Call for Papers: Management Consulting (MC)
(Program Chair: Ansgar Richter, Ansgar.Richter@ebs.edu)
The 2010 Academy of Management Conference in Montreal is drawing near! The Management Consulting Division (MCD) invites you to contribute academic papers, field reports/case studies, and symposia proposals to next year’s conference. The MCD is different from most other Academy divisions in that it has a strong applied orientation and a tradition of receptivity to experience-based knowledge. We strongly encourage colleagues from other divisions who have consultancy-related papers (e.g. in the fields of HRM, strategy, organizational development) and would like to reach academics and practitioners alike, to submit their manuscripts to MCD. An important motivation of presenters in the MC division is to get feedback for their work not just from scholars, but from consultants and executives as well.
We actively solicit papers and symposium proposals on the theory, research, teaching and practice of management consulting. Submissions might deal with, but are not limited to, questions such as: Where is the consulting industry heading? Is there evidence for the ascent or decline of management consulting? How is the role of consultants changing? Why and how are clients using the support of external advisors, be they general management consultants or consulting service providers specialized in a particular function or industry? Are there any emerging trends in management consulting that academics and executives should be concerned about? Do organizations survive and prosper thanks to or in spite of management consulting? How precise is our conceptualization and evaluation of intervention techniques and strategies? What are the insights from action and intervention research? What are the current challenges and tensions in consulting relationships? Are there any enigmas or mysteries about the consulting process that your research has unraveled? How good are consultants in managing and marketing their own firms? How are consulting and related professional service firms organized, and what can we learn from them? Do consultants lead or are they led by change initiatives? Do knowledge management systems really support knowledge transfer? How convincing and transparent are the professional and ethical standards in the consulting practice? What are the issues around certification? In sum, any topic related to management consulting is welcome.
The topic of next year’s Academy of Management conference in Montréal, “Dare to Care: Passion and Compassion in Management Practice and Research” provides a particularly good opportunity for practitioners and scholars with an interest in management consulting to submit and discuss their work. For example, some papers may address issues such as whether consultants really help their clients, and what the nature of such help might be. Others may study consulting to non-profit organizations, or the motivations behind pro-bono projects (which many of the larger consulting firms provide). Yet others might look at the nature of mutual support among the members of consulting teams, or the question of whether and in which way consulting firms care for their own people. Overall, the topic of the Montréal conference invites us to reflect on whether our work as managers, consultants or researchers contributes to the wellbeing of the larger society in which we live and work, and to (re-)gain a sense of passion for this work, as well as compassion for the people involved in or affected by it. However, it is important to stress that your submission may be about any topic in the area of management consulting (broadly construed), whether it relates to the overall conference theme or not.
In addition to submissions from practitioners and experienced academics, we also strongly encourage submissions from doctoral students and young faculty members who would like to take advantage of this opportunity to develop their work. The MCD has a strong tradition of providing developmental feedback and advice on how to make manuscripts (even more) useful: For example, how to shape a case study so that it becomes an ideal basis for class discussion, or how to make scholarly papers ready for submission to academic journals. We pride ourselves on the quality of our review process, and hope that you take this opportunity to benefit from it.
MCD seeks submissions in the following categories:
- Academic
research papers that report on studies related to the division domain,
as indicated above. These include quantitative or qualitative studies
with deductive or inductive approaches. Academic papers should follow
the
- Symposia proposals that address division domain topics. A symposium may take the form of a collection of papers, an interactive discussion, or a panel discussion. Interest to the division, timeliness of the topic, and whether the session is informative and engaging are the primary criteria for evaluation. The aim is to provoke new lines of thought and debate that can promote new areas of research and inform practice.
- Field report papers and consulting cases. These are rich descriptions of an event, an issue or an organization with a discussion of lessons learned. We are looking for contemporary experiences that are particularly rich in providing lessons for consultants or their clients. As such, the papers should provide enough detail to demonstrate the lessons learned and provide a rationale for the importance or implications of those lessons. The aim is to capture current concerns in the field that could form the basis for class discussion or the starting point for more involved research studies.
Division Awards: The division offers several best paper awards:
- The Graziadio School of Business and Management/Pepperdine University Award for Outstanding Paper on the Practice of Management Consulting
- the Bentley College/HEC School of Management Best Student Paper Award;
- the Thomson South-Western Award for Outstanding Research Based Paper on Management Consulting;
- the Benedictine University Award For Best Paper On Ethical Issues In Consulting;
- The division award for Best Field Report Paper.
Submission Details:
The submission deadline is January 14, 2010. In order to submit your paper / symposium proposal, please use the