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I'm distributing this for Joel Harmon.

Please distribute the Call for Projects below to your members so that they may have the opportunity in our jointly-sponsored workshop to interact directly with practitioners and/or receive expert hands-on assistant with projects they have underway or would like to initiate.  This requested collaboration is the result of prior co-sponsorship conversations we have had with your division at AOM in Hawaii and subsequent to that time (see below).  Thanks you very much for your help, I’m sure your membership will be appreciative.

 

Joel

 

Joel Harmon, PhD
President, University Faculty Senate
Professor of Management &
CHRMS Distinguished Faculty Fellow
Silberman College of Business
Fairleigh Dickinson University
Cell: 732-672-2834
Fax: 973-443-8506

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Prior message, Fall 2005:

 

Dear Linda and Tom: 

 

Attached please find a copy of our “Sustainable Practice Action Research Community” (SPARC) PDW workshop proposal that we submitted to Paul Harvey (Practice Theme Committee PDW chair) several weeks ago, and should have copied you on sooner.  I believe Janet Thompson and SIM members Virginia Gerde and Marilyn Taylor may have spoken to you about this proposal.   Virginia and Marilyn attended a PDW dialogue session in Hawaii at which we discussed how this workshop could serve SIM and other divisions committed to fostering more sustainable, whole-system organizational practices by providing a space for involving the practitioner community in a more intimate way.  Based on their and Janet’s feedback, we listed SIM as a potential co-sponsor on the proposal and hope that you will lend your support to what we believe is an important intiative with great potential.  In any case, we would like to explore with you further ways to involve your division’s members in bringing forward ongoing or potential real world projects with a social-action component that can be worked on during the workshop.

 

Best Regards,

Joel Harmon,

on behalf of SPARC Steering Committee

 

PLEASE DISTRIBUTE BELOW TO YOUR MEMBERS

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CALL FOR WORKING PROJECTS

 

Sustainable Practice Action Research Community (SPARC) Workshop  

Academy of Management, Atlanta, Georgia

August 12, 2006

 

If you are interested in enriching and adding velocity to a project that you are (or would like to be) working on, then the Sustainable Practitices Action Research (SPARC) Community invites you to be involved in our 9^th annual preconference development workshop at the Academy of Management meetings in Atlanta on August 12 from 8am-5pm. 

 

The SPARC Workshop will be a hands-on, practice-grounded, action-learning venue that brings together academics from many disciplines and reflective practitioners from business, government and NGO sectors to collaboratively learn by working together using action-research processes on real-world projects at various stages of development.  The SPARC workshop is dedicated to generating collaboration among academics and practitioners and synergy between theory and practice in the service of organizational and social transformation.  Its intent is to help solve real organizational and cross-organizational problems of a local and/or global nature while generating deeper learning and publishable knowledge. 

 

During the day-long workshop, teams of academics and practitioners will collaboratively apply their expertise in a roundtable format to critique and develop various applied research projects brought by organization sponsors.  You are invited to propose your own project (details below) or join one of those being sponsored by others. 

 

Although all types of projects are welcome, we especially encourage projects that are multi-sector (e.g. business and government/nonprofit) and that have a social and/or environmental action focus or component. The goal is to help academic and practitioner attendees apply and test varied concepts and methods for managing sustainably at the point where the “rubber meets the road” – on actual projectss to enhance sustainable management through whole-systems approaches that both add value to organizations and are beneficial to people and the planet.

 

The workshop will leverage the expertise of the Action Research (AR) community in the service of your project.  For us, AR is an approach to organization development, not a specific technique.  Essentially, it attempts to generate knowledge about an organization as an integral part of the change process.  AR involves repeated cycles of diagnosis, planning, implementing, collecting/analyzing outcome data and reflections with organization members and stakeholders, reaching conclusions, and defining new sets of action plans.  Over time, the AR approach becomes part of how the organization attempts to bring about change.  Recent AR evolutions include embracing techniques to deepen inquiry, address larger-scale global issues of institutional change, and improve rigor to solidify validity as a social science research methodology.  Although AR and action inquiry are not the only frameworks embraced by our community, they may be particularly well-suited approaches to solving complex “multi-domain” problems that exist in the spaces between organizations from multiple sectors and that require high degrees of inclusion, collaboration and deep learning (AR often has been applied in many areas of the world for community development efforts involving organizations from multiple sectors).

 

For a history of the workshop series, including prior project descriptions, visit the AOM Practitioner Series at www.chrms.org

 

For further inquiry or to submit brief (1-page) proposals for working projects (start-ups or ongoing) contact Series organizer Neil Boyd, nxb12@psu.edu, 717-948-6061, fax 717-730-3816, co-organizer Terry Orr, morr@bnkst.edu, 212-678-3728, fax 212-678-4162, or any member of the PS Steering Committee listed below.

 

We will use an organic, developmental review process for your project proposals that you may initiate with as little as an exploratory call/email. A support system will be provided to further develop and learn from accepted projects leading up to the workshop.

 

 

SPARC STEERING COMMITTEE

Neil Boyd, Penn State University, Nxb12@psu.edu

Patricia Braun, U. of Ballarat, Australia, p.braun@ballarat.edu.au

David Coghlan, U. of Dublin, dcoghlan@tcd.ie

Rosa Colon, Bristol Meyers Squibb, rosa.colon@bms.com

John Dooney, Society for Human Resource Management, jdooney@shrm.org

Olav Eikeland, Work Research Institute, Oslo, oleik@online.no , oe@afi-wri.no

Richard Ennals, Kingston U., UK, ennals@kingston.ac.uk

Kent Fairfield, Fairleigh Dickinson U., fairfield@fdu.edu

Gerard Farias, Institute for Sustainable Enterprise, FDU, gfarias@fdu.edu

Carol Gorelick, Pace U., cgorelick@notes.interliant.com

Joel Harmon, Fairleigh Dickinson U., jharmon444@aol.com

Terry Orr, Bank Street College. morr@bnkst.edu

Thoralf Qvale, Work Research Institute, Oslo, tq@afi-wri.no

Dan Twomey, Fairleigh Dickinson U., Dtwomey@fdu.edu

Jeana Wirtenberg, Institute for Sustainable Enterprise, FDU, jwirtenberg@optonline.net

Lyle Yorks, Columbia U. ly84@columbia.edu

 

Linda K. Trevino
Professor of Organizational Behavior, Cook Fellow in Business Ethics
Smeal College of Business
402 Business Building
Smeal College of Business
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA  16802
Phone: 814-865-2194  Fax: 814-863-7261
Email: ltrevino@psu.edu

Linda K. Trevino
Professor of Organizational Behavior, Cook Fellow in Business Ethics
Smeal College of Business
402 Business Building
Smeal College of Business
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA  16802
Phone: 814-865-2194  Fax: 814-863-7261
Email: ltrevino@psu.edu _______________________________________________________________________

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