This year’s theme will be: Online Interactions and New Ways of Working. This 3,5 day workshop, organized by KIN research group together with Amsterdam Business Research Institute (ABRI) offers seminars on new research topics related to new ways of working and knowledge collaboration in online environments; interactive sessions to discuss your ongoing research with an international faculty and ample opportunities to network and socialize with an international group of scholars. The teaching faculty consists of an international group of scholars, known for their research in the field: Samer Faraj (McGill University), Niki Panteli (University of Bath), Emmanuelle Vaast (McGill University) and Marleen Huysman (VU University Amsterdam).

New ways of working refers to new ways in which knowledge workers communicate, coordinate and collaborate in increasingly distributed organizational contexts. This knowledge collaboration often happens in online environments, such as virtual teams online communities and online networks of practice. These online settings generate new ways of working that have important implications for our traditional ideas about work and organizational processes and the management of knowledge. For example, professionals creating online networks of practice in order to share knowledge over the formal boundaries of the organizations, also create dilemma’s in terms of the guarantee of quality, trust, knowledge integration, power, socialization, etc. Also, the growing use of virtual environment and mobile technology questions the traditional office architecture, while on the other hand we are all aware of the importance of face to face encounters to stimulate situated learning and serendipitous innovation; and the introduction of Social media in the workplace might significantly influence organizational power structures, social norms of communication and collaboration. These are just some examples that illustrate the significant changes that are and will come about when organizations seriously engage with online environments.

The summer workshop is designed to help develop the insights and skills of PhD and early career researchers (post-docs and junior faculty). For further information, including registration, please visit the ABRI website, or contact ABRI’s Programme Manager, Margriet Buseman (m.buseman@vu.nl).

The deadline for applying to this year’s consortium is May 10.  All details regarding the consortium, including application requirements, can be found here. Best of luck to all who apply and we look forward to seeing you in Boston!

Currently we are looking for a student-representative-at-large within the OCIS division of the Academy of Management.  The position will become available this summer (August 2012) with a duration of two years.

What do Student-Representatives-at-Large do?

At a high level, there are two primary purposes of this position: to provide other executive committee members with a student perspective when planning division events/programs and to increase awareness of and involvement in OCIS division activities among other students.  The first formal requirement is a rather obvious one: only full-time doctoral students/candidates are eligible for the position. Additionally, you must remain a full-time student/candidate for the duration of your two-year term.

In 2011, we formulated the following additional purposes that we intend to address through our website:
•    To share previous experiences and advice for success as a doctoral student
•    To disseminate information that is pertinent to current students
•    To foster a community of student peers that supports networking and collaboration
•    To promote international involvement in OCIS/AOM

The other expectations and duties of the Student-Representative-at-Large position include:

Attending the AOM Annual Meeting each year
•    Participate in the OCIS Executive Committee meeting – providing a brief update on student-led initiatives and activities
•    Act as a liaison for other students attending the conference – helping provide guidance in navigating the conference and attending social events

Participating in OCIS Executive Committee teleconferences as needed (typically no more than 1-2 per year)

Participating in weekly status calls with the other OCIS Student-Representative-at-Large to discuss ongoing projects and initiatives (typically 30-45 minute phone/Skype calls)

Contributing to the OCIS student blog (www.OCISphd.com) on a regular basis
•    Involves writing personal reflections, advice, or other information that may be valuable to other PhD students
•    Seeking out faculty members or other influential people in the field willing to conduct interviews to be posted online
•    Recording interesting lectures, research presentations, or other speaking engagements that may be of interest to the OCIS community
•    Combined, both Student-Representatives-at-Large should contribute 3-4 blog posts per month

Involvement in other special projects aimed at increasing student involvement in OCIS activities on an as-needed basis
The next question is “how much time will be required of me?”  While this question is difficult to answer definitively, my experience over the past 8 months has been approximately 6-8 hours per month with some additional time commitments before, during, and after the AOM Annual Meeting in August.

Interested? Please see http://apps.aomonline.org/DivNomination and submit your nomination before February 29, 2012

If you have any questions about the position, please feel free to leave them in the comments section below and we will address your concerns in a timely manner.  Additionally, if you do not feel as though you can commit to the requirements of the Student-Representative-at-Large position but still wish to get involved in OCIS, please continue to check this site for updates as we will post opportunities to participate in special projects as they arise.

With this blog post we aim to provide you some interesting considerations, general guidelines, readings and links we found useful when writing reviews. Please post your comments if you have any additional advice on writing reviews.

 Why reviewing?

It takes up a lot of your time and what’s in it for you? Here are a few reasons why reviewing is or can be important for your own work. First, looking at others’ manuscript in a detailed way helps you develop a critical eye towards your own work. Writing reviews trains you to read articles in a different, often more open way than when you read articles for your own research. It triggers you to keep an open mind on the subjects discussed in the manuscript, and to identify several levels of writing such as structure, argumentation, and contribution, which can come in handy when looking at your own work. Second, reviewing manuscripts gives you the opportunity to take a glance at novel insights not yet published. These might be insights that are stimulating for your own progress. Third, you are in the position to build a track record of good reviews, which can be beneficial for your reputation with others. Fourth, you are contributing to your community by enabling the peer-review process.

 Getting started

Before actually starting to review, it is important to consider whether you are able to review the manuscript that is assigned to you. It could be that the subject or methodology is not familiar enough to you to give detailed comments on. If this is the case it is better to notify the person or editor that has assigned the review to you. This person will, in the case of doing a manuscript review for a conference, often try to find you a better match.

If you review for the Academy of Management for the first time, you will be asked to take notice on the following literature on reviewing:

1. Becoming a Reviewer (Romanelli, 1996)
2. Reviewing Empirically Based Manuscripts (Schwab, 1985)
3. The Art of Reviewing (Leblebici, 1996) (source: AoM 2012)

The AoM reviewer guidelines for the conference request you to write a 1-page single spaced review covering your comments on the introduction, theory, methods, results and contribution. You can choose to divide you comments into general and detailed comments. In any case, it is useful to the authors as well as to the editor to prioritize your comments in a structured way, so it is clear which comments are more important than others.

Furthermore, a good review should have a constructive tone. Your advice should for example be interpretive, actionable, convincing, concrete, and show respect for the author’s work. By following these criteria, you are helping the editor in making an elaborate judgment on the status of the paper, and you help the author in developing his paper in a constructive way. If you are disappointed or even angry because of something the authors did or did not mention, it is often acceptable to mention this, in a professional (constructive) way. For example, it could be that the authors provide an argument that is in your opinion not well stated or even wrong in the light of recent literature on the subject. It seems that the authors are not aware of the latest work in their research field. Responding to this in a review by saying ‘This paper is absolute rubbish because the authors do not know what they are talking about‘ is not really considered constructive, convincing, concrete or respectful. Instead, a more helpful response could be to mention which particular argument in your opinion is not fully convincing, to state that recent literature gives opposing or more developed insights, and to actually provide some references to articles that the authors should take into account.  This way, you are respectfully and clearly explaining that the argument they make is according to you not valid, and you provide concrete argumentation and solution for this particular point for improvement.

The Academy of Management meeting website provides you with some more guidelines on reviewing manuscripts for the 2012 annual meeting:

http://annualmeeting.aomonline.org/2012/menu-program/menu-rev-info

Additional literature on reviewing manuscripts:

Lee, A. S. (1995). ‘Reviewing a manuscript for publication’. Journal of Operations Research 13: 87-92

Please feel free to add advice and literature on reviewing and help out your fellow PhD students!

More posts on reviewing and publishing:

Reviewing our review practices

Publishing in top journals

Call for reviewers

Full details regarding AOM 2012, including submission guidelines and procedures, can be found at the meeting’s website: http://annualmeeting.aomonline.org/2012/. The actual submission system can be found at: http://submission.aomonline.org/2012/default.asp?mode=login.

Look for more information and advice for submitting papers to AOM over the next few weeks. In the meantime, if you have any questions, just leave us a comment below!

If you have reviewed for AOM in the past, you must still sign up to be a reviewer for this year. If you are new to OCIS/AOM, this is a great opportunity to get involved. To sign up, visit http://review.aomonline.org/ and click on “Sign Up Now”. You will be able to select the divisions you wish to review for and the keywords that reflect your areas of interest and research so the program chairs can send submissions that are aligned with your domains of knowledge. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns about getting involved in the review process – we would be glad to share our previous experiences with reviewing for OCIS.

San Antonio, Texas, 12-16 August 2011, participants: 9000

This year’s  conference was my first Academy of Management annual meeting and intensive introduction to the OCIS community. I liked meeting many great people involved in OCIS and having the opportunity to learn about research from different fields. The meeting was held in San Antonio, Texas. My week started with the OCIS doctoral consortium, a two-day pre-conference workshop which offered PhD students a chance to discuss their research with faculty members and other students. The consortium was organized by Kevin Crowston. The faculty consisted of Bob Gallier, Claudia Loebbecke, Diana Burley, JoAnne Yates, Pamela Hinds, Paul Hart and Youngjin Yoo. The consortium gave me the opportunity to meet several of the doctoral students in the OCIS community and to find out about their respective research. The first morning was filled with discussion sessions in small groups on students own research. After a delicious ‘Tex-Mex’ lunch we were amused with a talk on ‘the world of academic publishing’ by Bob Galliers. In the afternoon we discussed PhD related subjects such as finishing your dissertation, what to do after your PhD and how to contribute (efficiently) to the academy. In the evening we were treated to a social dinner with the students and the faculty members in a Belgium restaurant close to the conference venue.

Some comments from students attending the doctoral consortium:

                                                                           ‘I really enjoyed the very constructive small group working atmosphere.’

                                                                            Ivo Blohm, Technische Universität München

‘The doctorial consortium was great!  I received some thoughtful feedback on my work and learned about the work of others.  I especially enjoyed meeting people from different disciplines and hearing about different theoretical perspectives.  I hope to see everyone again at future conferences.’

Sung Kim, University of Oklahoma

The next day we were given the opportunity to attend professional development workshops (PDW’s). I attended the ‘Building bridges through a socio-technical perspective’ workshop, organized by Steven Johnson and Brian Butler. We discussed socio-technical issues related to our own research, which gave us some new insights in how to approach our studies. In the end we discussed what would be the ultimate socio-technical methodology/measurement tool, not taking any investment constraints into account. This resulted in most interesting proposals and talks afterwards, such as cloning yourself as a researcher to do ethnographic studies on large scales and getting all possible Facebook data from the past 8 years.

  ‘I really liked the poster session on Saturday evening. It provided a quite unique opportunity to present our work, and actually get to talk about it extensively. I got some great feedback that evening, and appreciate the effort that went into organizing the whole thing.’

 Christine Moser, VU University Amsterdam

The end of the day was for most doctoral students the highlight of the consortium: they had to present their research in a poster session at the OCIS member networking reception. I believe this was the first year that poster sessions were organized this way, and many students and OCIS members enjoyed the session. Students rewarded people posing interesting questions with drink vouchers, which gave a funny quiz-like twist to the session.

The AoM annual event itself was full of interesting presentation sessions, discussion sessions and seminars. I made a selection beforehand by searching for sessions on topic and scholars who could be interesting for my own research and teaching. This resulted in both OCIS and other divisions related sessions on research and development, innovation, knowledge management, team work and social media. Most of the sessions I attended were full of great content, new insights, and interesting people. Besides sessions, I attended an interesting OCIS key note by dr. M. Lynne Markus, the OCIS business meeting and the social event afterwards. At the end of every conference day I was very tired (both from the great amount of info and high temperature outside), but fulfilled.

‘After almost a week of AoM I was both exhausted and energized. Exhausted because of the long days (fading into long nights , and energized because of all the ideas floating around everywhere. I know that I can use a lot of the ideas that I got during AoM in my own work, which is really the best result one could wish for!’

 Christine Moser, VU University Amsterdam

Every evening divisions and universities organized social events and parties somewhere in the San Antonio city center. Most of the parties were open to everyone, served free food and drinks, and were highly attended. I visited a couple of them on Monday night, but some of us enjoyed parties every night .

All in all, the conference was a great experience to get well introduced to the OCIS community and I am looking forward to the meeting in Boston next year. If you as a PhD student have any opportunity to submit your work for the doctoral consortium next year, I really recommend you to consider this. You will definitely gain useful feedback from experienced people and develop new insights on your own work, and you can meet many new people from your own research field.

Congratulations to all OCIS 2011 runners-up and award winners:

Best Published Paper Award

“Minding the Gaps: Understanding Technology Interdependence and Coordination in Knowledge Work.” Organization Science 21(3): 713-730.

D.E. Bailey, P.M. Leonardi and J. Chong

Best Published Paper Award-1st Runner Up

“The Process of Embedding New Information Technology Artifacts Into Innovative Design Practices.” Information & Organization 20(3-4): 133-155.

R.J. Baxter and N. Berente

Best Published Paper Award-2nd Runner

Up “Local Assimilation of an Enterprise System: Situated Learning by Means of Familiarity Pockets.” Information & Organization 20(3-4): 187-206.

E.B. Swanson, Y. Yamauchi

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Best Program Paper Award

“When Does Technology Enable Organizational Change? Convergent Feature Use and Collective Affordances”

Paul Leonardi, Northwestern University

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Best Program Paper Award – 1st Runner Up

“Knowledge Sharing in Professional Virtual Communities: Moderatorship and Social Identities”

Hongwei He and Nikita Kursov, University of Warwick Best

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Program Paper Award – 2nd Runner Up

“A Call to Arms: A Social Movements Perspective on ‘Issue’ Surfacing on Social Media”

Sung Won Kim and Shaila Miranda, U. of Oklahoma

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Best Interactive Paper Award

“Patterns of Technological Search: Institutional and Behavioral Triggers of IS Investment”

Torsten Oliver Saige, Ruhr-University Bochum and Rajiv Kohli, College of William and Mary Michael Barrett, U. of Cambridge

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Best Student Paper Award

“Tacit Knowledge Sharing between IT Workers: the Role of Culture, Personality, and Social Environment”

Renata Borges, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale

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OCIS Best International Paper

“Co-mingling Contrasting Institutional Logics”

George Kandathil, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad , Sue Newell, Bentley University Erica L Wagner, Portland State University

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DeSanctis Award

“Asset Transfer: Divesting Commodities or Inviting Investment?

Kiron Ravindran , Instituto de Empresa Business School

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Best Reviewer Award

Michael Boyer O’Leary, Georgetown University

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OCIS lifetime service award

Bob Zmud, University of Oklahoma

The OCIS division will have representatives attending the NDSC to disseminate information about our division and to talk with students interested in information systems and communication.  This will be an excellent opportunity to meet some of the OCIS executive committee members and to ask questions about our division as well as the Academy as a whole.

For more information and registration for this event, please visit http://group.aomonline.org/ndsc/.  I hope to see you at the NDSC and at other OCIS events in San Antonio.