Hi everyone,
Please review this call for a great AOM workshop. We're still looking
for additional projects.
Thanks,
Neil
CALL FOR WORKING PROJECTS
Sustainable Practice Action Research Community (SPARC) Workshop
Academy of Management, August 4, 2007, Philadelpia, PA, Loews Ballroom B
The SPARC Workshop is the only hands-on, practice-grounded,
action-learning venue at AOM that brings together academics from many
disciplines and reflective practitioners from business, government and
NGO sectors to actually work together on real-world projects using
action-research processes.
List of SPARC 2007 Action-Research Projects (tentative):
• “Building institutional bridges to further ‘North-South’
collaboration
• “Generating knowledge while launching a sustainable business
incubator”.
• “Building a Northern New Jersey community of educators for
sustainability
• “Towards Sustainability at Fordham University”
• “Bringing the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection
and the business community more together”
• ”The Guatamala Peoples Water Company – A study of past
practices,”
During the day-long workshop, teams of academics and practitioners will
collaboratively apply their expertise in a roundtable format to critique
and develop various applied research projects brought by organization
sponsors. You are invited to propose your own project or join one of
those being sponsored by others. Over the past 10 years, many
organizations have worked with our group and have found our sessions
very useful.
Although all types of projects are welcome, we especially encourage
projects that are multi-sector (e.g. business and government/nonprofit)
and/or that have a social and/or environmental action focus or
component.
The workshop is dedicated to generating collaboration among academics
and practitioners and synergy between theory and practice in the service
of organizational and social transformation. Its intent is to help
solve real organizational and cross-organizational problems of a local
and/or global nature while generating deeper learning and publishable
knowledge.
If you are a practitioner or scholar who is interested in enriching and
adding velocity to a project that you are (or would like to be) working
on, then the SPARC Community invites you to be part of our 10th annual
all-day AOM preconference workshop.
For more information on the workshop series, including prior project
descriptions and the full Friday-Sunday workshop program (also
summarized below), visit the AOM SPARC/Practitioner Series at
www.fdu.edu/ise
For further inquiry or to submit brief (1-page) proposals for working
projects (start-ups or ongoing) please contact SPARC organizer Dr. Neil
Boyd at
Boyd@Lycoming.edu or by phone at 717-512-3870, or any member of
the PS Steering Committee listed below.
We will use an organic, developmental review process for your project
proposals that you may initiate with as little as an exploratory
call/email. A support system will be provided to further develop
accepted projects leading up to the workshop.
SPARC STEERING COMMITTEE
Neil Boyd, Lycoming College,
Boyd@Lycoming.edu
Patricia Braun, U. of Ballarat, Australia,
p.braun@ballarat.edu.au
David Coghlan, U. of Dublin,
dcoghlan@tcd.ie
Rosa Colon, Bristol Meyers Squibb,
rosa.colon@bms.com
John Dooney, Society for Human Resource Management,
jdooney@shrm.org
Olav Eikeland, Work Research Institute, Oslo,
oleik@online.no ,
oe@afi-wri.no
Richard Ennals, Kingston U., UK,
ennals@kingston.ac.uk
Kent Fairfield, ISE, Fairleigh Dickinson U.,
fairfield@fdu.edu
Gerard Farias, Institute for Sustainable Enterprise, FDU,
gfarias@fdu.edu
Carol Gorelick, Pace U.,
cgorelick@notes.interliant.com
Joel Harmon, ISE, Fairleigh Dickinson U.,
jharmon444@aol.com
Terry Orr, Bank Street College.
morr@bnkst.edu
Thoralf Qvale, Work Research Institute, Oslo,
tq@afi-wri.no
Dan Twomey, Fairleigh Dickinson U.,
Dtwomey@fdu.edu
Jeana Wirtenberg, Institute for Sustainable Enterprise, FDU,
jwirtenberg@optonline.net
Lyle Yorks, Columbia U.
ly84@columbia.edu
Full Sustainable Practice Action Research Community (SPARC) Program
Academy of Management, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
August 3-5, 2007
The Friday Workshop: 3-6pm, Loews Congress B
As a warm-up event for the Saturday session, our Friday workshop
will contain exercises for participants to learn more about action
research. We will present a learning session for "beginners" and
"advanced" action researchers.
The Saturday Workshop: 9am-5pm, Loews Ballroom B
This will be a day-long experiential action-learning session.
In this roundtable format (as in the past) we host real time work on
actual projects using action-research processes (with pauses for
cross-project dialogue and reflective discussions). You are invited to
propose your own project or join one of those being sponsored by others.
The Sunday Workshop: 8-10am, Loews Congress B
As a follow-up to the Saturday event, we will host a two hour
seminar to jump-start professional writing about these experiences for a
variety of professional venues. In recent years, there has been a growth
in action research journal outlets and need for case studies for
training purposes. A core group proposes to write an analysis of the
practitioner series itself as a critical form of professional learning.
Dr. Neil Boyd
Assistant Professor of Management
Department of Business Administration
Lycoming College
700 College Place
Williamsport, Pa 17701
Boyd@Lycoming.edu
570-321-4167 (office)
717-512-3870 (cell)