British Academy of Management: A Place for Young Scholars
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2011.00774.x |
| Author | Kathrin M. Moeslein |
| Published date | 01 September 2011 |
| Date | 01 September 2011 |
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British Academy of Management: A Place
for Young Scholars
Kathrin M. Moeslein
University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Institute of Information Systems, Lange Gasse 20, Nuremberg 90403,
Germany, and HHL – Leipzig Graduate School of Management, Center for Leading Innovation and
Cooperation, Jahnallee 59, Leipzig 04109, Germany
Email: Kathrin.Moeslein@wiso.uni-erlangen.de
It is a pleasure to congratulate the British
Academy of Management (BAM) on its 25th
anniversary! It is a young organization at its best
age that has already achieved so much and with a
bright future ahead. Twenty-five years of BAM:
this is also a time to say ‘Thank you!’ as
throughout its lifetime BAM has shaped the lives
and academic careers of many – not just British
researchers. My German perspective gives me a
special viewpoint; even more, as my own
academic career has been heavily influenced by
BAM. My viewpoint is non-generalizable and
very personal, but definitely only one of many.
The history of BAM – as reported by
McKiernan and Masrani (2007) – sketches an
impressive path from the origins of the institution
through its periods of growth, of struggle and of
professionalization to its role as an internation-
ally recognized academy with impact that
endures. Still, there is an additional, a hidden
dimension, not reported in the books. It is a
dimension that – from my German perspective –
is strongly related to the fact that BAM is a
child of the 1980s, open-minded and open in
its approach, inclusive and internet-literate,
demanding and demand-oriented, ambitious
and attractive. I am speaking from the perspec-
tive of a country where the respective association
– the German Academic Association for Business
Research (VHB) – is a well-established lady that
turns 90 in 2011. With its establishment in 1921,
it has seen many of the founding fathers of our
discipline; has experienced a period of suspension
from 1933 to 1948; periods of institutionalization,
internationalization, growth and diversification.
It has established impressive routines (e.g. most
business schools and faculties in Germany still do
not teach in the week after Pentecost as this is the
week of the annual conference of the VHB since
1950) and still has changed a lot, especially since
the early 1990s – truly rejuvenated.
However, 25 years ago, at the time when I
started my life in academia, BAM was the open,
inclusive, demanding and attractive newcomer.
Already as doctoral students and then as post-
doctoral researchers we were welcomed by BAM
(at a time when our German association was still
focused on university professors only and seemed
to have little respect for, or even interest in, the
naı
¨ve enthusiasm and creative curiosity that draw
me and many others into management research).
Thank you for this opportunity, BAM!
As a consequence, the BAM, for me, is not an
institution in the first place, not a simple
association of academics, but an engaged com-
munity of great scholars that carries a mindset of
openness, encouragement, inclusiveness, support
and great respect. I have always experienced
‘BAMers’ as individuals who care about each
other as in a family – even about my career (why
should they?).
It was BAM, BAM events and, for sure, mainly
individual BAMers who changed my academic
life through its conferences and discussions. For
instance, the BAM Annual Conference hosted by
Middlesex University Business School, 9–11
September 2002, attracted quite a few of my
German peers – at that time all at doctoral and
post-doctoral level: Leona Achtenhagen, then at
the University of Bamberg, now professor in
British Journal of Management, Vol. 22, 548–549 (2011)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2011.00774.x
r2011 The Author
British Journal of Management r2011 British Academy of Management. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
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