Reports from SIM Committees

2022 SIM Social Media Report

Lucas Amaral -- Julia Grimm -- Onna M. van den Broek

IESEG School of Management --- Stockholm University --- University of Exeter

SIM social media channels are increasingly important to share information, academic work, celebrate achievements, strengthen our send of community, and highlight job opportunities. In this sense, our strategy is based on three main activities:

SIM Publishes – This consists of highlighting publications from SIM members, especially junior scholars. We briefly explain the paper, tag the authors and include the link to the document.

SIM Digest from Connect – This consists of continuously monitoring calls for papers, job opportunities, and events posted on Connect and then reposted in our channels.

SIM Community Support – Finally, we also repost content from our members. This occurs when SIMians ask us directly to do or when we see something that might interest other members (e.g. publications, CfP, job opportunities or news).

We focus mainly on Twitter and LinkedIn, social network sites where we receive the most interactions and engagement from our members. Our Twitter profile has gained 267 followers (Aug 2021-July 2022), and our profile has been mentioned 701 times in the same period. The figures below show our evolution.

August is the month with the most new followers and mentions because of the AOM annual meeting when both users and we are even more active. In 2022, we broke our record, with 154 mentions (vs. 139 in Aug 2021) and 47 new followers (vs. 34 in Aug 2021).

For 2023, we intend to continue with our strategy of monitoring our members’ activities, retweeting what they post and creating relevant content. Also, we intend to stimulate SIMians to send their publications, special issues, and events.

2022 Membership Committee Report

Frank de Bakker -- Sebastian Hafenbrädl -- Sarah Stephen

IESEG Lille --- IESE Barcelona --- University of St. Gallen

Dear SIM community,

We would like to share our report on the Membership Committee’s activities over the past academic year (2021/2022). Supported by the SIM governance team, we were able to bring the community together via organizing several virtual events and initiatives, as follows:

Coffee & Cocktails: We organized four C&Cs (hosted by the Division Chair Katherina Pattit, Program Chair Cristina Neesham, and PDW Chair Michelle Westermann-Behaylo) that aimed at building a sense of community and enhancing networking opportunities. One of the C&Cs featured a special keynote by Sandra Waddock. These events attracted SIM members (past and present), but also new members, members from other divisions, and potential future members.
SIM NETworking: In collaboration with the Research Committee, we organized the second year of SIM NETworking and the “Reconnection”, a mentoring initiative linking PhD students, junior faculty, and mid-career faculty with senior faculty mentors.
Panel discussion on navigating the academic job market: In collaboration with the Doctoral Consortium and Junior Faculty Consortium committees, we once again organized a well-attended panel discussion with faculty representatives who were recently hiring and those who were recently hired.
SIM Speed Networking: Working with Division Representative-at-Large Pushpika Vishwanathan (and on behalf of the Research Committee), Sarah Stephen co-organized the return of the famed Annual Meeting PDW, albeit in hybrid mode.

We also catalyzed the creation of SIM Sandbox Initiative, the innovation of Kevin Chuah, Bram van der Kroft, & David Skandera. This initiative offers paper development workshops and paper presentation workshops for early career researchers.

For the AoM annual meeting week, we encouraged the community organizing off-program events and circulated the events eventually submitted to us (e.g., Socialize, Smile and Support organized by Prem Menghwar).

Contributions: We believe that these online and onsite events contribute to the division becoming more accessible and inclusive. Our events have generally been open to everyone – current members, members of other divisions, and non-members. It has brought together scholars from around the world and has offered an opportunity to meet (in most cases, virtually) other scholars and develop networks and collaborations.

We also hope that through these events, the academic community has gained a clearer understanding of the division - notably, its values, sense of community, and availability of a fertile ground for growing as a scholar.

Moreover, we are encouraging and facilitating the SIMians in organizing more professional development and networking events for the community.

Next steps: On the whole, we have received encouraging feedback from the SIM community and participants of our events. For instance, participants of NETworking and attendees at the job market panel discussion have overwhelmingly indicated that they would like more such events.

Our events are also generally well-attended. Our statistics indicate that at least 50% of those who RSVP-ed to these events eventually attended, which seems above average (the average attendance rate apparently is lower).

Overall, the feedback, both formal and informal, and the attendance statistics suggests that the academic community likes to experience more of the SIM division – that they would appreciate a presence of the SIM division not only in January and July/August, but also throughout the year. This observation comes with a caveat - we have been observing that online meetings are on the decline as many are simply “Zoom fatigued”. In consequence, our aim is to continue organising events and initiatives, keeping in mind the tensions generated by “Zoom fatigue” and the need to maintain (and, hopefully, increase) the inclusivity, accessibility, and cohesivity of the division. We are looking forward to collaborating with other committees, as well as with the SIMian community. We would particularly love to see more off-programme events and those of relevance to the academic life – such as those organised via SIM Sandbox. If you have ideas or if you would like to assist, please reach out to us!

We would also like to take the opportunity to thank the SIM governance team and committees for all the support. We are also grateful to the many scholars who dedicated precious hours - either by serving or by attending these events and initiatives.

We hope we can all continue contributing towards making the division a supportive and unparalleled home for the community!