13512087_10153843037188717_5004960477529978382_nguest article by Kotaiba Aal and Kaisa Koskela-Huotari, Recipients of the 2016 Liam Glynn Research Scholarship Award

Excitement fills the air as we approach the NHH Norwegian School of Economics in a June evening. We enter a room with a beautiful view over Bergen and are warmly welcomed by the co-chairs of the doctoral consortium Associate Professor Lisa Brüggen (Maastricht University) and Associate Professor Bart Lariviere (Ghent University). This year’s AMA SERVSIG Doctoral Consortium is ready to start!

DC-Bergen-2016-025_1The doctoral consortium was held June 22-23 in Bergen, Norway and preceded the 25th Frontiers in Service Conference. The welcome reception on Wednesday evening offered us a great opportunity to discuss and get to know with senior faculty members as well as other doctoral students attending the consortium over some food and drinks. This all sounded easy in principle, but for many of us doctoral students approaching the leading service scholars was not so easy to do in practice. Lisa and Bart had, however, thought of everything and created a fun quiz about the faculty members, which made it a lot easier to start conversations. Who would not like to know which one of the faculty members almost skipped Frontiers conference for a rock concert or who broke their arm while jogging with a coffee mug. This little exercise was great as from the start the atmosphere at the doctoral consortium was engaging and relaxed and this feeling was carried through the entire event.

DC-Bergen-2016-018_1On Thursday morning the doctoral consortium continued with inspirational lectures by the participating faculty fellows. The morning program was organized along three themes of “Kick Start and Manage Your Career”, “Publishing Relevant and Rigorous Research” and “Creating Impact through Teaching and Service”. First, Katrien Verleye (Ghent University), Clay Voorhees (Michigan State University) and Katherine Lemon (Boston College) shared their personal journeys as service scholars and gave us very useful and practical tips of e.g. how to write our academic CVs. Then, Florian von Wangenheim (ETH Zurich), Mary Jo Bitner (Arizona State University), and Steven Shugan (University of Florida) shared their magnificent experience and insights about publishing with us. And last, but not least, Liliana Bove (University of Melbourne), Yany Gregoire (HEC Montreal) and Jochen Wirtz (National University of Singapore) reminded us about the importance of teaching and stressed the impact a scholar can make through students. All of the lectures were followed up with a lively Q&A discussions between the senior service scholars and the students in which both had the opportunity to exchanged their knowledge and experiences.

DC-Bergen-2016-047_1After lunch, the program continued with break-out sessions in which us students had the opportunity to present our research for the faculty members in smaller groups. Each doctoral student had prior to the event submitted a summary of their dissertation project to be discussed with two or more faculty fellows and other doctoral students. During the sessions, each doctoral student gave a short presentation of their selected research topic before getting feedback from the group. As throughout the doctoral consortium, the atmosphere of the sessions was very encouraging and motivating and we received brilliant guidance on how to further develop our research ideas and get them published.

On behalf of all the doctoral students participating at the event, we would like to thank Lisa and Bart and all other organizers for a fantastic event that we will remember for a long time. Also, I special thanks goes to all the esteemed senior faculty who warmly welcomed us to the service research community, shared their valuable experiences and insights with us over these couple of days and took the time to give us feedback on our dissertation projects.

Sincerely,

Kotaiba Aal and Kaisa Koskela-Huotari

Impressions from the event (for mobile click here)

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