Putting The ‘International’ In International Management: A 40-Year Narrative History of The Eam-I Conference On Managing In A Global Economy Series.

Authors:

Keywords: Institutional Memory, Organizational Governance, EAM-I History, Presidential Panel

Abstract: The EAM-I could be considered an entity in a loose coupling (diversity) with EAM characterized by heedful representing (mutual respect) and heedful subordinating (trust). Organizations are also known to construct and recreate culture and identity based on memory. Boje (2008) proposes memory as a knowledge asset. The additional complexity is that organizational memory is often collective memory that must be reconstructed. The process of organizational remembering typically involves narratives. Over the last four decades and twenty international conferences, the leaders of EAM-I were key boundary spanners in their role of liaising with a host institution in a foreign country and communicating with the EAM Board of Directors. Further, each such experience of organizing an EAM-I conference was conditioned by the EAM-I leadership team, the temporal context of the conference, and location and host institution. The narratives and recollections of these episodic events and experiences are contextualized by the perceptions of success and challenges for each of the international conferences. Organizational learning scholars have suggested that knowledge accumulation by organizations proceeds in several stages involving (1) knowledge acquisition, (2) interpretation, (3) dissemination, and (4) storage in organizational memory. The process of retrieving this stored organizational memory is provided through communication and interactions and transactions among members of the organization. With this process in mind, the goal of the session is to transmit and share the EAM-I’s organizational memory with those in attendance. The session will be led by a panel of Past EAM Presidents and Fellows who have been involved in organizing EAM-I conferences over its 40-year history. The goal of the session is to reflect on the valuable, rare, and inimitable EAM-I conference practices from past years in order to ensure the sustainability its operations for years to come.