BAM2014: Opening sessions

BAM2014 got underway this morning, with a light breakfast of croissants, pastries and coffee to welcome first-time attendees (a great way to help break the ice, thank you organisers!). A series of professional development workshops followed. Seventeen topics were offered, across two workshop sessions, before lunch including:

• The state of corporate responsibility and sustainability research
• Developing senior leadership and management capability
• Cognitive mapping: making sense of qualitative research data
• Low-tech teaching
• Researching and engaging with SMEs
• Generating impactful research: Views from the field

The workshop sessions were intentionally interactive, with the facilitators actively eliciting comments from, and the  experience of, the delegates in attendance. I attended the cognitive mapping session (quizzically, not really understanding much about the topic) and the generating impactful research (hoping to pick up some tips for my own research) sessions. The cognitive mapping session was really helpful. It exposed me to a method of moving meaningfully from the vast quantity of data that is typically gathered in observations and interviews toward some meaningful conclusions. However, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, because I now realise that I may have missed a trick in my research analysis—something that I'll need to give some careful though to in the coming days. The impactful research session was aimed at researchers seeking external (funding) assistance to support their research. This session was of less interest to me as I plan to return to professional practice and advisory work.

After the lunch break, several business and academic speakers will open the conference. They will address the conference theme: The role of the business school in supporting economic and social development. In my rather limited experience, one of the shortfalls of many business colleges relates to relevance. That business research conclusions often have limited practical application is an indictment on business schools and on the research process. This should be an interesting discussion.