By Kalle Lyytinen
It is common in these editorials and announcements from the program leadership to focus on great program achievements, identify specific issues that are emerging to be addressed or reckoned with (such as curriculum change which we will report on the next Digest), or highlight some new elements in the program that can be shared with students and alumni. This editorial will be somewhat different as I will talk more about gratitude and relevance and contextual awareness that form a moral obligation in teaching and attending this excellent practice-oriented program. But before, I will first congratulate our 99th (Stephanie Herbst-Lucke), 100th (Amanda Blake) and 101st (Jennifer Bishop) PhDs from our PhD program. Stephanie, Mandy and Jennifer are the 1st, 2nd and the 3rd students to finish from the 11th cohort. This is quite an achievement from the students, the faculty who have advised the students, and the administration and staff who have tirelessly greased the wheels over the years to make all this work! I never expected us to reach this number so early and not even during my tenure as a program director. I was expecting us to be in the 70s range at this point.
Gratitude- readiness to show appreciation and being thankful- is rarely discussed and recognized as a critical element and moral compass for organizing and running this type of doctoral program that strives for excellence, rigor, and relevance. But the events related to COVID-19 and the recent events in Ukraine highlight the importance of gratitude as a critical and positive element that undergirds all what we do in this program. Last two years have taught us that everything is temporary and fragile and can be taken away by the fate or by bad human behavior. Therefore, as a program director I need to show humility and show gratitude every day for the possibility to participate in such a great educational experience. It is a rare privilege to work with such a vast pool of smart, committed and thankful students. I also show deep gratitude to my great and diverse colleagues and peers across in the program with whom I can interact and who have taught me so much. I am also thankful for their willingness to give so much care and effort to the success of students and the program overall. I also express gratitude to all the program staff who have taught me devotion, passion and unwavering support over the years and made my experience in the program what it is. I also show gratitude that the program has helped create so many lifelong friendships and I have had the possibility to learn to know so many great people across many walks of life. Finally, I also show gratitude to the sheer possibility to learn constantly and that the program consistently challenges me intellectually in educational content and research projects. When you sum up it is hard to think a better mission to devote your life to. In all the daily noise and struggles that come with the program management I easily forget the great gift I have been offered in managing this program.
Relevance- the quality or state of being closely connected or appropriate to a situation- is tightly written into the mission of the program. Relevance, however, has come as a new force to our awareness as a result of events such as COVID-19 or the Ukraine war. What do these major events express as complex global problems and what their effects will be to the future of the nations, firms, or individuals. For example, both have significant impact on energy prices, manufacturing levels and the war will soon result in new global famine crisis. We expect our research to be relevant and help address problems of practice- ergo we desire to be relevant and, if we do what we teach we probably are relevant. In our recent faculty meeting we however discussed extensively that this call is deeper. Do we offer content that is relevant to understand the broader context of our actions or the effect of such events as COVID-19 or the Ukraine war? Can we be reflective about them and offer an arena to discuss and understand these events in a systemic manner? Are we offering intellectual framing and means whereby we can enter into dialogue of how improvements in situations like these are possible and are we seeing that the relevance calls also for ethics and integrity- take a stand for the good and virtuous? How much are we addressing such topics across the courses and how we conduct the program as a whole? Should we seek to be more relevant contextually and as a learning community engage in debates that can guide us to understand and improve situations? We purposefully seek to offer intellectual means in the courses and research, but do we practice those means in how we organize learning as a community? I think there are several ways we can improve such contextual relevance and we will look at ways in which this can happen in the next academic year.
