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CALL FOR ACTION RESEARCH PROJECTS

AOM 2011 Professional Development Workshop:

Shaping Caring Cultures and Strategies in Organizations

Meeting Date and Time:         Friday, August 12, 2011 8:00 AM - 12:00 PM (Central Time)

Location:                                 Grand Hyatt, Lone Star C, San Antonio, Texas 

Primary Sponsor:                     OB Division, with cosponsors ODC, BPS, MC, MED, and IMD

Main Contact:                         Kristine Kawamura, PhD, kristinekawamura@yahoo.com,

How do we, as management scholars and practitioners, shape caring cultures and strategies in organizations? How do we create courageous organizations, managers, and employees that understand the value and imperative of caring for their people as well as for profits?  How do we put humans back into the economic equation?

As we become a global knowledge/service society, people are well proclaimed as our most important resource.   With their hearts and minds, knowledge and experience, people create an organizations' culture and its' results with their work, loyalty, and values.  People thrive in caring environments.  Yet people have often been sacrificed in their organization's quest for survival in the recent recession.  How do organizations recover and then grow, while managing disheartened employees and facing a global talent shortage?

We believe that to move forward, we who value organizational systems and cultures, people and values, must collaboratively work for societal and organizational cultural transformation. We need to care, and to enliven care in our work. 

We invite scholars and/or research practitioners who are interested in the caring transformation of organizations, societies, and leaders (in governments, for profits and/or non-profit institutions) to submit a one page proposal for Action Research Projects by June 30, 2011 (either embryo or in-process projects) that will be organically and collaboratively created, nurtured, developed, and/or critiqued.  Be part of an exciting cross-divisional, cross-disciplinary conversation as you design real-world projects that move Caring Economics from concept to reality.  We'll utilize Action Research methods to bridge research with experience in hands-on, practice-oriented, practice-grounded roundtables.

Our intent is to solve real organizational, community, and inter-organizational problems.  We want to generate deeper learning and publishable knowledge in the area of Caring Economics and ignite the inclusion of Care as a critical component of Societal and Organizational Change, as well as Leadership Practice.  We build upon the excitement of the 2010 All Academy Theme "Dare to Care" as well as the transformational work of Riane Eisler, described in her book, The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics (2007, Berrett-Koehler) and highlighted in her 2010 All-Academy speech.  

* Please contact to discuss conceptual project ideas or to receive background research into this PDW topic.

PDW Organizing Committee

·         Riane Eisler, President, Center for Partnership Studies (Email: eisler@partnershipway.org)

·         Kristine Kawamura, PhD, AIM Centre, St. Georges University, Grenada (Email: kristinekawamura@yahoo.com)

·         Jeana Wirtenberg, PhD, Institute for Sustainable Enterprise, Silberman College of Business, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, New Jersey (Email:  jwirtenb@fdu.edu )

·         Simon Dolan, PhD, ESADE, Barcelona, Spain (Email: simon.dolan@esade.edu)

SAMPLE PROJECTS

All types of projects are welcome.  We especially encourage projects that are multi-disciplinary and contain both research- and practitioner-oriented perspectives.  The projects should focus on the critical importance of caring practices, policies, and programs that develop the well-being of a nation's and organization's people, and the culture and strategy of the organizations in which they work and thrive.  We encourage projects to address a broad range of "people", including: male and female leaders at all levels of organizations and institutions; women and minorities, children and the elderly, and people of diverse cultural and/or socio-economic backgrounds; and, new generations of students and employees who may be our future leaders.

Participants are invited to propose their own project (in embryo or development stage) or join one of those being sponsored by others. "Embryo" project proposals are new collaborative project between academics and practitioners for which attendees would like to add action-research expertise and advance during the session. "In-Process" project proposals are either ongoing collaborative activities that attendees would like to evolve into an action research project or are ongoing AR projects that they would like to strengthen/expand, through critique and development during the session.  Once the action research projects are selected, we will circulate the final project topics through the Sponsoring Divisions, again, in order to invite further project participation at the PDW.

All participants in this PDW will be invited to co-create an ongoing vision for this transformational work.  For example, we anticipate post-workshop paper submissions and possible monograph or book publications.

Sample questions for exploration via action-research include, but are not limited to, the following: 

General

• What is Caring Economics?  What are Caring Societies, Caring Organizations and Caring Leaders?  How do we develop them?
• What course curriculum and teaching methods may educate and empower students (and educators) to build and lead Caring Societies and Caring Organizations through Caring Economics?
• What is the interplay between care, values, and spirituality in building and leading Caring Societies and Caring Organizations through Caring Economics?
• What institutional assumptions, mindsets, players or entrenched systems either block, or resist, a move to building and leading Caring Societies, Organizations and Leaders?
• What caring practices, programs and policies will empower as well as develop the well-being of women and children through Caring Economics?
• What caring policies, practices and/or measurements in organizations and societies will help to develop the well-being of the natural environment?
• How does care influence, or not influence, management education in the areas of economics, organizations, and management?

Organizational Strategies and Cultures

• How do we put humans back into the business equation?
• How do we create, or develop, caring organizational strategies and cultures? What practices may be used to develop caring organizational strategies and cultures?
• What organizations are currently creating and implementing caring practices, policies, and environments?  What may we learn from them?
• What is the link between management (philosophy, value, vision, and goals) to culture to leadership type, communication strategy, and group dynamics in the development of a caring culture and caring organizational system? 
• What HR policies, practices and competencies would support the developing of Caring Organizational Systems?
• What would a care model for a caring organization look like? 
• What is a "whole leader"?  What is a "whole" person, and how may we motivate, empower, value, and measure them?
• What Leadership skills, knowledge and resources are needed in Caring Economics?
• What practices, policies, and programs are necessary and valuable for guiding the cultural transformation to a caring organization?
• What management consultant skill-sets are needed to design, deliver, and implement measurable caring change programs?
• What system-wide Social Wealth indicators and Organizational Metrics are needed to build the capacity and change existing mindsets for Caring Economics to be realized?
• How applicable are Western theories, philosophies and practices for developing caring organizations, egalitarian environments, and value applicable in other parts of the world?  How might Eastern theories, philosophies and practices inform and alter Western?
• Should we develop a "generic" theory and practice for creating caring organizations that apply to multiple cultures, or should we use a contingency based approach in which practices vary by culture? 

International

• How do we activate a Care-based paradigm shift within the social, cultural, organizational, and economic differences of East-West economies?
• What philosophical, cultural, social, political, and economic differences influence the development of caring organizations across the globe?
• How might different management, work and scholarly traditions play out, or influence, the development of management education and learning across different cultures and societies in the developing of caring organizations?
• How might globalization and migration impact the development of globally-based caring organizational cultures and strategies?
• How do different cultural values and traditions express themselves in terms of care?