2023-2024 DIVISION PROGRAM CHAIR’S LETTER
Erica Steckler
University of Massachusetts Lowell
Dear SIM Members,
Greetings in warm celebration of June’s arrival! It’s already that promising “AOM is almost here!” time of year.
On behalf of the Division’s officers, committees, and generous volunteers, we look forward to gathering with the SIM community at the Academy of Management (AOM) Annual Meeting in Chicago.
Building on our Member contributions, the 2024 Program includes timely professional development workshops (PDWs), paper sessions, symposia, and events that serve as important research, career development, and networking resources for SIMians and others. We are proud for this year’s Program to represent the tradition of important, impactful, and inclusive scholarship that is very much at the heart of SIM.
This year most (but not all!) SIM sessions will take place at our Division’s conference “headquarters” – Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile. SIM PDWs and consortia occur on Friday, August 9th and Saturday, August 10th. The SIM Scholarly Program of symposia, plenary sessions, and paper sessions is scheduled from Sunday, August 11th through Tuesday, August 13th.
For Monday, August 12th, please add the SIM Business Meeting (5:00-6:30pm) and SIM Social (6:30-8:30pm) to your high-priority AOM calendars! Additional SIM highlights on Monday include the following four sessions that spotlight best-in-class scholarship: Best Student Paper Finalists (9:45-11:15am), Best Ethics Paper Finalists (11:30am-1pm), SIM Best Paper Finalists (1:15-2:45pm), and Best Dissertation & Book Award Finalists (3:00-4:30pm). Once the 2024 Program officially debuts, please check out additional SIM “highlight” and featured sessions.
Kudos to the many SIM members whose submission and reviewing contributions have resulted in an outstanding 2024 Program! Importantly, SIM continues to make explicit our Division’s norm that those submitting to SIM should also be reviewing for SIM.
Speaking of SIM reviewing… A hearty thank you to SIM’s remarkable – record setting! – team of Reviewers and Associate Editors for the 2024 Program. In total, 472 people signed up to review for SIM this year. While this reflects a slight decrease (-4.6%) from SIM’s 495 reviewers in 2023, this year SIM proudly boasts what may be an AOM-wide Division record: a whopping 93.4% review completion rate, with 1,524 paper and symposia review assignments in total! SIM’s 2023 review completion rate was 88.3% with 1,689 total review assignments. On average, SIM submissions this year received at least 3 reviews (3.3).
In sum, SIM’s reviewing metrics are trending strongly in the right direction thanks to the dedicated efforts of SIMians! We recognize and honor all 472 volunteer SIM Reviewers for their expert and constructive feedback to help strengthen peer scholarship submitted to our Division. Special thanks to 65 experienced SIM Reviewers who served as Associate Editors, as well as for a handful of generous and tireless SIM “Emergency Reviewers” who stepped in on very short notice as the reviewing deadline loomed.
SIM Reviewers directly advance the scholarship mission of our Division. – Each and every SIM reviewing effort is deeply appreciated and celebrated. Again, thank you!
Finally, thank you to everyone who submitted to SIM this year! Submissions for 2024 include 403 papers, 71 symposia, and 22 PDWs resulting in 496 submissions in total. SIM 2024 submissions reflect a 6.8% decrease from 2023, when there were 532 total submissions. Looking ahead to AOM 2025, let’s aim for total SIM submissions to be in the 500s again! – Please continue submitting to SIM, and encouraging colleagues working in our field to do so as well.
This year SIM accepted 201 papers (50%), 48 symposia (70%) and 18 PDWs (80%), covering a wide range of topics and levels of analysis, such as: stakeholder activism; corporate political activity; sustainability; corporate social responsibility; business and human rights; social movements; social entrepreneurship and innovation; governance; ethical decision making; inequality; poverty; justice; diversity; green future-making; flourishing; corporate social irresponsibility; organizational wrong doing; stakeholder orientation and engagement; humanistic management; corporate social identity and purpose; responsible organizational leadership; responsible AI; CSR reporting and accountability; ESG ratings; and many more.
Rajat Panwar
2024 PDW Chair
Congratulations to Rajat Panwar for his leadership of the PDW Program this year! 2024 SIM PDWs cover a dynamic range of topics including historical injustice, polycrisis, stakeholder voice, humanistic leadership, and SDGs, among others.
This year’s PDW Program will again offer four SIM-sponsored sessions and consortia, with endless thanks to our wonderful co-organizer teams! We look forward to welcoming robust cohorts of colleagues to the SIM Doctoral Consortium (Sarah Ku and Akwasi Opoku-Dakwa) and SIM/ONE Junior Faculty Consortium (Jason Pattit and Sana Chiu), respectively. SIM Speed-Networking will once again support the expansion and deepening of SIM community connections (Sarah Stephen and Susana Esper), while the SIM Research Development Workshop (Jegoo Lee and Lucas Amaral Lauriano) will facilitate access to SIMian mentoring and feedback on scholarly work.
Finally, it's been a joy and rich learning experience to work alongside SIM leadership team members Colin Higgins, Cristina Neesham, Michelle Westermann-Behaylo, and Rajat Panwar, who daily bring their good energy, innovative ideas and insights, and extreme dedication to the stewardship of the SIM Division.
I’m honored to have had the opportunity to serve as 2024 SIM Program Chair, and eager for the AOM Program in Chicago to spotlight excellent SIMian scholarship. For questions regarding this year’s SIM program, I can be contacted at: simprogram2024@gmail.com.
See you in August for the 2024 SIM Program at AOM!
Warm regards,
Erica Steckler
2024 SIM Program Chair