English/US
Dear readers,
This is the first ANPAD newsletter, a new communication channel linking the Association and the academic community. This is a space aimed to ensure transparency in the actions of the new Board of Directors over the 2021-2023 term.
A key tenet of our work is to turn ANPAD a permanent, dynamic space for collaboration and integration in the academic community. Such collaboration should not revolve around the main events in the field, especially now that we are using an increasing number of connectivity resources because of this arduous pandemic.
In our first weeks in the Board of Directors, we needed to become familiar with the management procedures and routines of an Association with decades of existence. We have participated in long meetings and conversations with members of our community and potential national and international partners. Also, we have engaged in debates to define the priority projects of our management and the most appropriate ways to implement them. Some important actions have stood out in these first management weeks, as we describe below.
Aiming to provide greater predictability to our associated programs, we have already released this year’s schedule for the ANPAD Test. Anticipating the Test schedule allows the associated programs to plan their respective admission processes. It also allows test takers to access the Test in the various regions of Brazil at a lower cost and to plan their applications to their programs of interest. Considering all digital transformations and the impact of using online platforms, we have converted the ONLINE ANPAD TEST into our main Test modality. The gains in scale, inclusion and processing speed are promising.
At the same time, we have already released the schedule and modality of the Association’s main events in 2021. As in several international contexts, we have anticipated online events to circumvent the conditions imposed by the pandemic. After all, ANPAD holds civil responsibilities in any of its events. To ensure quality, we have already started planning the 45th ANPAD Meeting as an online event. The same will apply for the divisional events: the XXXI Symposium of Technological Innovation Management, the VII Meeting – Teaching and Research in Administration and Accounting/EnEPQ, and the IX Meeting – Marketing/EMA.
Our participation in several events organized by the IFSAM (International Federation of Scholarly Associations of Management) served as an important space for benchmarking and exchange of experiences with associations that hold events of similar size to EnANPAD, such as the US-based Academy of Management and the European Academy of Management. We have discussed the benefits and challenges of online events and distance education, as well as learning points and strategies for future improvement. Future topics for discussion involve the post-pandemic impact on the graduate programs. The partnership we resumed with the IFSAM can insert ANPAD in an international space for collaboration.
In collaboration with partners such as ANGRAD (National Association of Business Administration Undergraduate Courses), we have designed initiatives to help undergraduate trainers have access to the rich collection of case studies produced at the ANPAD events. We are also exploring potential internationalization-oriented partnerships, seeking to provide the ANPAD associates with services that facilitate their participation in foreign doctoral and postdoctoral programs.
In our first weeks in the Board of Directors, we also prioritized the development of some communication initiatives to give visibility to our actions and adapt the use of some social media. For instance, we have agreed with the divisional coordinators upon the use of the ANPAD’s YouTube channel to disseminate the events that each area promotes. Besides, as reported in a story in this newsletter, our Scientific Periodicals Electronic Library (SPELL) has great potential for adding value; therefore, we have renewed the contract of the provider in charge of logging and generating the periodical citation index. We know there is a lot to advance in this matter, but what we have seen is quite promising.
ANPAD is in continuous organizational improvement. One of the challenges we foresee is improving governance,which includes, among other aspects, transparency and the ability to keep up with digital transformation. We will return to this in future editions.
Finally, we are developing a major project for racial inclusion via training for the ANPAD Test and other products. The idea is to foster partnerships with institutions devoted to this topic and apply resources available in our academic community. ANPAD intends to become a catalyst for diversity and inclusion strategies, supporting associated programs in expanding related strategies and seeking to induce a qualitative change in the diversity indicators in our field.
These have been the first actions in the initial months of our management. We intend to use this channel to keep the entire community posted and engaged.