Thank you to everyone who attended the 72^nd Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management. With your help, this has been a year of records. This was the highest attended meeting with the most submissions, sold out hotel room blocks and the most tweets to the Twitter hashtag.

A special THANK YOU to the members who blogged the meeting. Your shared insights are a valuable resource to so many and will continue to serve as a recap of learned experiences. In addition to those who blogged to our AOM Blog, below is a listing of other blogs and resources that were posted to Twitter during the meeting. Check back soon for a link to the complete Twitter feed from the meeting as well!

Once again, thanks for a great meeting! Members use of social media to share thoughts has been fantastic – and one that will surely continue! See in Florida next year!

Blogs and Resources during the 2012 Annual Meeting

http://www.karinderksen.nl/?p=1076

http://www.marcelbogers.com/?q=AOM2012-OpenInnovationTheory

http://www.kpsquared.org/the-aom-conference-2012-impresssions-and-refl

BPS Dissertation Award Finalist Presentation .mp4 http://youtu.be/dYUb2GVNE3Y

Case Video Trailer: “Bethlehem Steel” (Case UVA-BC-0226) http://youtu.be/vritNYF1asw

http://www.insightstoactions.com/2010/08/04/10-common-objections-to-using-social-media/admin/

http://uaestrategy.blogspot.com/2012/08/research-and-teaching-collaborations.html?spref=tw

http://better-operations.com/2012/08/06/academy-of-management-safari-in-boston-aom-annual-meeting-2012/

http://blog.vision2lead.com/2012/08/04/attending-aom-come-to-my-qualitative-e-research-workshop/

http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/index.php/m/article/why_boycotts_succeed_and_fail#.UB7CWPFQ8eQ.twitter

http://chetanchawla.wordpress.com/2012/08/04/advice-for-pre-dissertation-doctoral-students-on-august-4-2012/

http://www.denisonconsulting.com/events/conferences-presentations/2012-academy-management-annual-meeting

http://www.mightybytes.com/about/news/whats_brewing_in_your_organization/

Session Introduction video (from remote participant): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jScAhncGBno&feature=youtu.be

http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2012/08/03/management-scholars-and-the-media/

http://allaboutwork.org/2012/08/09/update-twitter-at-conferences/

Video summary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJR-pxfgoIw

It was an interesting session and the participants were from several countries from east and west. Bahaudin Mujtaba and Shaista Khilji argue that corruption is a product of bad governance and has direct impact on the informal economy. They suggested that it is important to understand the causes of corruption and its role in the informal economy. Also, the corruption leads to an increase in public sector employment.

Transparency Index was introduced in the discussion to identify the most corrupt countries and they argued that the corruption is a deterrent to foreign direct investment, and the creativity of entrepreneurs in countries with corruption.

As a participant in the discussion, I suggested that corruption occurs when two parties agree to be part of the process that is corrupt. When two parties agree to the corrupt process, it eventually becomes part of the culture. Corruptions exist in both developed and underdeveloped countries. The degree of corruption differ form country to country. The level of corruption in underdeveloped countries is very high compared to developed countries because of the economy, political and legal system, and the culture. We cannot solve the problem of corruption with only a legal system, we need to address the economic problem and the culture to solve the corruption problem in the developing countries.

Dr. Mohammed R. Ahmed MBA, DBA
Professor and Consultant
Webster University
Space Coast Campus, Florida 32953
Phone: (321) 459-0077
Website: http://professorahmed.com
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/professorahmed2010
Twitter: http://twitter.com/prof_ahmed
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/drahmed

Visiting the AOM makes me feel like a kid in a candy store. Over 10,000 colleagues, hundreds of interesting sessions and many schoolbook authors that you can actually talk to or sit in a discussion panel with!

This year was my second visit,  and I have learned from last year. Last year I did not only felt like a kid in a candy store, I behaved like it. After collecting the phonebook-like program I just went to every session I found with and interesting title or interesting presenter. Even on Sunday, I did not take any time of, being afraid to miss something.

When I flew home I was really exhausted, overwhelmed en arriving home I did not only had to recover from a jet lag but also form an information overflow.

This year I planned my program at home, including coffee, tea and lunchbreaks, having at least one alternative for every session I attended. and I visited the touristic website of Boston, to at least some of the interesting sites.

So this year, on the last day I feel as enthusiastic about the learnings, new contacts and fresh Ideas for further research and publication. and next to that I have been to visit MIT, Harvard and Fenway Park, where I managed to get tickets for Sundays ball game.

Yesterday Henri Mintzberg promoted the morning reflections, so now I will go through my notebook and look back on the take-aways from this years annual conference. I will try to write down at least one onliner from each interesting session or conversation I had in the past few days.

1. Action Research is about real problems; a team that wants to do something about it; and the integration  of action snd inquiry. my scyion itrmd form thr session with David Coghlan:  I have to keep a diary and have to find ways to share the data with the team I am working with.

2. In the session on MBTI and transformational leadership the mail take away was the metaphor of the garden; if you don’t get rid of the weeds, they might take over…and it needs fertilizer and maintenance to keep the diversity.

3. A very practical PDW on happiness at work learned me that we are not all the same, with a fellow participant being kicked out of the room by other participants, because he was really behaving disrespectful.

But about happyness at work: this sometimes requires tough decisions.

Every employee has to master his/her own destiny.

4. The most interesting session I attended was about resistance to change. I could write a paper on the insights I got there and I will do for next years AOM. But I won’t do that now. What I will try back home is to change my job title from change manager to resistance manager, just to grab some attention and get the conversation starting. We need resistance, and only apathy is killing to an organizational change project.

5. The showcase symposium of the ODC Division was very interesting, with a good (male only!) lineup.  A few one liners from the presenters:

- Schein:

- if you can’t write it, you don’t know

- if you really want to no something about someone, don’t ask about it.

Just say “tell me your story”

- Burke:

- we need to find innovative techniques to facilitate culture change

- it is not about intervention, but about the people’s reaction

- Beer:

- ask managers for the outcome they want to achieve and help them to

figure out barriers and ways to get there

- Dale:

- we need to design interventions to build trust

- in line with the chaos theory a small intervention can cause  a great

effect on the longer term

6. Then I went to the MED keynote speaker Henri Mintzberg, he was really on fire.

- never send a changed person to an unchanged organization

- have you ever seen an executive on an executive MBA?

- you don’t create a manager in a classroom

7. My last session was the MC keynote speaker Rosabeth Moss Kanter, she is really entertaining. Her speech was full of one liners, but the first was the best for this audience.

- anyone in management consulting must be an idealist, believing that

things can be better.

A good session to conclude my AOM 2012 meeting and to turn to work. I will be back next year, see you all in 2013!

Lysbeth van Silfhout, Drs

De Adviespraktijk

This symposium brought together researchers with extensive research and personal experience in seven African, Asian, and European countries to discuss the challenges of studying leadership in markedly diverse economies and cultures. Bahaudin Mujtaba reviewed the difficulties in building public sector leadership capacity in the war ravaged environment of Afghanistan. Yin Lu Ng and Eugene (Yu Jin) Tee explored the problems of building team leadership skills among Malaysian leaders who are oriented to maintaining high power distance. Han Ping discussed the problem of building trust among government and business leaders in the politically charged environment of China. Mohammed Ahmed provided insights on the impact of region, class, and religious culture on leadership integration in India. Terrell Manyak reported on the complex difficulties faced by Uganda in developing leaders that can build local government in the face of national political conflict, poverty, ethnic differences, and corruption. Lam Nguyen examined the task and relationship orientations of German and Vietnamese workers.  The symposium used these findings as a springboard for an open discussion as to where leadership studies might proceed to extend the theories and methodologies that have developed in the western world.  Particular attention was be given to public sector leadership because of its critical importance in bringing social and economic progress to the developing world.

Mohammed Ahmed proposed the new leadership theory for emerging markets.

The new theory Emerging Leadership Theory (ELT) suggest that

1. Leadership is a collective effort of a group of individuals who has knowledge of the environment in which they are participating, and are eager to learn from the participants. 2. Leadership is built on the strength of social, personal, and digital networking. Open and two way communication leads to successful leadership.

3. In an emerging leadership style, vision is not the vision of the leader, it is a shared vision of the participants. Vision is all about the future of the participants.

4. Leadership is all about creating value for the participant and developing ways to share value for the participants.

5. Leadership is about learning about the change, changing with the environment, and banking on the opportunities from the change.

Dr. Mohammed R. Ahmed MBA, DBA
Professor and Consultant
Webster University
Space Coast Campus, Florida 32953
Phone: (321) 459-0077
Website: http://professorahmed.com
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/professorahmed2010
Twitter: http://twitter.com/prof_ahmed