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Peer Fiss
Division Chair
University of Southern California
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Past Division Chair
University College London
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Renate Meyer
Division Chair Elect
WU Vienna
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Martin Kilduff
Program Chair
University College London
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Eva Boxenbaum
PDW Chair
CBS Copenhagen
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Five Year Review
Davide Ravasi, Past Division Chair, Peer Fiss, Division Chair, Renate Meyer, Chair-Elect, Martin Kilduff, Program Chair, Eva Boxenbaum, PDW Chair
In 2020, we once again undertook a thorough review of the OMT Division (download the full report here). As part of this review, we surveyed our members, examined all our existing activities and strategic initiatives, and deliberated what future actions we can take to better serve you, our OMT Division members. Thank you very much for your thoughtful feedback and constructive input throughout this process.
We are pleased to report that the efforts that we put into addressing issues identified by the previous review have produced positive results, as evidenced by the continued positive, engaged and constructive responses about the state of our Division and the significantly reduced number of members who express concerns. In the past period, we have intensified our outreach to the international community through a variety of initiatives such as the organization, co-organization, or participation in paper development workshops around the world along with the launch of the OMT Global Professional Development Workshop, a space for researchers from around the world to meet and reflect on the challenges and opportunities of international research collaborations. We have also worked to ensure that our leadership team reflects the international composition of our membership and have expanded our cooperation with the European Group on Organization Studies (EGOS), our European counterpart—a collaboration that is rooted in the extensive overlap in membership and includes the co-sponsoring of events and the coordination of our strategic initiatives to best utilize our joint resources to the benefit of our members.
Regarding the Division’s financial situation, OMT continues to make careful use of its resources and has initiated a variety of cost-saving measures, such as eliminating monetary awards, minimizing administrative costs, and reducing travel costs, especially those associated with the mid-winter meeting of the Executive Committee, all the while being mindful of the carbon footprint of all our activities. The Division has also proactively recruited sponsors, and we are glad to report that our financial position is solid: OMT is well prepared for future contingencies, including those associated with the current pandemic. However, since sponsorships can and likely will fluctuate, we continue to pay close attention to the financial situation to make sure we are well positioned to support OMT’s growing activities.
The revision of our activities and membership survey also highlighted three strategic goals for the Division going forward. The first goal focuses on further improving OMT’s inclusiveness and member involvement. Thanks to a broad range of grassroots activities and a dedicated structure that has offered members opportunities to volunteer in various capacities, we have already made considerable progress in this respect. Nevertheless, more efforts are needed to facilitate involvement of members who may be unaware of these opportunities. Our efforts include spreading information on options to get involved in elected and non-elected positions more broadly, revisiting the content and structure of our website to make information on how the Division works more readily accessible, proactively recruiting members and volunteers who reflect the diversity of the Division, or strengthening the sense of community among volunteers.
A second strategic goal is to intensify our efforts to reach out to the international community. While we have made considerable progress in engaging our international members, we can and will do better. Among others, we are currently working on initiatives to connect and integrate scholars from underrepresented areas through jointly organized local workshops to discuss frontiers of research, theory, and/or methods, regional mini-conferences, and improved mentoring opportunities, along with revamping our communications strategy to better connect OMT members across the globe. Part of this initiative is also our recently launched series of OMT podcasts which is an excellent opportunity to present the work of scholars from all areas and domains of OMT. We also plan to identify local “OMT Ambassadors” in parts of the world that are currently underrepresented, with the goal of helping us spot opportunities for local events, establish bridges to local professional associations, and find innovative ways to reach out to local communities.
Our third strategic goal is to expand our opportunities for mentoring. We recognize the increasing need for mentoring expressed by our younger members as well as the need for mentors to reflect the diversity of our members’ experiences and needs. We have already started working on new formats. Two recent examples of reach out to younger faculty are OMT Meetups and Thursdays with OMT – virtual sessions held during the Covid lock-down. OMT Meetups is a series of one-to-one online conversations between senior scholars and junior faculty (including last-year PhD Candidates and Post-docs) for which a great number of both junior and senior faculty signed up. Thursdays with OMT is devoted to job markets around the world and how to move forward in the current circumstances. We will continue developing new ideas and formats that will help us identify and recruit mentors and will reach out to many of you to help with this and to participate in these events.
To conclude, our five-year review has clearly shown that OMT continues to be a vibrant, collegial, and inclusive intellectual community. We will work hard to further improve how we serve our members to make OMT the place to be!