BAM Chair, President and Vice Chair for EDIR for 2023-2024 Announced

BAM’s Chair and President – Professor Katy Mason and Professor Nic Beech – will both reach the ends of their second terms of office in December this year and must step down by the rules of our constitution, having ably led and developed the British Academy of Management for 4 years.  BAM’s Vice Chair for Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Respect (EDIR), Professor Martyna Śliwa, also reaches the end of her first term of office in December and is eligible to stand again for a second term.

The call for nominations for a new Chair and President to lead our community from January 2023 recently closed. As only one nomination was received for each role, the nominees are duly elected unopposed. 

We are delighted to announce that Professor Emma Parry FBAM, of Cranfield University and currently BAM’s co-Vice Chair for Academic Affairs of Conference and Capacity Building, will become BAM’s next Chair. Our current Chair, Professor Katy Mason FBAM FAcSS, of Lancaster University Management School, will become our next President. 

Their candidacy statements may be read below.

Similarly, Professor Śliwa was the only nomination received in the election for Vice Chair for EDIR and is duly elected unopposed. Her candidacy statement may also be read below.

Professor Nic Beech, BAM’s outgoing President, welcomed the news: 

“It is a real joy to see the fabulous team appointed to take BAM into our next phase of development. We have in place a relatively new, absolutely outstanding Council and Executive Group, and with the election of Katy, Emma and Martyna to the central roles of President, Chair and VC for EDIR, BAM is sure to go on to make a significant difference within academia and beyond it on the things that matter most. Over the past years we have had a major focus on equality, diversity, inclusion and respect and the new team are adding a complementary focus on sustainability and a responsible future for management research, scholarship, education and practice. I know that Katy, Emma and Martyna will inspire and nurture the community to support each other in producing outcomes that will resonate within the UK and around the world in our global partnerships'.

Candidacy statement for BAM Chair position

NAME:  Emma Parry 

POSITION: Professor of Human Resource Management, Director of Academic Development & Head, Changing World of Work Group, Cranfield University  

I am a highly experienced and passionate international leader in business and management, including past roles in the Academy of Management (AOM), International Federation of Scholarly Associations of Management (IFSAM) and the European Federation for Management Development (EFMD), as well as BAM. I would like to use this experience, my network and expertise in researcher development and wellbeing, to grow our community in numbers, collegiality and impact. 

Over the past few years I have watched and contributed to BAM becoming an inclusive, professional and impactful organisation. My vision is to build on this foundation to develop BAM’s exciting future as a vibrant and diverse community that facilitates the development of impactful research and education in business and management and supports scholars in business and management to have happy, healthy and productive careers. 

We will achieve this by  

• Supporting business and management scholars throughout their careers regardless of the career journey that they decide to take, providing a comprehensive and coherent portfolio of development activities in collaboration with our SIGs. 

• Facilitating the impact of academic research in business and management by engaging with practitioners and policy makers, developing relevant research agendas and raising the profile of our research.   

• Growing the size and reach of the BAM community by providing valuable opportunities to our membership and strengthening our relationships with international and professional bodies.  

• Improving the value that we offer to stakeholders outside of those on traditional academic journeys such as practitioners and those undertaking professional doctorates. 

• Promote equality, diversity, inclusion and respect within the business and management academic community, address underrepresentation in academic careers and promote wellbeing for all scholars. 

• Influencing policy agendas and advocating for change where necessary to support a sustainable future for the business and management scholarly community and exploit our thought leadership in driving societal and organisational agendas. 

I have developed relevant skills and experience through the six years I have served on BAM Council, most recently as Vice-Chair for Academic Affairs of Conferences and Capacity Building (AACCB). During this time, I pioneered the development of support for faculty and students from DBA programmes, including launching an annual symposium.  I was Chair of the doctoral symposium and am currently developing programmes for early career researchers and new professors in my Vice-Chair role, as well as developing BAM’s engagement with practitioners and policy makers. I have also held positions as President of the Executive DBA Council (EDBAC), Vice-President of IFSAM, member of an Executive Committee and UK Ambassador for AOM and member of the EFMD Programmes Committee, alongside roles as Director of Academic Development, Director of Doctoral Programmes, and Deputy Director of Research at Cranfield School of Management.  

These roles have enabled me to develop a detailed understanding of the sector and academic careers within business and management and have provided me with the leadership skills and network needed to take BAM forward. Most importantly they have allowed me to develop a strong motivation for supporting and developing our community.  

Candidacy Statement for BAM President position

NAME: Katy Mason 

POSITION: Chair of BAM and Associate Dean of Research at Lancaster University 

I would welcome the opportunity to lead BAM in generating a supportive, community-centred framework for Sustainable Futures in HE Business & Management. This framework will enable the BAM community to move the dial on sustainability in our Research and Education. Specifically, my aim is to promote a culture that inspires HE Business and Management academics to produce world-leading research that shapes ‘the manager of the future’, developing deep knowledge and skills in specialist area, directed by the desire and ability to protect the planet and engender a fair, inclusive society through good work, organisation and management. This does not supplant but complements the emphasis we have placed on EDIR over recent years. 

BAM has an unparalleled track record in nurturing individual education and research careers. Recognised as one of the best places in the world for supporting career development, I will work closely with the Chair, the Executive, the Council and the wider BAM community including are sister learned societies around the world, to foster BAM’s culture of local and international collaboration, providing researchers and educators with effective professional support to enable our community to co-develop solutions to in complex real-world challenges. I will champion Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) that is inclusive of multiple stakeholder and public groups in the production of new business and management knowledge, and delivers world-leading theoretical development and insight.  

BAM’s aim is to be a community at the forefront of impactful knowledge production, learning and engagement in the field of Business and Management, with ethical practice, diversity and excellence made visible in all that we do.  We will achieve this by: 

• Developing the structures and practices that deliver Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Respect (EDIR) across the business and management academic community’s portfolio of activities, to support wellbeing for all scholars 

• Extending our EDIR work to drive sustainable futures through business and management by further growing our ability to co-develop new knowledge with practitioners and policymakers, to drive societal and organisational change agendas that will protect our planet, and ensure a fair distribution of resources through good work, moral markets and sustainable consumption.  

• Supporting business and management scholars across multiple careers trajectories, by providing a comprehensive portfolio of development activities in collaboration with our SIGs. 

• Growing the size and reach of the BAM community by providing valuable opportunities to our membership, and strengthening our relationships with national and international professional bodies and societies.  

• Supporting management learning wherever it happens, in education setting, through professional doctorates and through collaborative research. 

My clear Responsible Business & Management vision and ambition for the British Academy of Management, together with my leadership experience, and international scholarship in markets and management, position me well for this role. As Vice-chair and Chair of BAM I have led the development of MKE, led our liaison with ESRC and UKRI, and developed our international relations particularly with SIMA and IFSAM. This work has produced the development of a transformation career support pathway in business and management education, an EDIR research project in Higher Education that is has been used by the British Academy, UKRI and the AcSS in developing their EDIR agenda, a series of international collaboration grants and a collaborative agreement with CABS and ESRC to support engaged, interdisciplinary, impactful business and management research. I have a long career working in UK business schools and in business and management settings and in the international HEI area. Working across the HE Business and Management portfolio, I have led a Business and Management REF submission, developed grant writing, UG and PG programmes, set-up a cross faculty research centre and led a new strategic approach to engaged research and impact. I have been the Associate Dean for Research, Research Enhancement Director, Chair of British Academy of Management, and Council Member of the International Federation of Scholarly Associations in Management. It would be an honour for me to serve the BAM community, in the role of President. 

Candidacy statement for BAM Vice Chair for EDIR position

NAME: Professor Martyna Śliwa

POSITION: Vice Chair for EDIR

The circumstances brought on by Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic pose substantial organisational and societal challenges with regard to equality, diversity and inclusion. I have decided to stand again for this role as I feel that my passion, knowledge, skills and experiences related to EDIR issues are enabling the British Academy of Management as an organisation to address these challenges effectively and creatively, and to adopt a leading role in supporting the business and management community in addressing them.

I am a long-standing member of BAM and a Professor of Business Ethics and Organisation Studies at Durham University Business School. In my professional practice I have always pursued a strong interest in equality, diversity and inclusion. My research has explored EDI in organisations; I have published work on gender, intersectionality, linguistic diversity and migration in academia, and have studied empirically the links between diversity and organisational hierarchies and power relations, as well as individual careers. As a woman and a foreigner from a non-anglophone background, I have also gained rich first-hand knowledge of EDIR in UK higher education over the past two decades.

I have a strong track record in university leadership, and have successfully engaged in a range of roles, including: Head of Group, Director of Research, Graduate Director and Dean of Postgraduate Research Education. In these roles I have learnt how EDIR issues play out in day-to-day organisational processes and workplace relations, and what issues need prioritising and addressing. These roles have also given me extensive experience of mentoring students and early career academics from different backgrounds and with different needs.

I have served as a member of the BAM Council and the Research and Publications Committee. Since 2016, I have co-convened the Critical Management Studies track at the BAM Conference. The track positively contributes to diversity and inclusion within the BAM community through creating a safe and respectful space for early career academics to discuss both research-related ideas and a variety of issues, including those related to EDIR matters, affecting their professional experiences.

I appreciate how far our learned society has come in drawing attention to the importance of equality, diversity inclusion and respect in leading and managing, as reflected in the BAM Framework. If re-elected as the Vice Chair for EDIR, my vision would be for BAM to become an exemplar for the business and management community in the UK and beyond with regard to developing and implementing the EDIR agenda. First, my focus would be on BAM’s own internal processes and challenges to ensure that we organise our activities in a more inclusive way, and that the composition of our governing bodies more closely reflects the composition of the diverse BAM community. Second, I would work on strengthening BAM’s role in influencing and supporting leadership within business and management schools in developing more inclusive and respectful organisational cultures. Third, I would wish to extend BAM’s role in promoting good EDIR practice across different types of organisations through working with leaders and policy makers