English/US
Dear ANPAD members, dear colleagues,
I sincerely hope this message finds you well. As you know, ANPAD is a full member of IFSAM. We are very happy that under the leadership of Alketa Peci, the current president, ANPAD came back to IFSAM just after 8 months it had left the Federation because of the difficult situation brought up by the covid outbreak. Muito obrigado, Alketa.
Through the news but also through your president, with whom I keep regular correspondence, I have been aware that the pandemic situation in Brazil and the socioeconomic results have been very difficult. I truly hope it will improve soon.
I want to express my personal endorsement of ANPAD board’s statement about the covid crisis and commend the board for its courageous stance. The IFSAM Executive Committee hás made a statement about it too. We hope you find it appropriate. We are confident that our elected government officials will increasingly rely on science and common sense to deal with both the covid pandemic and other societal and ecological crises.
The Federation currently has 18 members (16 full members and 2 associate members), plus two observer organizations (ANZAM from Australia and New Zealand, and CAMS from China). In the last 7 months, we have welcomed 7 new or returning members (ACACIA, AIMS, ANPAD, ASAC, ASSG, ATC, and BAM). We are extremely delighted with the interest and trust of these associations.
IFSAM joins together scholarly associations of management broadly defined, as stated in our statutes. Thus, we have actively endeavored to increase membership across all continents (particularly Africa and America) aiming at a broad representation of all different management subfields: operations, marketing, accounting, finance, Information Technology/ Science, Organization Behavior/Theory, Human Resources Management, strategy, governance, ethics, and Corporate Social Responsibility.
At IFSAM we are greatly concerned that the consequences of the covid pandemic might put at risk many of our member associations and lead to a shakeout of the scholarly ‘industry’ worldwide, in which only the most well-endowed in terms of economic resources might be able to survive. IFSAM platform meetings try to cope with this risk. And to embed this concern in our statutes, IFSAM General Assembly decided on May 10 to update its statutes by adding in article 2.2. the objective of encouraging the ‘maintenance of and synergies among scholarly associations of management’ to ensure their endurance.
ANPAD also co-chaired the fourth webinar (with governmental representatives) of our webinar series on management research quality evaluation which we started in January, triggered by the FT list survey. All five webinars’ videos and Conversation Letters are or will be soon available on our webpage.
The fifth webinar in our very successful series on management research quality evaluation was held on May 20th. Following this webinar and on the basis of the elements collected through the series, IFSAM General Assembly (GA) released its first soft policy statement on management research on June 4th, as retrievable from https://www.ifsam.org/ blog/2021/06/04/ifsam-general-assemblys-position-statement-on management-research/. The three newly created GA committees will have a mandate to structurally continue our soft policy on research, education and practice.
In addition, IFSAM has been busy these first five months of 2021 in preparing its 16th biannual congress to be held online in October 2022. Further, the GA also approved the proposal of the awards’ committee and launched four new IFSAM awards to which we hope you will send applications: (https://www.ifsam.org/ifsam-awards/).
Governance-wise, almost an entirely new executive team started to work on April 1st: a new President Elect (Isabelle Bouty, outgoing AIMS president) and other members of the Executive Committee (Treasurer, VP Conferences, and VP Communication), following the new Secretary who took office on January 1st. Further, the General Assembly (GA) recently elected three new Vice-Presidents (VPs) as members of the Executive Committee: Andre Luiz Maranhão de Souza-Leão (ANPAD’s Director for Education Affairs) as IFSAM VP of Education, Lee Lu (AODN President) as IFSAM VP of Practice, and Silviya Svejenova (former EGOS chair) as IFSAM VP of Research. They will start their two-year term on June 17. We are very grateful to them for accepting to serve in these very important capacities for the Federation’s soft policy. They will co-chair the respective committee of the GA.
The Council (now relabeled as General Assembly) had its 2021 annual meeting on May 10th. The 2021 revised budget, internal supervisor’s report 2019-2020, statutory changes for the Federation’s incorporation, and position statement on management research (calling for engaged, decent scholarship) were approved, and the President’s report discussed. Right after this annual meeting, the GA also approved the inaugural composition of the GA Advisory Board ( https://www.ifsam.org/ ga-advisory-board/).
The GA will meet again in mid-October to discuss the 2022 budget, further plans for the 16th congress, as well as the initial work of the new soft policy committees.
I look forward to having further opportunities to update you through ANPAD’s Newsletter. Please follow our activities through our website and social media (LinkedIn and Twitter).
On behalf of the IFSAM GA and Executive Committee, please let me thank ANPAD’s contributions to our Federation once again. I sincerely hope we will be able to continue recognizing the value of pluralism and diversity, generating synergies among scholarly associations, and defending a scientific approach to management and its societal contributions.
Warm regards, Xavier Castañer IFSAM President (April 2021-March 2023) P.S. If you have any questions or want to get in touch with IFSAM, please contact us at: info@ifsam.org You can find more information on IFSAM on our website: https://www.ifsam.org/