Management Education & Development (MED) 

2023 Division PDW Program: Call for Submissions

PDW Chair:Christine Rivers, Surrey Business School, University of Surrey United Kingdom

The Management Education & Development Division (MED) invites you to submit a Professional Development Workshop (PDW) proposal to the 83rd Academy of Management (AOM) meeting which will be held in person 4-8 August 2023, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. 

This year's conference theme is “Putting the Worker Front and Center”.  We are looking for PDWs centered around the theme and invite PDWs that:

1. Focus on professional development by giving participants skills or tools that will improve their practice; and 
2. Are interactive, inclusive, innovative, and energizing.   
3. Are relevant to other divisions.

MED is the education theory, practice and policy research division of AOM. We welcome research insights that address challenges and opportunities that educators, leaders, students and administrators face, including: education and learning research on practices and policies that drive learning and student engagement, technology supported learning challenges and opportunities, business school governance and accreditation, leadership development, pedagogic theory development (e.g. design-based research), course/program curriculum, and pedagogy; assessment designs, innovative technological solutions, effective teaching or learning tools, case studies, and experiential learning exercises, and scholarly writing and publication processes relevant to undergraduate, postgraduate, doctoral, executive and non-credit bearing management education programs. 

PDWs should be designed to support the development of our members’ professional skills in collaborative research, learning, teaching, or professional practice, and envisioning our future as educators, developers and disseminators. We welcome novel and even provocative ideas, tools, techniques, concepts and perspectives that explore issues within the MED domain and that also cross divisions and geographies. To promote engagement, we urge PDW proposals to allocate at least half of the planned time for participant interaction and dialogue (e.g., discussion, experiential activities).  

Content  

For the upcoming conference theme of "Putting the Worker Front and Center," calls for our community to rebalance our attention, and pivot towards those at the very core of productive enterprise, namely the workers. We are seeking PDWs with breakthrough ideas and perspectives that will both broaden our vision and focus our attention on the worker indispensable to delivering, designing, managing and leading in management education. Along these lines, the following are example questions to consider as you prepare your PDW proposal:  

• What operational and employment strategies are required to more effectively and sustainably leverage the potential of people working in management education?  
• How are geo-political and institutional shifts transforming the experience of people working in management education and how can we support workers to remain motivated?  
• How is the changing nature of work and “anti-workism” transforming collective voice and the institutions through which it is expressed around the world, and indeed, what underlies the emergence of new forms of worker organization within and across workplaces?  
• How is the AI revolution impacting the work of people in management education (academics and professional services) – blessing or curse?  
• What changes would we have to make or should we make to the curriculum to ensure that the worker remains front and center?  
• What theoretical models do we need to drop, rework to change perspective and enable workers in management education to feel valued? 
• How would a business school leadership model look like that puts the worker front and center? 
• How might we more effectively expose our students to the experience of marginalized workers and the factors underlying anti-workism? 

Format 

We encourage a variety of non-lecture formats, including workshops, town hall meetings, debates, panels, tours, roundtable discussions, case study exercises, and more. These are only examples. We encourage imaginative and innovative formats.  

We expect each PDW to allocate at least half of its time to engaging participant interaction and dialogue.  

We also encourage proposals that: facilitate international and diverse participation; take an interdisciplinary approach; and/or include an awareness of practitioners and their concerns alongside researchers and educators.  

Early career stage individuals may self-nominate their proposal for the inclusion of your PDW proposal in our Doctoral Student /Junior Faculty Consortium showcase.   

Submissions 

Please be sure to follow the AOM's 2023 general submission guidelines for PDWs. You must submit your proposal via the AOM Submission Center. 

Note these key dates as you plan your submission:  

• Submission Center Opens: 6 December 2022 
• Submission Deadline: Tuesday, 10 January 2023 at 17:00 ET (GMT-5/UTC-5). 

The “Best AOM MED Division PDW Award” will be given to the workshop that meets the guidelines, and is judged to make the most significant contribution, in relation to the terms of reference offered here.  

The PDW proposals should include the following criteria:  

• Value: How will the PDW provide real value to the attendees? What will be the take-away for attendees? What is the “unique value proposition” of the PDW?  
• Creativity: How is the PDW delivering novelty and originality?  
• Interaction and integration: How does the PDW enable communication, exchange between participants, and cross-fertilization across fields and methodologies?  
• Design and formal quality: Does the PDW follow the guideline for the text, the quality of the writing, and the required information? How well is the logistical component of the PDW described?  
• Ability to draw an audience: Will the PDW interest a large audience?  

Please remember that PDWs submitted to MED should specifically target our domain, as described above, rather than be an “all academy” submission.  

If you have any questions, please contact Arran Caza, PDW Program Chair.