Outcome of BAM Vice Chair 2022 - 2023 Nominations

Dr Ashley Roberts

Co-Vice Chair: Management, Knowledge and Education

Professor Kate Black

Co-Vice Chair: Management, Knowledge and Education

Candidacy Statement: 

As long serving, active members of our BAM community we would be honoured to advance our involvement and contribute further to BAM’s Strategy 2024 in the role of Co-Vice Chairs of MKE. 

Our key areas of proposed focus if elected as Co-Vice Chair are: 

• Capacity building events for high quality learning, teaching and management education  
• Championing diversity through links and partnerships 
• Raising BAM’s global profile via impactful MKE activity that contributes to scholarship and practice 
• Each of these areas will aid the further development and enhancement of our BAM community, extending membership and opportunities for all colleagues engaged with teaching and scholarship. 

We bring our joint experiences of being: 

• elected as a BAM Council member 
• founding BAM Council member of MKE 
• co-leads for BAM’s Education-focussed Professor series 
• co-leads for the 2021 MKE Education Practice Conference 
• contributors to MKE’s Education Practice Awards 
• keynote speaker at BAM’s Teaching Excellence, Scholarship and Impact Event 
• elected as a BAM SIG Chair 
• reviewer for BJM  
• contributor to BAM’s Doctoral symposium 
• facilitators for BAM SIG/conference workshops 
• reviewer for BAM grants 
• recipient of BAM Grant 
• Relevant experiences external to BAM include AMLE editorial board membership, publications in such journals as Management Learning, The Leadership Quarterly and Work, Employment & Society, and editorship of two Routledge-commissioned texts. 

Further insight into our key areas of proposed focus are as follows: 

First, the growing focus within Business Schools upon quality learning and teaching and associated scholarship, brought about especially through TEF and most recently, the pandemic, highlights the strategic importance of educational capacity-building activity.  We will leverage our co-leadership of BAM’s successful Education-focussed Professor programme that has seen over 400 participants from across Australasia, Europe, US, as well as the UK, to develop activities and opportunities that provide impact for education-focussed academics. 

Second, in extending BAM membership through actively engaging teaching and scholarship colleagues, we will champion diversity by seeking to actively recruit and involve a broader membership.  Specifically, working with BAM’s Continental Network and drawing upon Ashley’s networks as Assistant Dean (Internationalisation), we aim to increase international membership and events so as to maximise our global impact.  Aligning also with BAM’s strategic aim of developing purposeful partnerships, and recognising how these are central to MKE’s future, we will explore synergistic relations for mutual benefit.  For example, utilising Kate’s PFHEA (Advance HE) and CABS networks, Ashley’s NTF (Advance HE) community and our HRM/D practitioner communities. 

Third, to raise BAM’s global profile from building upon the on-going MKE projects, we will also explore and implement impactful initiatives that contribute to the scholarship and practice of teaching and learning.  These activities will include growing the MKE Conference and supporting the strategic aim of developing and launching the new BAM MKE journal.  We will further examine new interdisciplinary approaches and champion activities to ensure strategic alignment between the disciplinary research within BAM’s SIGs and the educational scholarship and practice of MKE. 

We look forward to working with you, as BAM members, as Co-Vice Chairs of MKE. 

Prof David Sarpong

Co-Vice Chair: Academic Affairs of Conference and Capacity Building

Professor Sarah Robinson

Co-Vice Chair: Academic Affairs of Conference and Capacity Building

Sarah is a Professor at Rennes School of Business and a visting Professor at the University of Glasgow. Previously, she worked as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Leicester, the Open University, Lancaster University and in international development in China and Ukraine.

Her interests relate to learning in its many forms, both personal and organisational. She is particularly interested in developing visual, digital and hermeneutic research methodologies for organisational research and in applications of Pierre Bourdieu’s work to organisation studies. 

Projects

Current projects include:

• a study of the learning and development of early career academics in contemporary business schools
• the origins and development of the English wine industry
• the genesis of women as political leaders in Scotland.

Journals

Sarah has published in a broad range of journals including:

• Human Relations
• Organization Studies
• British Journal of Management
• Organisation
• Business History
• Management Learning
• Leadership and International Small Business Journal.

Candidacy Statement: 

David Sarpong - I am Reader in Strategic Management and Head of the Brunel Business School’s Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and International Business (SEIB) Research Group. My research interest lies in the broad areas of strategic management and international management. My current research concerns second-order innovation and technology management, strategic foresight, and microstoria of first-generation migrants in European marketplaces.  

I joined BAM as a Doctoral student in 2007 and has since been an active and engaged member of the Academy. I co-Chaired the Strategy Special Interest Group (SIG) from 2013-2018 and was co-opted to serve on the BAM Council in 2018, where I continue to serve on the Sub-Committee of Academic Affairs of Conference and Capacity Building. In the same year, I was given the opportunity to serve as co-Convenor of the Doctoral Symposium of the annual BAM Conference, delivering a doctoral symposium consistent with the academy’s values of excellence, community, integrity, inclusiveness, and professionalism. 

Emma Parry - I am Professor of Human Resource Management and Head of the Changing World of Work Group at Cranfield School of Management. My research interests focus on the impact of the changing external context, in particular the influence of national context, technological advancement and changing workforce demographics on managing people.  

I am passionate about developing research and broader capacity within the management academy and providing support and development opportunities to academics across all stages of their careers.  This has been evidenced strongly in my career to date. For example,  until very recently I was Director of Doctoral Programmes and am currently Director of Academic Development and Deputy Director of Research at Cranfield School of Management.  

I am a BAM Fellow and  have been a member of Council and part of the Academic Affairs of Conference and Capacity Building team for the past six years. I created and managed the annual symposium for students and faculty involved with doctorates in business administration (DBAs).  For the past two years, I have been Chair of the annual Doctoral Symposium, and have led the design and delivery of this as a crucial part of BAM’s strategy. I was also President of the Executive DBA Council until June 2020 and am currently part of the Executive Committee for the International Federation of Scholarly Associations of Management (IFSAM).  

In seeking election to the role of Vice Chairs (Academic Affairs of Conference and Capacity Building), we hope to contribute our time, knowledge, and experience in shaping the present and the future of the Academy. Working together with the Council, we aim to do this by 1) extending the current provision of  multidisciplinary capacity building workshops, events and structured programmes for academics at all stages of their careers, 2) driving forward the internationalisation of our capacity development efforts to increase BAM’s visibility across the four nations of the UK and beyond, 3) emphasising and promoting ‘scholarship that matters’ at BAM conferences, events, and symposiums, and 4) exploring and exploiting potentialities, and possibilities to improving BAM membership offerings and recruitment.  

Professor Pawan Budhwar

Co-Vice Chair: Research and Publications

Professor Stephanie Decker

Co-Vice Chair: Research and Publications

Candidacy Statement: 

In running as Co-chairs for Research and Publications (R&P), we bring together our combined research and journal editing experience, and leadership vision to work collaboratively on behalf of BAM members and help BAM achieve its 2024 strategy.  

Via this role, we envision to adopt BAM’s principles on equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) to work in collaboration between committees to adopt an integrated approach to help BAM become a key provider of training and development and thus career enhancement independent of their place of work, as a means of overcoming the hierarchical nature of the UK higher education. The Covid-19 pandemic in particular has highlighted the importance of such initiatives by the BAM community. We will embed the principles of EDI to promote clear standards for all aspects of R&P at BAM (e.g., editorial appointments for BAM journals, research awards, nomination for national panels like REF). 

Between us, we have worked at a wide range of UK institutions, in key research roles, and bring a wealth of experience (e.g., both of us have been Associate Dean Research and Pawan is on the present REF panel). Further, both of us have significant journal editorial experience, including Pawan as past Co-Editor-in-Chief of BJM and present Co-Editor-in-Chief of HRMJ and Stephanie as Editor of Business History. Pawan currently serves as Head of Aston Business School, while Stephanie is Head of Academic Group at Bristol. Through our vast and diverse experience, we have come to appreciate the range of challenges faced in supporting management researchers in diverse institutional contexts and ways of successfully addressing them. 

We seek to expand BAM’s increasingly international reach by drawing on our substantial international research experience (for details, see our profiles: Pawan, Stephanie). We would continue to support existing activities that enhance internationalization and explore, with other Vice-Chairs, how R&P can develop new initiatives and contribute to those of other committees. As editors of major journals, we are used to working with publishers and well-versed on topics such ‘open access’, negotiating new contracts with publishers and implementing the principles of COPE and DORA, which are key issues for R&P going forward. 

BAM being a closely knit community, we would work closely, with our SIGs, Fellows, Council members, Doctoral Scholars reps, and related learned societies to support management research that is relevant, impactful, interdisciplinary and innovative. This includes strengthening our links with key research organisations and learned societies like Academy of Social Sciences. We aspire to expand grant funding opportunities (e.g. industry sponsorships) in addition to the highly successful BAM Developmental Grants Scheme. Such funding support is vital in supporting the research of BAM members and building capacity, especially among early-career researchers.  

Having been involved with BAM for decades, in a variety of roles, including, in Pawan’s case, as a BAM Fellow since 2012, we would be excited by the opportunity to build on the excellent work of our predecessors and continue promoting and developing the value of research, publishing, and impact activities by business and management scholars in the UK.