Message From the President

 

Vision and Values

 

Judi Neal, The University of New Haven and The Center for Spirit at Work at The University of New Haven, and President, Eastern Academy of Management

 

Three years ago, a group of EAM members met at Fairleigh-Dickinson to engage in our first ever Strategic Planning Retreat. This was the brain-child of Joan Weiner and others, and was beautifully executed by then President Joel Harmon. About 30 of us met for two days to look at our vision for EAM and to more clearly define our guiding values.  Some of us were board members, some of us were really new to EAM, and great care was taken to ensure that there was good representation of the diverse voices in EAM. 

 

It was an inspiring weekend and there were several good things that came out of it.  The first was the creation of our EAM Statement of Purpose:

 

We are a learning community of college educators and others dedicated to using our skills and talents to help the world work better. For us, a learning community is a forum of broad philosophical, social, and practical thought within which knowledge is generated and people are inspired, challenged, and validated at the same time. As a learning community, we are devoted to members' professional development as well as the advancement of management theory, research, education, and practice. We accomplish our goals and attain our vision through conversations and activities held both throughout the year and at regular domestic and international meetings.

 

The second was a charter to look at substantially redesigning our conference to increase the level of dialogue, and to enhance the experience of being a learning community, which I think we were able to achieve when I was Program Chair for the conference held in 2002 in New Haven.

 

The third was the creation of several committees, some of which fulfilled their charter, and others which did not. One excellent result of one of the committees is our new electronic journal, Organization Management Journal, edited by Jeanie Forray.

 

In our conversations that weekend, we realized that our vision for EAM was that it can be more than just annual conferences. When we looked at why we were members of EAM, we realized that this organization has helped us grow professionally and has nourished us personally. We are inspired by the research and teaching of our colleagues, and we are motivated in our own research and teaching because we have the opportunity to present our ideas and findings to our colleagues and to get valuable feedback. 

 

Many of us also discovered that EAM has led to life-long friendships, and that those friendships have led to creative and collaborative work with each other. We also realized that just meeting annually at the regional meeting and bi-annually at the International EAM is not enough if we really want to take advantage of the professional development opportunities that this learning community offers.

 

At the same time, EAM faces many of the competitive and economic pressures that other professional organizations face. Our members have lots of options for professional conferences, and frequently are subject to declining levels of professional development funding. The Academy of Management continues to grow as the primary professional body in our field, and sometimes our members need to make a choice between either attending AOM or attending EAM. Yet we know that we offer a distinct environment that is different and valuable, and it would be worthwhile to understand and mine the gold that is in the heart of the Eastern Academy of Management.

 

So on October 17-18, 2003, we will be holding the second Strategic Planning Retreat. I am inviting a mixture of Board members and non-Board members, with a commitment to replicate the diversity of voices that was achieved at the first retreat. We will revisit the work done by the previous group, with the help of Alain Bolea, a consultant with Business Advisors Network in Westport, CT.  And we will examine the current environment that we face, and look deeply at the potential that EAM has to fulfill its purpose of “using our skills and talents to help the world work better”.

 

I wish that there was a way we could invite the hundreds of people who have been active in EAM over the past few years, but that’s not practical. So it is my hope that the group I have chosen will represent our community well, and will help us find a way to become a stronger community, one which serves our professional development, which helps us expand the effectiveness of the field of management, and which thereby contributes to making the world a better place.

 

If you have any suggestions about how we can make EAM a better, more meaningful organization, please contact me or anyone on the Board, so that your ideas are heard. We are also looking into the idea of having an online discussion board on our website so that people can easily contribute thoughts, ideas, and suggestions. 

 

EAM has made a significant difference in my career and my life. When I was a new faculty member and attended my first EAM conference, I had never published anything, nor did I really know how to. I had done an action research project for my dissertation while I was working in the corporate world, and had never done anything with it.  By the time I came to academia, it was too late, and I really didn’t have a research identity. 

 

As I attended sessions at the conference, I began to get new ideas, and left with a tremendous amount of inspiration and energy. A year or two later, Joe Seltzer, who was an editor for the Journal of Management Education, came up to me after one of my presentations and encouraged me to write it up and submit it to the journal. At each conference, other colleagues would ask me to be involved in research or in creating activities for the Experiential Learning Association, and many of these presentations led to published papers. There are countless experiences like this in EAM, and my vision is that we can build on them and continue to expand our reputation as a place that is both challenging and nurturing for our professional growth. 

 

We can do this by taking the time to reflect on our vision and values as an organization, and by realistically assessing the world we live in today.  Because of all the great leadership and volunteer work of so many people in the past, we are a strong organization, and I look forward to spending this year doing my part in carrying the torch of this learning community into the future.