Guest article by Simon Hazée, Leonhard Mandl, and Janthorn Sinthupundaja, Recipients of the 2017 Liam Glynn Research Scholarship Award
(New photos of the events are at the end of the article)
June is always an exciting period. Semester ends, holidays are getting closer and, even more important, this is the time for focusing on research and attending the AMA SERVSIG Doctoral Consortium that precedes the Frontiers in Service conference. Needless to say: 2017 was even more special for us as the doctoral consortium was held in New York City at the Gabelli School of Business of Fordham University. An exceptional location in the heart of Manhattan.
Wednesday, June 21st 2017. The time has come: We are looking forward to attending the opening reception. We enter the brand new building of Fordham University and are welcomed by the doctoral consortium co-chairs: Yany Grégoire (HEC Montréal), Lisa Brügeen (Maastricht University), and Sertan Kabadayi (Fordham University). The family celebration begins: The mini-burgers and drinks are waiting for us. Hugging, hand shaking, and greeting both familiar and new faces; and there are a lot of them, with 75 Ph.D. students attending this year’s consortium! Next to our fellow Ph.D. students, the welcome reception is also a great opportunity to meet the top scholars (you know, those big names whose articles stand on your desk all year long) in a friendly, relaxed atmosphere. It takes us some time to break the ice, but we finally do it and realize service scholars are just like us, always thrilled to discuss.
On Thursday morning, 7:00AM, the beloved “hard work” begins… with an amazing American breakfast! We are now full of energy; the doctoral consortium can start. Three topics will beat the rhythm of the day: (1) Kick start and manage your career, (2) Publishing with different methodologies, and (3) Creating impact through teaching and service.
Within the first session, Stacey Robinson (University of Alabama), Bart Larivière (Ghent University), and Mike Brady (Florida State) share their successful experience, covering various topics that are matter of our daily lives as young researchers: defining research projects, identifying mentors, and managing a research pipeline, among others. Following this session, we get to know the best practices to publish, with Michael Giebelhausen (Cornell University), Stephanie Noble (University of Tennessee-Knoxville), Maria Holmlund (Hanken School of Economics), and Yves Van Vaerenbergh (University of Leuven) encouraging us to think critically about our and others’ research and methods.
The last session is already approaching. It is now up to Tom Baker (University of Alabama), Gaby Odekerken-Schröder (Maastricht University), Martin Mende (Florida State), and Wolfgang Ulaga (Arizona State) to give us insights on how to develop an impactful teaching agenda through the use of problem-based learning and case studies, among others. We learned from the best and the consortium already gave us many insights, but the breakout sessions are yet to come and we are to prove our own abilities.
The breakout sessions represent a great opportunity for all of us. During these sessions, we present our research in front of two top faculty members and three fellow Ph.D. students. Two hours of discussion, reflection, constructive comments and suggestions – just what we need to keep going on our dissertation. Also, the breakout sessions are the starting point of an international network and, for some us, new research collaborations.
It is 5:00PM, and the breakout sessions are already over. Time flies. We thank our mentors for their time and leave the meeting rooms, full of new great research ideas and feedback on how to get our research projects published. The consortium was an amazing learning experience, from the beginning to the end. Now that the consortium is finished, we know two things with certainty: We became fully-fledged members of the service research family and will attend the AMA SERVSIG Doctoral Consortium in 2018 in Austin Texas!
Impressions of the event:
click on the collage or here
