Dear Colleague
This is to remind you
that the deadline for submission of papers for the Ashridge International
Research conference with the subject “The Sustainability Challenge:
Organisational Change and Transformational Vision” is March 31st
2011, hence in a couple of weeks time.
The conference will
take place June 10-12 2011 at Ashridge, Berkhamsted [near
All information, Call
for Papers, Outline Conference programme with three Special Sessions with
Experts and Keynote Speakers, Registration Form with Early Bird fee, Link to
Special Issues of three peer reviewed journals, can be found on the AIB
Conference site or on www.ashridge.org.uk/airc2,
or below.
ASHRIDGE
INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH CONFERENCE
“The
Sustainability Challenge: Organisational Change and Transformational
Vision”
10-12
June 2011 2pm-2pm;
paper
submission deadline 31 March 2011: www.ashridge.org.uk/airc2
A multidisciplinary international conference aimed at scholars,
executive leaders and policy makers working in international business
and marketing, organisational behaviour, strategy, education, public
affairs, economics, management and leadership.
The conference focuses on a change of mindset and on implementation
of the long term sustainability agenda and is linked to Special Issues of
·
The Journal of Organisational Change Management
[www.ashridge,org,uk/jocm]
·
The Journal of Public Affairs
[www.ashridge.org.uk/jpa]
·
The Journal of Management Development
[www.ashridge/org.uk/jmd ]
The
submission deadline for papers for the Special Issues of these journals is in
the autumn 2011. See the relevant websites above for the Calls for Papers and
further details, and take advantage of the opportunity for dialogue among
colleagues and feedback and peer review on your papers well before the
submission deadlines for the individual journal special issues by submitting your conference paper by 31 March
2011 and attending AIRC2 between 10 and 12 June 2011.
Outline conference programme:
Friday 10 June
14.00
– 14.15 Conference Opening Carla Millar / Matthew Gitsham
14.15
– 15.30 Experts’ panel
16.00
onwards Conference papers in parallel
sessions
Saturday 11 June:
09.00
– 16.00 Conference papers in parallel
sessions
16.30
– 18.00 Dean’s Forum
19.00
– 21.00 Conference
Dinner
Sunday 12 June
09.30
– 12.30 Keynote Addresses and
Interactive Forum Discussion
12.30
– 13.00 Concluding Keynote Address by Matthew Gitsham
13.00 – 13.15 Journal SIs and Closing of Conference by
Carla Millar
Three Special Sessions:
Friday 10 June, 14.15-15.30
Experts’ Panel: “Redesigning Business
for Long term Sustainability”
An international panel of experts will introduce and discuss
issues around the conference theme
• Graham Floater,
Director, The Climate Centre. Formerly Deputy Director and Senior Advisor to
the
No.10 Offi ce of Climate Change
• André van Heemstra,
Chairman, Steering Group Netherlands Network UN Global Compact and Vice
Chair, Supervisory Board, EABIS,
and Personnel Director, Unilever
• Sandra McLeod, Group
Chief Executive, Echo.
Chair: Professor Kai Peters, CEO Ashridge.
Saturday 11 June, 16.30 – 18.00
Dean’s Forum: “Redesigning Business
Schools for Long Term Sustainability”
• Professor Phil Harris,
Executive Dean, Faculty of Business,
Affairs
• Professor John Mahon,
John M. Murphy Chair of International Business Policy and Strategy and
Professor of Management,
and Health,
• Professor Mette Morsing,
Sustainability Director,
Chair: Professor Kai Peters, Dean and CEO Ashridge
Sunday 12 June, 9.30 – 12.30
Keynote Addresses and Forum Discussion:
“Transformational Vision and Sustainability-driven
Change”
• The leadership dimension: Philip
Sadler, Senior Fellow with the think tank Tomorrow’s Company;
Vice President and former CEO, Ashridge, and author of
’Sustainable Growth in a Post-Scarcity World’
• The organisational change management
dimension: David Ballard, Director, Alexander Ballard Ltd.
• The management development dimension: Dr Gill Coleman Co-Director of the Ashidge MSc in
Sustainability and Responsibility and Director of the Ashridge
Centre for Action Research
• The public policy dimension: Professor Kalle
Määttä, Office
of the Inspector of Public Finances,
• The strategy and influencing dimension: Professor John F.
Mahon, John M.
Murphy Chair of
International
Business Policy and Strategy and Professor of Management,
Chair:
Philip Sadler.
Call for papers
e Susta
An increasing number of global mega trends is shaping the contemporary
business, political and societal landscape: demographic change, globalisation,
shifts in the centres of economic power to include emerging markets, climate change
and ecosystem degradation, to list those most frequently cited. Differentials
in the quality of life and resource scarcity are challenges that underline the inevitability
of change. In this environment the narrative of ‘sustainable development’
is increasingly being adopted as a helpful set of principles to make sense of
these connected global facts and trends and to guide our political and business
responses.
How can and do organisations, businesses and nations respond? What
are the specific roles of the customer-facing and organisation-facing
disciplines of strategy, organisational change and development, executive education,
marketing or public affairs at home or globally in that response?
Ten years ago, CEOs tended to believe that the principles of
sustainability added nothing but cost to their business. Now the situation is
radically different as a critical mass of business leaders increasingly see
sustainability becoming one of the lynchpins of competition within their sector
and a significant source of both opportunity for and risk to long term
competitive advantage.
The United Nations Global Compact-Accenture 2010 CEO study, for
example, shows that 93% of CEOs believe sustainability will be critical to the
future success of their companies. 80% believe a tipping point where
sustainability is embedded in the core business strategies of most companies will
be reached within the next 15 years, and 54% believe this tipping point could
occur within the next decade (UN Global Compact and Accenture, 2010). As this
significant shift in thinking has occurred over the past decade, the need for
organisational change has become increasingly recognised by business leaders.
Ashridge’s 2009 study for the United Nation PRME with EABIS,
for example, showed that 92% of CEOs and senior executives believed change in organizational
culture was required to effectively address the challenges and opportunities of
sustainability (Gitsham et al., 2009). These changes over the past decade
mirror developments in the academic literature. There is an increasingly well
developed body of literature on the nature of the challenges around
sustainability, and also a well developed literature on the implications for organisations
and the changes that need to take place. However, while the Beta sciences have
provided much technical advice and solutions, the Gamma sciences are failing to
provide the research for implementation (Winsemius, 2010).
Where there is a need for more work is around understanding how to
bring about these changes effectively within organisations, nationally and internationally,
and what we can learn from organizations where these changes have already begun
to occur.
For example:
• What can we learn from the organizational transformation,
change and development literature about how to effectively stimulate change for
sustainable organisations? How can we best build on the thinking of pioneering
scholars such as Dunphy (2003), Ballard (2005), Reason (2009), Doppelt (2003) and
others?
• What does this mean for how we approach building leadership
capability in organisations? How can we build on the work of Maak & Pless
(2009), Stubbings (2009), Gitsham et al. (2009), Hind et al. (2009) and others
who have begun to explore what implications these changes in the global context
might mean for the kinds of leadership required and how to develop these?
• What then does this mean for the role of business schools
and the management education sector?
• What do these changes mean for how we conceptualise the
purpose of organisations, what they stand for, their identity, and how this
connects with the corporate brand proposition and their image and reputation,
especially for MNEs in the global context?
• What are the implications for corporate communications and
public affairs? How should the organisation be communicating about itself, both
internally and externally?
• How should public policy be challenged? What kind of
national and international regulation is required in bringing about change and
what does this mean for the public affairs function?
• How are leaders in multinational organisations seeing and
practising their role in a global environment where sustainability is beginning
to be perceived as a norm?
• How can the policies of governments, business, and the
third sector be influenced and made to ‘dare to care’ (AoM 2010) as
well as fulfill strategic objectives?
We invite theoretical and empirical (quantitative or qualitative)
papers that focus on any of the subjects mentioned above, and fit within the
general context of the conference in the various disciplines.
We welcome both strong academic papers and papers focusing on real
managerial and policy dilemmas and solutions, as a major objective of the
conference is to foster a dialogue among academics, policy researchers and
corporate executives on the challenges inherent in dealing with the
sustainability agenda – within MNEs, complex organisations in a networked
world and a diversity of national environments; and affecting organizational
behaviour, leadership, strategy, corporate brand and reputation and policy
making.
The fundamental question for this conference is
thus:
How to deal with the sustainability challenge? How to balance short term
priorities with long term vision, organisational change with stability,
strategic goals with day to day implementation, domestic with international
responsibilities; how to manage the corporate brand, image and reputation; how
to influence policies nationally and internationally and how to foster
relations, teach and educate - all in the realm of effecting the change in
attitude and behaviour that sustainability demands.
Submission and review details for Conference
Papers
·
Submission details
can be accessed at http://www.ashridge.org.uk/airc2.
Please follow the link ‘Submissions’ and clearly indicate that your
submission is for the conference
·
Submissions should
be sent by email as a Word document attachment to
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Submission and review details for Panel
Proposals
We welcome proposals
to organize a Panel. These should be for focused research based sessions of 1- 1.5 hours, where the panel
leader invites the other speakers [they may be scholars, executives,
researchers] as participants to conference and panel and creates dialogue with
the audience. Panel proposals will be reviewed and a decision will be given
within one month.
·
Submissions of
around 1000 words should be sent by email as a Submissions of around 1000 words
should be sent by email as a Word document attachment to [log in to unmask]
The Conference Chairs of the
Ashridge International Research Conference “The Sustainability Challenge:
Organisational Change and Transformational Vision”
are delighted to announce that
Bank Santander has offered special encouragement to
researchers
from
Up to 6 scholarships offering a
£500 reduction on the conference fee will be available for excellent
submissions from that continent.
The Conference Chairs will inform
the winners by 1 May together with the feedback on their submission.
When submitting your paper for the
conference, please indicate that you wish to be considered for a
Carla Millar
and Matthew Gitsham
Conference
Chairs
Administrative details
The Ashridge International Research Conference will be held from
10-12 June 2011 2pm-2pm at
extensive buildings and executive facilities in the English
countryside, 40 minutes from
The conference fee is a very competitively priced all-in fee, and
covers attendance at the conference, accommodation in executive suites, all
meals and refreshments during the
Friday-Sunday 48 hour conference period, and the conference
proceedings on CD
Travel costs are not included.
For conference registration, arrangements for transport to/from
airport or station, or any further information please go to www.ashridge.org.uk/AIRC2 or contact
[log in to unmask]
The Ashridge International Research
Conference represents an opportunity for stimulating multi-disciplinary
conversations academically as well as across the institutions of the academic,
the business and the policy world. We encourage researchers and executives from
academe, the corporate world, the public sector and the third sector to
consider submitting their research, case studies or international
experience-based work to the conference.
Carla Millar and
Matthew Gitsham
Conference Chairs
Prof. dr. Carla C.J.M. Millar
Professor, International Marketing & Management
School of Management & Governance
The
0031 53 489 5355
0031 33 462 7343
Fellow, Ashridge
Berkhamsted,
0044
1442 84 1175
0044
20 7402 4700
Ashridge
Berkhamsted
Hertfordshire HP4 1NS
Tel: +44 (0)1442 843491
Fax:
+44 (0)1442 841209
Prof. dr. Carla C.J.M. Millar
Professor, International Marketing & Management
School of Management & Governance
The
0031 53 489 5355
0031 33 462 7343
Fellow, Ashridge
Berkhamsted,
0044 1442 84 1175
0044 20 7402 4700