Work-in-Progress

January

This was an extremely demanding month!! No break! The avalanche of submissions for the Academy of Management came flooding in during early January. Meihui and I worked feverishly to record and enter all the submission information into our database and on the Academy of Management website. In addition, we sent out, in less than 48 hours from receipt of submission, over 300 papers for review. The entire month was consumed by continuous data entry and monitoring of submissions. We also worked on updating the database, getting it ready for receiving the results from our reviewers. This was truly a full-time job for several weeks. 

In the meantime, I managed to write a preliminary grant proposal for the Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Secondary Education (FIPSE) with my colleague, Dr. Rod Muth at the University of Colorado, Denver. The title of our grant proposal is "Reinventing Management and Educational Administration: A Whole Systems Approach." I kept track of our drafts and revisions--between the two of us, we revised this proposal 43 times before it was finalized. The challenge was to reduce a complex 3 year process into 5 double-spaced pages. We hope that FIPSE invites us for the next round of submitting a final proposal. Our grant, if funded, would provide us $326,000 over 3 years.

Also this month, I attended the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative (NLLI) conference down in New Orleans, as part of meeting among all the faculty working on the Center for Distributed Learning grant project. It was great to be in 76 degree, sunny weather for a few days and eating cajun food.

I received good news that my paper that I submitted to the Western Academy of Management (WAM) conference was accepted. I also received good news that my paper that I submitted to the International Association of Business Disciplines (IABD) conference was accepted too. The WAM conference will be held in Hawaii this year (yea!). And the IABD conference will be in Las Vegas (not thrilled).

February

Another busy and hectic month, with significant work duties devoted to processing information from reviews received for Academy of Management papers and symposia. I met with the Organization Development and Change division's Executive Board at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, where we reviewed the results and planned for our annual conference in August. Most of my time has been spent working on the conference program. 

March

Again, work, work, work on the conference program. Seems my whole life is nothing but Academy of Management tasks--but, I really do enjoy being of service to my division and professional association. I have had little time for reading, writing or reflection last three to four months. I really look forward to June when my life returns to some form of normalcy. I have been starting to try to "re-group," and re-orient myself to future publishing projects I need to attend to (I have a backlog of articles I need to get published), but more importantly, I need to get reconnected to my book project. I plan to write an article on Time and Management for the upcoming special issue of the Academy of Management Review, which will parallel my book project ideas. I also feel a strong need to spend more time in meditation, and daily reflection and relaxation, as I notice that these intense periods of mental work, especially when one if trying to manage and attend to several projects at once, that one's sleep patterns become somewhat disturbed. I have cut back on my caffeine intake considerably. I also manage to exercise at least 4 days a week to release stress.

I received good news that both my All Academy symposium, as well as my paper that I submitted to the OMT division were accepted for the Academy of Management conference meeting in August.