All right, some of us like such Jokes, some don't. In any event, there is no
need to quarrel with a joke, I think. But seriously, I think it is
worthwhile trying to get a paper into the academy of management (please note
the full form to avoid confusion) than other places. This is especially so
if your school does not fund too many conferences. For those of us working
in Singapore, any conference that is held 29 miles away from the city centre
becomes an international conference and an expensive proposition. We have a
limit of 2 per year. I do not know how it is across the United States but I
know that there are some schools which have restrictions on conference
funding etc., If professional satisfaction is what matters to you, Academy
is a better bet, in my opinion.
Let me justify. What follows is a long sketch of my experience and my
impressions of the association of management conference in Montreal, 1997.
This might have been a one time occurence for them but it did leave a bad
taste for me. I have been holding back but these guys seem to take
themselves too seriously.
1. There was a review process all right, but (personally) I was not
satisfied. I had the feeling that the conference was disorganized. They have
two volumes of proceedings. They give you only that volume in which your
paper is printed. You do not get the entire conference proceedings. I did a
paper on incentives using the Ouchi framework, and I was scheduled for
Managerial communication session.
2. Once again, this is a personal opinion: few people were inclined towards
any intellectual debate or for that matter, seemed to be interested in the
papers at all. Attendance was more or less thin. There were not too many
practitioners or consultants in sight either.
In my personal opinion, the papers were not worth it. But, different people
go to conferences for different reasons. So , it is up to them and you.
So....
But these are all things we can put up with or even ignore. Every conference
has rough edges, and a conference organized by people with disparate
backgrounds, and probably not the same resources as the academy, may have
some problems. There is a lot of effort that goes into a conference (we have
organized some conferences here in Singapore very well and with limited
sources; but I am willing to grant them- teamwork is not always possible due
to several constraints). But the real problem arose after the conference.
3. Somewhere in the fine print of the conference registration form or
pamphlet (we were told later), it was stated that the credit card billing
will serve as the receipt for the registration fee of $314. Anyway, I did
not read it, paid the fee by credit card, went to the conference. At the
conference, the organizers told us (they did not invoke the fine print
clause, mind you) they will post it to us after the conference. We waited
for four weeks and after that one of my colleagues sent an email politely
requesting for the receipt ( you can't get any more polite than people in
this part of the world). He (and I remember another colleague from North
Texas) got a stinker of a reply saying that the "post-conference" work at
association of management is very intensive, and they cannot accommodate
demands from "around the globe" asking for receipts and such. Of course, the
aforementioned fine print clause was invoked. It was rudely worded. My
colleague forwarded it to me. I was already getting calls from the Bursar's
office for the receipt as proof of attendance (we are very bureaucratic
here). So, I emailed Jimmy Sanders (who was the president of the
association) with some words of my own, none too polite. He wrote back
saying that he has directed the office to mail the receipts. We received an
electronic receipt (with a curt message) which we submitted. But todate,
there has been no physical receipt.
I wrote this long message because throughout the conference, I was feeling
that it was extremely unprofessional and the aftermath confirmed my
feelings. Now, I did not speak out because of the same professional
concerns- you do not shout out every time someone makes a blunder. But when
I see that someone is taking themselves too seriously, I felt that my
experience should be shared. I still have all the correspondence in my saved
folder. But no longer waiting for the receipt, Rao
N. Rao Kowtha
Graduate School of Business
National University of Singapore
10 Kent Ridge Crescent
Singapore 119260, Singapore
Tel: (65)8743049
Fax: (65)775 5571
Email:
fbarnk@nus.edu.sg
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