Dear Careers Division Members:
I want to offer you a sneak peak at NEXT year's 2007 AOM Theme. I have placed an unofficial draft of the 2007 theme "Doing Well by Doing Good" from Angelo DeNisi below. Please read it and use the coming days in Atlanta as a conversation starter with colleagues to start planning ahead. (Such conversations are often more fruitful in person!) Remember that symposia proposals are almost always most successful when they involve more than one AOM division. More will follow in the coming months on next year's program, but I wanted you to be aware of the theme to help you start generating ideas. Hopefully we can develop a program worthy of our division next year as has been accomplished this year. I look forward to seeing you all in Atlanta.
Jon Briscoe
Northern Illinois University
AOM Careers Division Program Chair, 2007
DOING WELL BY DOING GOOD
There are many ways to evaluate how well a firm is doing. Many of these are concerned (out of necessity) with the bottom line, focusing on stock prices and financial returns. But developments in other areas, such as the Balanced Scorecard, make it clear that there are multiple ways in which success can be gauged. Furthermore, any measure of success or performance must suffer from some degree of criterion deficiency, so that there are other indicators of performance that could be just as useful.
One such indication of performance is the extent to which a firm improves the lives of its members and its stakeholders. Some have referred to this as Social Entrepreneurship but, whatever the name used, it represents the recognition that there is more to corporate success than the financial bottom line. More importantly, there is no reason to believe that a firm which spends it energies trying to improve the world around it, will necessarily suffer for those efforts. In fact, there is evidence that firms which do good are often the same firms that do well. Furthermore, many of the best practices our colleagues from all parts of the Academy have suggested can lead to both financial success and social success. Thus there would seem to be micro, macro and international research topics that are consistent with these ideas.
Philadelphia represents the perfect setting for a meeting with this theme. When the founders of our country declared our independence, they were clear to state that it was the role of government to allow for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of its citizens. Those words were drafted just a few blocks from this years meeting site. So it is fitting to feature research that demonstrates how firms can be financially successful while, at the same time, trying to accomplish some positive social goals. Our countrys founding fathers recognized that there were multiple goals to be served by government and that they were all important. This seems like a good time to remind ourselves of those ideas and to focus on research showing how modern organizations can make life better for its employees and the communities where they operate and that they can do so without suffering financially.
Philadelphia is a wonderful city, with many historic sights, great ethnic neighborhoods, and those steps that Rocky ran up as he was training. It is also the perfect setting for the Academy meetings since it seems that the founding fathers also anticipated the scholarship we do and the theme of this years meetings. You wonder why I say this? Lets look at the preamble to the Constitution where it states the purpose of government, and notice how it relates directly to our research. Specifically, our government was founded in order to:
Form a more perfect union (benchmarking and continuous improvement)
Establish justice (distributive, procedural, and interactive)
Insure domestic tranquility (work/non-work interface)
Provide for the common defense (strategic alliances)
Promote the general Welfare
Secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity (increase shareholder wealth; avoid firm mortality)
This years theme builds upon last years theme linking management and the public concern, and is a logical extension of the new vision for management called for during our Honolulu conference.
Angelo DeNisi
2007 Program Chair