Minutes
Executive Committee Meeting
Business Policy & Strategy Division
August 10, 1997

Present: Michael Lubatkin, Harbir Singh, Ed Zajac, Diana Day, Ming-Jer Chen, Rhonda Reger, Bruce Lamont, Peter Lane, Gerry Johnson, Rikard Larrson, Bert Cannella, Sayan Chatterjee, Maragrethe Wiersema, Syd Finkelstein, Phil Bromley, Connie Helfat, Bob Hoskisson, Margie Peteraf, Rob Grant. (Jay Barney and Julia Liebeskind were absent.)

1. REPORTS
• Welcome to New Members—Michael Lebatkin warmly welcomed the newly elected Executive Committee members in attendance: Phil Bromiley, Connie Helfat, Gerry Johnson, and Rhonda Reger. Michael mentioned that Julia Liebeskind was unable to attend due to illness and that Ming-Jer Chen would be continuing on the EC in his newly elected role of Assistant Program Chair.
• Pre-convention Report—Diana Day reported on seven well-received pre-convention activities.
• The New Faculty Consortium, organized by Syd Finkelstein and Karen Bantel, was a smashing success with 21 outstanding attendees. The Panel Members included Syd, Karen, Kathy Harrigan, Bente Lowendahl, and Praveen Nayyar.
• The BPS Doctoral Consortium, coordinated by Kathleen Connor and Jay Barney, was equally superb.
• Diana reported that the Dissertation workshop was very crowded and Gabriel Szulanski, who coordinated the event, did a wonderful job.
• The Academy-wide New Doctoral Student Consortium, sponsored by All of the Divisions, was also well attended. The focus is to provide a picture of the various divisions to folks beginning their doctoral programs
• The Craft of Reviewing Workshop, jointly sponsored by BPS and OMT and coordinated by Peter Lane, went very well. About one-third of the attendees were doctoral students. The rest were mostly junior faculty. Presenters included Rob Grant, Marjorie Lyles, Elaine Mosakowski, and Lloyd Sandelands.
• George Yip organized an excellent session on Global Strategy addressing emerging company/country issues. The session was co-sponsored with the IM Division.
• Anne Illinich coordinated an innovative session on linkages between case writing and academic research.
• Program Update and Innovations—Ed Zajac reported that 294 papers and 29 symposia were submitted for possible inclusion on the BPS program. In an attempt to be inclusive and through creative use of the 1/3 acceptance rule, shared interest tracks, and poster sessions, 146 papers and 14 symposia were included on the program, for an effective acceptance rate of nearly 50%. With 108 non-US scholars as authors of accepted papers, many of which were first authors, the representation of international scholars on the program was quite good.
  
  Ed also reported that the innovative use of email in the review process was a general success. It saved paper and some mailing costs and permitted reviewers a bit more time to do their tasks. The negatives were the non-trivial sorting and file editing, inevitable glitches with system incompatibilities that also precluded the use of file attachments, and security issues.
  
  Another innovation this year that Ed discussed was the outsourcing of the coordination and handling of the review process to Carolyn Martin of Event Design. Carolyn did a wonderful job. When queried about the cost, Ed estimated it to be between $8,000-$9,000, which he personally paid.
  
  Ed also discussed the reviewers. There were 297 reviewers this year. Priority Mail and Fed Ex for international reviewers, other costly innovations, were used to expedite papers getting to the reviewers. The quality of the reviews received was quite high. The top 20 were selected as this year’s Outstanding Reviewers for the division. Each will receive a certificate to recognize their amazingly high quality work, equivalent to reviews one would expect from a top journal.
  
  Michael Lubatkin congratulated Ed on his fine job with the program and nominated himself and Ed to serve as the Division’s Innovation Committee. The EC approved.
  
  Not on the original agenda, Rhonda Reger distributed copies of the February’s Executive Committee Mid-Winter Meetings for approval. The minutes were approved by the EC.
  
  Diana Day then discussed the Glueck Best Paper Award winner. Richard Makadok’s (Emory University) outstanding paper, Do Inter-firm Differences in Capabilities Affect Strategic Pricing Dynamics? was selected for the award.
• Free Press Outstanding Dissertation Competition—Harbir Singh noted there were 25 submissions, about the same as previous years. The six selected finalists represented outstanding strategy research, frequently combining both qualitative and quantitative data and analyses. The winner of the 1997 Free Press Best Dissertation Award is Gautam Ahuja (Michigan), currently a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. The title of the dissertation is Collaboration and Innovation: A Longitudinal Study of Inter-firm Linkages and Firm Patenting Performance in the Global Advanced Materials Industry. His primary advisors were Professors Will Mitchell and Sumit Majumdar, both at the University of Michigan. Other finalists included David Kang (Harvard Ph.D.) currently at Harvard, Michael Leiblien (Purdue Ph.D.) currently at South Carolina, Ravi Madhavan (Pittsburgh Ph.D.) currently at Illinois, Brian Silverman (UC Berkeley Ph.D.) currently at Toronto, and James Westphal (Northwestern Ph.D.) currently at UT-Austin.
• Financial Report—Peter Lane distributed and discussed a copy of a report which detailed the current budget, projected budget, and other financial issues. A copy of the report is attached. Peter mentioned that the Academy board has approved our two new endowments: the Management Practice Award and the BPS Development Fund. The funds will be transferred to the endowments in the fall. Peter noted that the new endowments need charters and requested that the EC draft them today. Discussion of the endowments was deferred to later on the agenda.
  
  Peter also detailed the new Academy limits on annual spending and carryovers of surplus. (See attachment.) It was mentioned that our excess dollars could be used to defray the escalating costs of newsletter postage or to help cover those incurred by the future program chairs. The issue was tabled till later on the agenda.
  
  Peter noted that division membership, while still 2^nd largest in the Academy, was 2,562, down slightly from last year. Peter also described the current status of the postage debate between the Academy and the University of Maryland. It seems likely that the dispute will be settled shortly.
  
  Ed Zajac lauded Peter for doing a wonderful job at Treasurer.
2. OLD BUSINESS
   With the above discussion of the endowments, Michael Lubatkin chose to cover issues of old business in a different order than originally scheduled.
• Status of the Endowment Funds—Michael Lubatkin discussed the correspondence with Mike Hitt, copies of which were distributed prior to the meeting (copies attached). Michael mentioned that he has since resolved and clarified issues with Mike Hitt. There was extensive discussion among the EC concerning the merits of the endowments, their usage, Academy/Division relationships, and the use of excess funds. Most of the discussion centered on two questions: What should be done with the new endowments (i.e., their charters)? What should be done with future carryovers? In the end, it was decided that Peter Lane and Michael Lubatkin would draft charters for the endowments. To address the second question, a Creative Spending Committee was established: Rhonda Reger (chair), Ed Zajac, and Gerry Johnson. The Committee will present their recommendations to the EC at the Mid-Winter Meeting.
• Awards Proposal & Joint BPS/OMT Initiatives—Jay Barney was absent. No report. Michael said that he was not aware of any BPS/OMT joint initiatives underway.
• $50 Ph.d Consortium Fee—Michael Lubatkin asked Syd Finkelstein if the participants to the New Faculty Consortium were charged the fee this year to help cover the event’s costs. Syd said that the fee was paid. In light of the division’s surplus, it was moved that these charges be waived for future consortia. The motion passed.
• Member Communications—Bruce Lamont and Michael Lubatkin provided an update on the events that lead to the near total breakdown in member communications. Oh, a sorry tale (Editor’s note). Bruce distributed a job description for a new BPS Netmaster (copy attached). It was suggested that the description be augmented to encourage teams of individuals to volunteer and the appointment be extended to 2 years. Bruce agreed to post the announcement to the BPSNet and obtain a new Netmaster.
3. NEW BUSINESS
• Special Topic Chair—Minimal discussion.
• European Task Force—Rikard Larsson distributed a proposal for a BPS international outreach program (a copy is attached). Due to time constraints, there was no opportunity for discussion. Michael Lubatkin said the proposal would be handled via email among the EC.
• Teaching Committee Innovations—Michael Lubatkin distributed a proposal prepared by Steve Floyd on expanding the role of the BPS Teaching Committee (copy attached). Again, due to time constraints, Michael said that the proposal would be handled among the EC at a later time by email.

The meeting was adjourned at approximately 3:15 pm.

Respectfully submitted,

Bruce T. Lamont

Attachments

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