Capacity For Resilience, Preparedness, And Transformation;
- Jennifer Bishop - Level Up: What Factors Inhibit or Contribute to African-American Women Moving into the C-Suite in Corporate America? ;
- Joshua Gerlick - Ethical and Legal Considerations of Personalized Pricing in an Algorithm-Driven World;
- Susan Johnson - Discovering the Role of Functional Team Identity In Cross-Boundary Learning and Their Effects on Project Outcomes; and
- Angel Lopez Mutuberria - How Do The Factors Of Family Functioning, Personal Growth Engagement, And Meaningful Work Influence Life Meaning? (Angel was unable to participate due to unforeseen circumstances, but I was pleased that he was accepted to the consortium).
I was extremely proud of each of these students and how they are able to carry on the tradition of the Weatherhead DM Program in a way that that would make all of the alumni, current students, faculty and staff proud. I have found, and I think our students find, that people want to hear about their experiences at Weatherhead and CWRU. It makes us all feel good when we see the respect that our program garners across the world. Our group not only joined the community of practitioner scholars, but they have the opportunity to help lead the future of this emergent community.
 |
| Josh Gerlick, DM Cohort 20201, presenting at EMS 2019 |
Jagdip Singh journeyed to Antwerp as well to serve as faculty for the doctoral consortium. That level of commitment is outstanding and is of enormous benefit to other students who do not get the opportunity to have a course or to study with Jagdip as we do here in Cleveland. He has also served as faculty for the doctoral consortium at previous EMS conferences. Additionally, Chris Lazlo was invited to serve on a prestigious panel of sustainability experts during the main portion of the conference. The panel was entitled “Circular Economy as an Enabler of the Sustainable Development Goals”. This group was chaired by the overall conference keynote speaker, Wayne Visser, from AMS who already has a working relationship with Chris with shared synergy for this topic. Dick Boland attended the EMS conference and was terrific in providing feedback during conference sessions for the entire community. Of course, Kalle Lyytinen was there and is truly a founding father of this community. I am personally humbled that Jagdip, Chris, Dick and Kalle travelled all that way to support student learning and the continued building of this community. To me that is the essence of community. These individuals are greatly respected well beyond the confines of Weatherhead and it is amazing to see them in action.
The same day as the Doctoral Consortium, there was an Alumni Consortium, chaired by another new friend Ekin Pellegrini of the University of Missouri-St. Louis, with alumni from all over the world who had completed executive doctorates in management. This group had a terrific day of touring the AMS and going on a field trip to a neuroscience laboratory. They had discussions on job markets, personal branding, and publishing their research. Alumni from CWRU have participated in this consortium in the past, but none were able to attend this year. My expectation and hope is that there will be many CWRU alumni in attendance next year.
During the main conference, CWRU was well represented as in addition to the panel Chris Lazlo served on referenced previously, Kalle and I co-led a panel with Lars Mathiassen and Louis Grabowski both from Georgia State University on “How to Publish in Engaged Management ReView”. This was a well-attended session with a good deal of follow-up to potential authors post conference.
Josh Gerlick presented his work (referenced above) in a paper session, which was co-authored by Stephan Liozu, PhD ’13. A wonderful surprise was another conference paper session presented by J. Bart Morrison, DM ‘02 entitled “Towards Achieving Broadened Accountability”. I was able to attend both of these paper presentations and once again CWRU is providing clear evidence of relevant and rigorous research to the EMS community. Finally, I was able to chair a session on “Organizations” in which four papers were presented to a room packed full of practitioner scholars. It was an invigorating session in which Dick Boland was offering his expertise to all.
In 2020, Kalle will host the anniversary celebration of the EMS conference in Cleveland and at Case Western Reserve University. He has invited Chris Lazlo to Chair the Conference Proceedings and for me to Chair the Consortia. We are excited and anxious (at least I will not be worried about travelling a long distance) about the work that lies ahead in the coming year, but I know that the DM/PhD alumni and students from our program will be eager to help us make the upcoming conference more successful than ever. Marilyn, Shelley and Sue along with a PhD student at Weatherhead, Sharon Fay, are already working on the logistics. It is an honor for me to be a part of this amazing worldwide community of practitioner scholars. Please come join us and the rest of the community in Cleveland, September 10-13, 2020. Truthfully, we cannot build the community without you.
