WORKSHOP: Organizational Communications and Information Systems Doctoral Consortium

Syracuse University, Syracuse NY

Investigators

Abstract

This is funding to support a Doctoral Consortium (workshop) of approximately 25 promising graduate students from the United States and abroad, along with a panel of about 5 distinguished research faculty mentors. The event will take place in conjunction with the Academy of Management (AOM)'s 2011 Conference and will be held August 12-16 in San Antonio, Texas. This is the leading international forum for the presentation and discussion of research about management and organizations, and is attended by approximately 6,000 professionals from around the world. More information about the conference is available at http://meetings.aomonline.org/2011/. The Organizational Communication and Information Systems (OCIS) Doctoral Consortium is a research-focused meeting that has taken place annually at the AOM conference since 2000, and has helped to launch the careers of many outstanding researchers in organizational communication and information systems. Goals of the workshop include building a cohort group of new researchers who will then have a network of colleagues spread out across the world, guiding the work of new researchers by having experts in the research field give them advice, and making it possible for promising new entrants to the field to attend their research conference. Student participants will make formal presentations of their research during the workshop, and will receive feedback from the faculty panel. The feedback is geared to helping students understand and articulate how their work is positioned relative to other OCIS research, whether their topics are adequately focused for thesis research projects, whether their methods are correctly chosen and applied, and whether their results are appropriately analyzed and presented. Student participants will present their work to the doctoral consortium on August 12-13, with follow up activities planned during the technical program of the conference. The OCIS conference management committee will evaluate the doctoral consortium, and the results will be made available to the organizers of future consortia. The OCIS doctoral consortia have been highly successful in providing a forum for the initial socialization into the field of young doctoral scholars; many of today's leading researchers participated as students in earlier consortia. Broader Impacts: The annual OCIS doctoral consortia traditionally bring together the best of the next generation of researchers in organizational communication and information systems, allowing them to create a social network both among themselves and with senior researchers at a critical stage in their professional development. Applications are encouraged from all doctoral students whose research is OCIS-related, regardless of the fields in which they are earning their degrees. While NSF funds will be used chiefly to support participation by students enrolled in graduate programs in the United States, some international participants may be supported as well in recognition of the fact that the OCIS field embraces educational and cultural traditions that vary in different parts of the world. The organizers will try explicitly to identify and include the broadest possible group of highly qualified participants, and in particular will consider gender in the participant selection process with a target of a 50/50 split. As a consequence of these steps, the student and faculty participants will constitute a diverse group across a variety of dimensions, which will help broaden the students' horizons to the future benefit of the field.