CALL FOR WORKING PROJECTS
Sustainable Practice Action Research Community (SPARC) Workshop
<st1:placetype w:st="on">Academy</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Management</st1:placename>, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Atlanta</st1:city>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Georgia</st1:country-region></st1:place>
August 12, 2006
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 Sustainable Practitices Action Research (SPARC) Community invites you to be involved in our 9th annual preconference development workshop at the Academy of Management meetings in Atlanta on August 12 from 8am-5pm.
The SPARC Workshop will be a hands-on, practice-grounded, action-learning venue that brings together academics from many disciplines and reflective practitioners from business, government and NGO sectors to collaboratively learn by working together using action-research processes on real-world projects at various stages of development. The SPARC 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.
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 (details below) or join one of those being sponsored by others.
Although all types of projects are welcome, we especially encourage projects that are multi-sector (e.g. business and government/nonprofit) and that have a social and/or environmental action focus or component. The goal is to help academic and practitioner attendees apply and test varied concepts and methods for managing sustainably at the point where the "rubber meets the road" – on actual projects to enhance sustainable management through whole-systems approaches that both add value to organizations and are beneficial to people and the planet.
The workshop will leverage the expertise of the Action Research (AR) community in the service of your project. For us, AR is an approach to organization development, not a specific technique. Essentially, it attempts to generate knowledge about an organization as an integral part of the change process. AR involves repeated cycles of diagnosis, planning, implementing, collecting/analyzing outcome data and reflections with organization members and stakeholders, reaching conclusions, and defining new sets of action plans. Over time, the AR approach becomes part of how the organization attempts to bring about change. Recent AR evolutions include embracing techniques to deepen inquiry, address larger-scale global issues of institutional change, and improve rigor to solidify validity as a social science research methodology. Although AR and action inquiry are not the only frameworks embraced by our community, they may be particularly well-suited approaches to solving complex "multi-domain" problems that exist in the spaces between organizations from multiple sectors and that require high degrees of inclusion, collaboration and deep learning (AR often has been applied in many areas of the world for community development efforts involving organizations from multiple sectors).
For a history of the workshop series, including prior project descriptions, visit the AOM Practitioner Series at www.chrms.org
For further inquiry or to submit brief (1-page) proposals for working projects (start-ups or ongoing) contact Series organizer Neil Boyd, nxb12@psu.edu, 717-948-6061, fax 717-730-3816, co-organizer Terry Orr, morr@bnkst.edu, 212-678-3728, fax 212-678-4162, 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 and learn from accepted projects leading up to the workshop.
SPARC STEERING COMMITTEE
Neil Boyd, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Penn</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">State</st1:placetype> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>, Nxb12@psu.edu
Patricia Braun, U. of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Ballarat</st1:city>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Australia</st1:country-region></st1:place>, p.braun@ballarat.edu.au
David Coghlan, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">U.</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Dublin</st1:placename></st1:place>, 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, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Oslo</st1:city></st1:place>, oleik@online.no , oe@afi-wri.no
Richard Ennals, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Kingston U.</st1:city>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region></st1:place>, ennals@kingston.ac.uk
Kent Fairfield, 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, Fairleigh Dickinson U., jharmon444@aol.com
Terry Orr, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Bank</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Street</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">College</st1:placetype></st1:place>. morr@bnkst.edu
Thoralf Qvale, Work Research Institute, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Oslo</st1:city></st1:place>, tq@afi-wri.no
Dan Twomey, Fairleigh Dickinson U., Dtwomey@fdu.edu
Jeana Wirtenberg, Institute for Sustainable Enterprise, FDU, jwirtenberg@optonline.net
Lyle Yorks, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Columbia</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">U.</st1:placetype></st1:place> ly84@columbia.edu