Dear Colleague:

The Association of Management / International Association of Management (AoM/IAoM) invites you to share your academic-corporate experience, business acumen, and understanding of global business challenges with delegates of our annual conference.

With the preparations for the 2008 Conference of the AoM/IAoM well under way, I personally extend a warm invitation to join me in this coming year’s conference activities.. We envision many exciting debates among corporate officers and management academics that produce innovative relationships and partnerships, provide creative solutions for the multitude of organizational, management, leadership, higher educational, ethical and technological problems.

This year, the AoM/IAoM is introducing a new conceptual framework that we believe will appeal to academics and practitioners alike. In this letter, we briefly describe the model and then delineate some ways in which corporate managers can add value to the annual conference of the AoM/IAoM.

The new conceptual model which invites contributions of academicians and practicing managers in known as MELT – Management, Education, Leadership, and Technology. Its intention is threefold: (a) to bring practicing managers to the high table that management academicians are monopolizing; (b) to facilitate the discourse between management academics and management practitioners for the purpose of creating new knowledge that has both scientific and applied value; and (c) to establish collaborative partnership across the four areas embraced by MELT. In part, support for this endeavor must come from major corporations as well as from academic institutions. Academe, companies and managers at large are invited to get into the act.

Here is a quick sampling of some prevalent problems in MELT’s four areas, which many of you encountered and are familiar with:

MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS

• Anti-Americanism that is threatening America's political and business interests
• Outsourcing of jobs to Asia
• Ideology based gloomy vision of management
• Knowledge drain as a large number of Baby Boomer executives are retiring
• Obsolete management theories including those developed by Drucker, Deming, and Peters
• Bad management theories destroying good management practices

EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS

• Outdated educational models
• Media ranking of business schools as indicators of the quality of MBA programs
• Lack of business experience of MBA faculty
• Competition between online and traditional brick-and-mortar programs
• Narrowness and overspecialization (especially among junior faculty
• Business schools adopting the scientific model of the social sciences

LEADERSHIP PROBLEMS

• Prevalence of unethical leadership
• Character and mortal failures of exceptional leaders
• Prevalence of Anglo-centric, leader-centric two-dimensional models of leadership
• Inadequate succession planning in a large number of corporations
• Dearth of leadership talent in the 35-45 age group

ETHICAL PROBLEMS

• Post Enron Business Climate
• Lack of ethical and moral leadership
• Distrustful business relationships
• Absence of organizations reward systems that hold executives, managers, and employees responsible for ethical conduct

TECHNOLOGICAL PROBLEMS

• Increasingly rapid development of new technology
• Digital divide between developed and developing nations
• Technological literacy
• Cultural, social, economic, and political effects of technology
• Analog and digital cellular phone conversations carried on radio waves
• Virtual border screening of foreign travelers

You are invited to join us in cultivating the scholarship of practice under the umbrella of MELT. In order for MELT to succeed, we need active participation of academics and practitioners to shape the directing of the MELT efforts around the world. Many learned societies and professional associations pay lip service to the integration of theory and practice, research and action. Yet many practitioners often exist outside the academic mainstream, even though it is their work that academics rely on when testing theories, developing new instruments, validating models, or implementing new management practices. Instead of judging practicing managers based on their scientific credentials, a more appropriate criterion would be their practical knowledge. We invite senior managers from corporations, nonprofit organizations, and administrators of institutions of higher learning to help us create a marketplace for new ideas from a practitioner’s perspective.

There are numerous ways in which you can bring your ‘know-how’ to the annual conferences and thereby enrich the experience of all participants:

• Workshop and seminar leader
• Plenary speaker
• Organizational sponsor of AoM/IAoM events such as lunches,dinners, coffee breaks
• Establish a scholarship in the name of your organization (see sponsor page)

In sum, we cordially extend this invitation to participate in our Annual Conference to you, your colleagues, and your organization. To learn more about AoM/IAoM and MELT,  visit our Web pages. If you have specific questions regarding your participation, please let me know at aomgt@inter-source.org.

Sincerely, 

Willem A. Hamel, Ph.D.
President