This is funding to support a Doctoral Consortium (workshop) of approximately 25 promising graduate students from the United States and abroad, along with a panel of about 5 distinguished research faculty mentors. The event will take place in conjunction with the Academy of Management (AOM)'s 2012 Conference and will be held August 3-4 in Boston, MA. This is the leading international forum for the presentation and discussion of research about management and organizations, and is attended by approximately 6,000 professionals from around the world. More information about the conference is available at http://meetings.aomonline.org/2012/.
The Organizational Communication and Information Systems (OCIS) Doctoral Consortium is a research-focused meeting that has taken place annually at the AOM conference since 2000, and has helped to launch the careers of many outstanding researchers in organizational communication and information systems. Goals of the workshop include building a cohort group of new researchers who will then have a network of colleagues spread out across the world, guiding the work of new researchers by having experts in the research field give them advice, and making it possible for promising new entrants to the field to attend their research conference. Student participants will make formal presentations of their research during the workshop, and will receive feedback from the faculty panel. The feedback is geared to helping students understand and articulate how their work is positioned relative to other OCIS research, whether their topics are adequately focused for thesis research projects, whether their methods are correctly chosen and applied, and whether their results are appropriately analyzed and presented. Student participants will present their work to the doctoral consortium on August 3-4, with follow up activities planned during the technical program of the conference (August 5-7). The OCIS conference management committee will evaluate the doctoral consortium, and the results will be made available to the organizers of future consortia. The OCIS doctoral consortia have been highly successful in providing a forum for the initial socialization into the field of young doctoral scholars; many of today's leading researchers participated as students in earlier consortia.
Broader Impacts: The annual OCIS doctoral consortia traditionally bring together the best of the next generation of researchers in organizational communication and information systems, allowing them to create a social network both among themselves and with senior researchers at a critical stage in their professional development. Applications are encouraged from all doctoral students whose research is OCIS-related, regardless of the fields in which they are earning their degrees. While NSF funds will be used chiefly to support participation by students enrolled in graduate programs in the United States, some international participants may be supported as well in recognition of the fact that the OCIS field embraces educational and cultural traditions that vary in different parts of the world. The organizers will try explicitly to identify and include the broadest possible group of highly qualified participants, and in particular will consider gender in the participant selection process. As a consequence of these steps, the student and faculty participants will constitute a diverse group across a variety of dimensions, which will help broaden the students' horizons to the future benefit of the field.
The goal of the project was to support for a research consortium of promising doctoral students and distinguished research faculty in conjunction with the 2012 Academy of Management Annual Meeting. The Academy of Management (AOM) is organized in several divisions, each focused on a different area of interest to management researchers (e.g., organizational behavior, strategy and business policy, gender and diversity, etc.). The project was to support a consortium organized by the Organizational Communication and Information Systems (OCIS) division. The OCIS track at the annual AOM meetings provide a leading international forum for the presentation and discussion of research and practical issues related to the use and impact of information and communication technologies in organizations. The Academy of Management has more than 16,000 members, of whom 1000 (approximately) are currently affiliated with the OCIS division. AOM meetings are attended by more than 6,000 researchers, professionals, and students. All papers submitted for presentation at AOM are peer-reviewed, and the Academy of Management Conference Proceedings publishes approximately the top 10% of those papers. Most faculty and student members of the Academy focus their participation in the conference on the activities sponsored by the one or two divisions with which their interests are most closely aligned. Thus many divisions offer complementary activities for doctoral students, including several divisions’ doctoral consortia. These activities are scheduled concurrently during the first two days of the conference, which are devoted to professional development workshops. PhD students will therefore generally apply to attend the doctoral consortium of the division that is most closely related to their interests. In 2012, the AOM meetings took place in Boston, MA from August 3 to 7. The OCIS Executive Committee for the year 2012, responsible for organizing all activities for OCIS members, consisted of Manju Ahuja (Division Chair, University of Louisville), Elizabeth Davidson (Division Chair-Elect, University of Hawaii), Kevin Crowston (Program-Chair, Syracuse University), Youngjin Yoo (Program-chair elect, Temple University), Brian S. Butler (Past Chair, University of Maryland), Marie-Claude Boudreau (Treasurer, University of Georgia), Michael Boyer O’Leary (Secretary, Georgetown University). Youngjin Yoo was responsible for organizing and running the doctoral consortium and also serves as the PI of the project. The support provided by this grant contributed in supporting research in the CISE community and expand the network of CISE PIs (principle investigators). The research interests of the OCIS division are intertwined with the broader interests of CISE in significant ways. Specifically, many OCIS members are engaged in research on computer-mediated communications and information sciences. Many members perform research in organizational communications and information systems on issues related to the contemporary information-based society. Specifically, the goals of the Consortium were to: build a cohort group of new researchers who will then have a network of diverse colleagues spread out across the world; guide the work of the new researchers by having the experts in the research field give advice; provide encouragement and support for the selection of OCIS research topics; make it possible for promising new entrants to the field to attend their research conference; illustrate the interrelationship and diversity of OCIS research; make the new entrants’ experience at the AOM conference an enjoyable and rewarding experience, encouraging them to return and submit papers, panels, demonstrations, posters, etc. to the conference. A major focus of the doctoral consortium was discussion of the students’ dissertation projects. These represented cutting-edge research in the field of organizational communication and information systems. The consortium provided both an opportunity for these projects to be shaped through intellectual exchange as well as communicating the work to a key group of young scholars. The OCIS doctoral consortium brought together highly talented students and several senior researchers, facilitating the development of a social network that would play a major role in the career success of new researchers. Since both faculty and students were diverse on several dimensions (research topics, methodological approaches, national and cultural background) the students’ horizons were significantly broadened at a critical stage in their professional development. Further, the consortium had a broader impact on building community and help students understand issues related to how to be a responsible member of the OCIS community, the Academy of Management community and the broader scholarly community in general. The project allowed doctoral students to make presentations on their thesis project to their peers and faculty mentors. They received specific and concrete advise on how they should deal with theoretical and methodological challenges that they face in their research project. We also had two panels of faculty members talking about (1) selecting research topic and developing a program of research and (2) how to build sucessful scholarly career. We also had a keynote talk by Professor Noshir Contractor who provided an overview of how some of NSF funded research projects that he is working is guiding his research program.
