Note From BPS Program Chair

I invite you to my hometown of Philadelphia next summer. In addition to the culinary delights of soft pretzels, scrapple & authentic Philly cheese-steaks, the major-league baseball Philadelphia Phillies, the Philadelphia Art Museum, and many historic sights, we have an active scholarly community. It will be a great venue for knowledge creation with plenty of activities in store as well.

The recently held Academy of Management Meeting in Atlanta highlights how engaged the Business Policy & Strategy (BPS) Division has become. The Professional Development Workshop (PDW) sessions were very well attended, and submissions for the remainder of the Conference were at an all time high for the BPS Division within the Academy of Management. Despite the expanded program that now goes from Friday through Wednesday for some of our BPS members, attendance at sessions was high throughout the entire conference. This level of participation and dedication is the hallmark of our BPS Division. I anticipate this tradition of strong participation and serious scholarship to continue in Philadelphia in August 2007.

Our BPS program in Atlanta also shows the BPS Division’s commitment to representing members with diverse interests, backgrounds and affiliations. International representation is increasing with submissions representing almost 50 different countries. Also, scholars who reside outside of the United States earned a substantial number of our BPS awards.

As I turn to the task in the year ahead, I am grateful for the groundwork provided by those before me. First and foremost, Russ Coff has been outstanding and has helped at every step of the way. Jim Westphal and Anita McGahan continue to guide steadfastly the BPS Division. We are also indebted to past leaders of the BPS Division, with special thanks to Margie Peteraf for her consummate service to our Division over the past five years. Every Program Chair has enhanced the BPS electronic submission since being initiated by Diana Day and Javier Gimeno. Several other Divisions have borrowed the system to streamline the submission process and it has become the basis for the Academy of Management’s centralized submission and reviewer management system, which will be in place for the 2007 Academy of Management Conference. Thanks to Matt Suppa and Jimmy Le of the Academy of Management who are leading the effort and who are exceptionally responsive to the Divisions.

Call for Reviewers. Another indication of BPS Division’s vibrancy is that several hundred people attended this year’s BPS business meeting. In addition, many of you have volunteered already to offer your assistance in putting together the Philadelphia BPS program. For example, Anne Marie Knott and Cathy Maritan have volunteered substantial amounts of their time and talents to work with me extensively on the BPS Program for 2007. I appreciate such enthusiasm from so many of you and I will work with the BPS Executive Committee to look for ways to involve more people. The most immediate need we have is for reviewers. We typically require between 1,000 and 1,200 reviewers in order to distribute the reviewer workload fairly. We want to make sure that the new reviewer sign-up system results in the participation we need. The quality of the reviews has been increasing over time, making this level of feedback an increasingly valuable service for research paper submitters and the Division as a whole. Please continue to provide high-quality, timely reviews for which our BPS Division has become known.

Reviewer recruitment begins in early October. To sign up as a BPS reviewer, please visit the academy reviewer sign-up website (http://program.aomonline.org/reviewers). Reviewers will be asked to review about three submissions between January 16^th and February 12^th. You will be assigned papers based on the 5 topic codes you provide that indicate your areas of expertise.

Call for Submissions. For those who have previously supported the BPS Division with your submissions and reviews, please continue sending us your best recent papers, and I emphasize the opportunities for BPS members to submit symposium proposals. I also encourage those who have not submitted to the Academy or to the BPS Division in the past to please do so. We celebrate the diverse interests of the BPS Division and we welcome the opportunity to consider your work for inclusion.

Now, on to the Conference theme for the 2007 meetings in Philadelphia: “Doing Well by Doing Good.” The Academy of Management provides a call for a Stakeholder approach for this Conference, and this approach is one that I hope to support.  

While the BPS Division has no separate submission guidelines (from those of the Academy of Management), we have posted some useful information on the BPS web page (http://divisions.aomonline.org/bps/ -- see the <Meetings> tab). Among other things, this includes the call for papers, a copy of the submission checklist, and hints on putting together symposia proposals.

I look forward to working with you all this coming year.  It is an honor to serve you.

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