Greetings Colleagues - with apologies for potential cross-postings, as I am
seeking significant participation from AOM members, I have a special call
for papers for you to consider:
In association with my AOM 2010 Caucus, "Expanding Minority
Representation in Management Education," which is held Monday August 9,
9:45-11:15 am in 522C of the Palais de Congres in Montreal, there is a
special issue opportunity for interested researchers at the Decision
Sciences Journal of Innovative Education (submission period September 1,
2010 - February 28, 2011).
To that end, and as a part of the Academy Caucus meeting, we are
interested in papers that outline practices for effective recruitment,
retention and training of under-represented minorities in the management
disciplines at the graduate level. The special issue will focus
specifically on how to improve pedagogy and learning research so as to
expand minority representation; articles that only describe the related
problems or explore potential public policy solutions may not be
appropriate for DSJIE. This will be a solutions-oriented special issue
focused on academic practice.
Ethnic minorities account for a third of the US workforce and 25% of the
US college population, yet only 5% of college faculty are
African-American (Payton, White & Mbarika, 2005). In certain business
specialties, the representation is even lower - not even 3% among
Management Information Systems faculty, for example (Payton & Jackson,
1999). Despite strong demand from industry for representation and
preparation on the topic of diversity in business (Day & Glick, 2000),
and notwithstanding active support for the role of diversity in business
education from the AACSB, little progress has been noted in either
increasing diversity among the ranks of faculty or in formally training
for students for the challenges of diversity in the workforce (Bell et
al., 2009).
As has been demonstrated in studies of recruitment and retention of
minorities in business education, the goals of diversity in the
classroom and the workforce will only be met through increasing the role
of diversity among the ranks of business professors (Payton et al.,
2005). Plainly put, a greater effort must be made to recruit, retain,
and graduate members of under-represented minorities at the doctoral
level of business education in order to achieve lasting advances in
business school diversity and in the subsequent level of diversity to be
found in industry. The mechanism by which such recruitment efforts
contribute to the goals of diversity in business and business education
is a simple one: more minority students will be motivated to seek
terminal degrees in business disciplines if they find visible examples
of other members of similar minorities having succeeded in the same
endeavor; this is the basis of Payton's (Payton et al., 2005; Payton &
Jackson, 1999) "mentoring" approach, and a similar demographic effect
has also been noted in research on the nature of the interactions
between workers and their managers in business (Goldberg et al., 2008).
The purpose of the Academy Caucus and related special issue is to draw
together researchers with a common cause on the issue of diversity in
the management classroom in order to springboard new approaches and new
research perspectives on this critical topic. Aside from efforts to
recruit and retain minority graduate students and faculty in business
schools, the role of research on the topic of diversity is critical in
attaining AACSB goals for the inclusion of diversity in the classroom
(e.g., Bell et al., 2009). To that end, research on how to increase the
ranks of under-represented minorities in the graduate management
classroom provides a substantial contribution toward a necessary
societal good and essential academic role in the form of understanding,
promoting and training the workforce of tomorrow on the nature and
effects of diversity.
Leveraging theoretical diversity and methodological expertise, the
special issue will serve to merge diversity research interests that span
the business disciplines served by the Decision Sciences Institute. To
that end, submissions from colleagues in any of the substantive
business, technology, engineering, and managerial disciplines are
welcomed, so long as their focus and goal is related to increasing
representation in said discipline at the graduate level.
Submissions will be made electronically at the Journal's online
submission site,
http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/dsjie, and must adhere
to the stylistic guidelines of the Journal found at
http://www.dsjie.org/dnn/AuthorCenter/StyleGuidelines.aspx. Please
indicate that the submitted paper addresses this special issue in the
cover letter.
Both specific and general questions about the special issue, its topics,
themes, and deadlines may be directed to the either of the special issue
editors:
Thomas F. Stafford
Fogelman College of Business and Economics
University of Memphis
Memphis, TN 38152
tstaffor@memphis.edu
and
Chetan S. Sankar
Professor, Department of Management
Auburn University, AL 36849
sankacs@auburn.edu
REFERENCES
Bell, M. P., Connerley, M. L., & Cocchiara, F. 2009. The case for
mandatory diversity education. Academy of Management Learning &
Education, 8(4): 597-609.
Day, N.E. & Glick, B.J. 2000. Teaching diversity: A study of
organizational needs and diversity curriculum in higher education.
Journal of Management Education, 24(3): 338-352.
Goldberg, C., Riordan, C.M., & Zhang, L. 2008. Employees' perceptions of
the leaders: Is being similar always better? Group & Organization
Management, 33(3): 330-355.
Payton, F.C. & Jackson, C. 1999. Ethnic diversity in IS: What are
current Ph. D. students saying? ACM SIGCPR Computer Personnel, 20(3):
27-39.
Payton, F.C., White, S.D., & Mbarika, V. 2005. A re-examination of
racioethnic imbalance of IS doctorates: Changing the face of the IS
classroom. Journal of the AIS, 6(1): 37-51.
************************
Thomas F. Stafford, Ph.D.
Editor-in-Chief, ACM Data Base
MIS Department
Fogelman College of Business and Economics
University of Memphis
901-678-4628, voice
901-678-4151, fax
tstaffor@memphis.edu
http://MemphisState.org
http://The-Database.org