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Research Committee Member Responsibilities To be appointed to the BPS division’s Research Committee is an honor, but it carries with it some significant responsibilities. Research Committee members serve 2-year terms, and are asked to do different things for each of these 2 years. In the first year of service, Research committee members are asked to evaluate and select 3 winners among papers submitted to the BPS Division. All of these are selected from among the proceedings papers (the top 10% of the papers on the program). The award categories are: the Glueck Best Paper award; the Robert J. Litschert Award for Best Paper by a Doctoral Student; and the Research-to-Practice award. The latter is a new award initiated only this year, and designed to honor the Proceedings paper that has the most potential to influence the practice of management. In the second year of service, Research Committee members are asked to select the BPS Division’s Outstanding Dissertation Award. The committee normally consists of 16-20 members, serving staggered 2-year terms (i.e. ½ of the members are replaced each year). To accomplish the required tasks, the Committee’s members are divided into two groups. An overview of each responsibility is provided below. BPS Division Best Paper Awards The selection of Best Paper and Robert J. Litschert Best Doctoral Student Paper Award starts after the BPS program is decided upon, usually in late March or early April. This competition is led by the BPS division’s Assistant Program Chair (PDW Chair). The competition for Best Paper Awards is conducted among the papers selected by the BPS Program Chair for publication in the Academy’s Best Papers Proceedings. Each division is permitted to accept for Proceedings publication the top 10% of papers selected to be on the program. This is typically the top 4% to 5% of papers submitted, and the papers are identified by reviewer ratings. The BPS Program Chair mails the selected papers to the BPS Assistant Program Chair around late March. There may be as many as 35 papers that must be read and evaluated by the first-year Research Committee members. The process of evaluation is entirely up to the Assistant Program Chair. However, a typical process for evaluation is to assign each member of the committee 4 to 5 papers to read and evaluate, both providing ratings and rankings of the set of papers. Then, when the top 3 (or maybe 4 depending on how the ratings fall) papers are identified, each of these will be read (again) by ALL first-year committee members, and winners will be identified by their ratings. Neither paper authorship, nor which papers are from doctoral students is known by Research Committee members during the evaluation process, in order to level the playing field. The above outlines a “typical” evaluation process, but the Assistant Program Chair may elect to send more papers to each Research Committee member, and/or reduce the process to a single round. The process is up to the discretion of the Assistant Program Chair. In any case, the workload in late March and April will be heavy. This process, again, must be completed fairly quickly. In virtually every case, it is desirable to have the process complete by the end of Spring semester, as members scatter during the summer. The end of April is a good date to consider as a deadline. It is imperative that any person who accepts the honor of serving on the BPS division’s Research Committee be aware of and willing to carry out the responsibilities that come with this honor. Please be aware that the BPS Assistant Program Chair will come calling upon you in late February or March, and reserve time on your schedule for service. Keep in mind that the Assistant Program Chair is very busy, since he or she also manages the PDWs. It is extremely frustrating for him or her to call members of the Research committee only to find that they are too busy to serve in this critical role. If you can’t serve, please decline the nomination. BPS Division Outstanding Dissertation Award The Outstanding Dissertation award process is usually conducted early in the year, and typically relies upon the ½ of the Research Committee members who are serving in their second year on the committee. The competition is led by the Division Chair-Elect, who issues a call to all BPS members who have completed their dissertations in the past year (January 1 through December 31) to submit a 10 page abstract of their dissertation to the competition. An example call for dissertations appears at the end of this document. The deadline for receipt of the abstracts is usually mid-February. When they arrive, the President-Elect divides these up among the members of the committee, and tries to get either 2 or 3 evaluations of each dissertation abstract submitted. As with the Best Paper competition, depending upon how the ratings fall out, the President-Elect will ask the top 3 or 4 candidates to send in their complete dissertations, and all second-year members of the Research Committee will be asked to read and evaluate each of the finalist dissertations. This process, like the Best Paper competition, is conducted quickly. In virtually every case, it is desirable to have the process complete by the end of Spring semester, as committee members spread out during the summer. The end of April is a good date to consider as a deadline. It is imperative that any person who accepts the honor of serving on the BPS division’s Research Committee be aware of and willing to carry out the responsibilities that come with this honor. |
