President’s Message

Dear leaders of IFSAM member and observer associations, General Assembly, Board of Directors and Advisory Council members, deputies, ambassadors and staff, colleagues and all,

Please let me start by thanking you for your involvement and contribution to IFSAM during the last year. We devoted 2022 to consolidating the Federation in six main domains.

1. After the embryonic version at the 15th Congress in 2020, IFSAM’s 16^th biennial Congress in 2022 was the first to fully embrace its new orientation as a forum for gathering expert insight and discussing critical trends in the fields of management research, education and practice around the world, nurturing the soft policy role of the Federation, rather than positioning itself as yet another traditional academic conference. In this way, the federation aims to avoid competition with its member associations’ own annual conferences and can focus on its synergistic mission at a global level, taking differences in context across the globe as a central dimension. To facilitate worldwide attendance, and due to the remaining impact of covid19, the 2022 Congress took place online and free of charge in collaboration with our member association ANPAD, between 7^th and 9^th September 2022, thanks to the superlative efforts of Martin Spring, our VP Events, Juliana Bonomi, his deputy and the General Assembly (GA) congress committee and the organizing committee. The programme included six roundtable discussions that focused on management research, management education, and academia-management practice interactions, along with an exploration of the relevance and application in Brazil of the first IFSAM soft policy statement on management research (approved by the GA in 2021). The 2022 Congress also included sessions on the work of the winners of the inaugural IFSAM Awards, another innovation which came to fruition in 2022. Furthermore, the opening session of the 2022 congress contained another innovation which we would like to become a tradition: reflecting IFSAM’s heritage through the celebration of significant anniversaries (30, 20 and 10 years) of IFSAM biennial congresses. The 2022 congress presented an opportunity to celebrate the 30 year anniversary of the first IFSAM congress, which took place in Tokyo in 1992, organized in cooperation with IFSAM founding member the Japan Academy of Business Administration (JABA). For this celebration we prepared a booklet of memories of several participants and organizers, who we wish to thank again. A special thanks to YingYing Zhang, deputy Secretary General, for helping me to edit the booklet and to Eleonora Piacenza, IFSAM’s webmaster, who supported the organization of the virtual conference in an outstanding way. There was also mention of the 20 year anniversary of the 2002 congress in the Gold Coast, Australia and the 10 year anniversary of the 2012 congress in Limerick, Ireland, which we look forward to further celebrating in the future. All of the congressional sessions are available on our website and YouTube channel, free of charge. Moreover, 2024 will mark 30 years since the 2nd IFSAM congress, which took place in Dallas, Texas, in cooperation with another IFSAM founding member, the Academy of Management.

2. In addition to the use of social media, the federation disseminated its 2021 soft policy statement on research across the world through joint sessions at several member and observer associations’ annual conferences, creating dialogue and collecting useful input to nurture its further development. This work was headed by Silviya Svejenova, our VP Research, aided by Christine Moser, her deputy and the GA Research committee. My gratitude goes to all of them for their excellent work and especially to the leaders of the associations (ACACIA, ANPAD, ANZAM, BAM, and SIMA) who kindly agreed to co-organize joint sessions as well as all the panelists. Thanks also to our VP Education, Sergio Wanderley, and our VP Practice, Lee Lu, who worked hard in 2022 to develop the first IFSAM soft policy statements on education and practice, respectively, with their GA committees. Many thanks to all of them. We are confident that this period of intense work will bear fruit in the coming year, with policy statements to be proposed in the three areas at the annual meeting of the General Assembly.

3. In March 2022 the recipients of the IFSAM inaugural Awards (2021) were announced, the first on “societally relevant management research” being also advertised by the Financial Times. We are hoping that this is an innovation which will continue to grow in importance. In its meeting on April 6 of 2022, and based on the experience of the inaugural awards, the General Assembly decided to grant two Awards on even years, given their significance for the Federation (Societally Relevant and Indigenous Management scholarship) and four Awards (including Pedagogical innovation and Service to the academic community worldwide) on odd years. These Awards, currently funded by our membership fees, are our way of “giving back” to the worldwide community. I would like to thank the GA Awards committee and all the panelists who participated in the selection as well as as chairs of the 2022 congress sessions on the Awards and the secretariat, in particular Elisa Martinelli, first deputy and later Secretary General, and her deputy YingYing Zhang, for their critical role in the awards’ logistics.

4. The quarterly 2 hour presidents’ platform meetings (PPMs) were consolidated in 2022, following their launch in January 2021. We believe the PPMs illustrate how the Federation is uniquely positioned to create value with and for our member associations, and for the field as a whole. As explained in the Vision 2024 statement, these gatherings of presidents of member and observer associations (and/or their delegates) constitute one of the key synergistic activities of the federation, in which presidents share their concerns and insights, which in turn generates further synergistic ideas and collaborative initiatives between various member associations. One of these initiatives was the launch of webinars, separate from the biennial congress, the first being devoted to a comparison of Western and Eastern Management approaches, with the cooperation of member associations ACEDE, CAMS and CNEMA, and of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain through its House of Asia. We are thankful to all their leaders. This experience led to the reformulation by the GA of the GA Congress committee (which had been established in 2020 during the pandemic specifically to organize the 2020 and 2022 online congresses) as the GA Events committee, chaired by our VP Conferences. I would like to extend my special appreciation to Prof. Patrick Reinmoeller, Director of the presidential team office (PTO), and Prof. Nuno Oliveira, deputy director of the PTO, who organized three outstanding PPMs in 2022 dealing with critical issues for our member associations, recruiting experts from professional organizations and other non-member associations: online conference organization, conference formats (hybrid experience) and financial sustainability, and climate impact of academic conferences, mega trends affecting the economics and experiences of academic conferences. A shared central theme of these PPMs was about how to balance the intellectual, social and ecological footprint of conferences together with their financial feasibility.  Patrick and Nuno have already set a date for the 9th PPM, on the impact of management research, for April 17, 2023.

5. The Federation continued to grow during 2022, welcoming five new full member associations (AEI, AFC, AIM, ASFAE and SMS) and with the Irish Academy of Management (IAM), which so greatly contributed to the federation for over 20 years, rejoining the federation as an associate member. The Federation thereby comprised 27 member associations and one observer association (ANZAM), the highest number of members in IFSAM’s history. We are very grateful to the leaders of the new/rejoining member associations who have made this possible and to our VP New Membership and Governance, Prof. Ouidade Sabri, and her team of deputies – Amina Djedidi and Yongho (Martin) Hyun – and ambassadors – Boualem Aliouat, Benoit Cordelier, and Zied Ftiti – for their amazing work which we are certain will bear yet more fruit next year. The inclusion of AEI, AFC and AIM is especially salient because it symbolizes IFSAM’s statutory will to include all subfields of Management in the federation, including scholarly associations specializing in a particular sub-field. With AFC we extend the coverage of accounting, a domain represented also by ATC. With AEI, AIM and SMS we welcome three learned societies which represent four specific sub-fields of Management: entrepreneurship, information systems’ management, innovation and strategy. Moreover, the inclusion of ASFAE (Chile) represents a renewal of the membership from scholarly associations formed by universities and schools of Management, like FNEGE and CLADEA (a former member). We are extremely happy to welcome all of them and their GA representatives. During 2022, we also continued to nurture our ties with ANZAM, an observer association, hoping for its return to the Federation as a full member and to the remaining three former member associations, VHB, NFF and CLADEA, which we hope will rejoin the federation in the near future.

6. The Advisory Board became the Advisory Council and welcomed new members appointed at the 2022 Annual GA meeting: Kerry Brown, Luis Ángel Guerras, Trish McLaren, and Yang Zhang (at the time Past President). I am grateful to all the AC members, whose involvement is essential to the Federation for many reasons, not least of which is to provide historical memory and perspective. To which, 2022 also saw the recording of videos with former presidents to preserve organizational memory and take stock of the federation’s contributions from a historical perspective. I wish to express my special gratitude to Alain Burlaud, chair of the AC, and Felicity Kelliher, the secretary, for being so supportive and agreeing to carry out three meetings of the AC in one year. In recognition of the outstanding contribution of several colleagues who serve on a voluntary basis in the leadership and staff of the Federation, in 2022 the BoD also created a proposal for Awards for outstanding service, and the GA also instituted the GA Awards for Exceptional Service to the Federation. Both bodies awarded their first set of these Awards for contributions during 2021-2022. Congratulations and sincere thanks again to all the recipients. I think it is fair to say that both the organizational and the human basis of the Federation have developed substantially during 2022. The GA now comprises over 50 members (which will increase with the new member associations, and still further if we are to count the member associations’ delegates on the committees), the BoD comprises 11 members, and the staff consists of 15 deputies, assistants and ambassadors, plus the PTO director (please see the organizational chart and the composition of the different bodies at the end of the newsletter), plus the inestimable contribution of our only paid staff member Eleonora di Piacenza since 2020 as media manager, who has now been joined by Victoria Braverman for communications support. This growth has been the result of many people’s effort and there is still much more to do, but I truly believe we can feel proud of so many accomplishments in such little time, particularly as a federation of scholarly associations across the world, with the accompanying crosscultural and time-zone differences!

In closing this annual newsletter, my last as President, I would like to extend a series of special words of appreciation. First, to my predecessor, prof. Yang Zhang and the other members of the then executive committee (Michael Morley, Yvon Pesqueux and Sibel Yamak in particular), who encouraged me to take on this role, for their trust, valuable advice and support. Second, to Prof. Isabelle Bouty, who was President-elect during 2021 and with whom I worked closely in dealing with various governance challenges and the early organization of the 2022 congress. I also would like to thank Patrick Reinmoller as PTO director since 2021 for being ever available to provide outstanding advice on critical matters. Next, to Prof. Wafa Khlif, for taking on the role of IFSAM Treasurer so effectively, modernizing our banking operations and bringing a highly appreciated sense of humor and colorful presentations to our BoD meetings, as well as proposing prof. Richard Jabot as her deputy. I would also like to acknowledge the work of our VP Communication during 2022, Prof. Guadalupe Calderon, who greatly contributed to the development of IFSAM Conversation Letters, launched in 2021, and who was also a key player in the dissemination of our news in social media and via the monthly bulletins.

Last but not least, I am extremely grateful to Prof. Sandro Castaldo, who not only supported, as SIMA president, the joining of SIMA but who has also introduced people who have become a critical part of the Federation’s leadership, such as Prof. Arabella Mocciaro, former Secretary and Secretary General until mid-2022 and prof. Elisa Martinelli, who was deputy Secretary until mid-2022 when she became Secretary General. It would have been entirely impossible to carry out all the work without Arabella and Elisa. My deepest gratitude to them, and special thanks also to our Secretary General deputies, Eleonora Di Maria and Yingying Zhang Zhang, and her assistant, Sonia Snadli.

But my gratitude to Sandro goes beyond his support as SIMA president and GA member (as SIMA’s rep). When  Isabelle Bouty unfortunately had to stepp down as President-Elect due to her school commitments, Sandro accepted the nomination for and was elected as President-Elect in early 2022. Moreover, in December 2022, as my term as president was coming to an end, Prof. Nic Beech was elected as President-Elect, effective from Jan 1, 2023. I am also very grateful to him for accepting this role. Given the existing leadership team, I am convinced that the Federation is in great hands. As Past President, I will remain on the BoD and in the GA for two more years and I  stand ever available to help the new president and his team to the best of my ability.

I hope that 2023 will bring greater stability and a healthy development to IFSAM, thanks to all your advice, support and imagination, as well as your dedication and commitment to the Federation.

Warm regards,

Xavier Castañer

IFSAM President