Intervista a Abby Ghobadian – President of the British Academy of Management (BAM)

When was BAM found, how many members does BAM have and who are they?

The British Academy of Management was founded in 1986 by a group of academics with great foresight. They included Cary Cooper, Andrew Pettigrew, Roger Mansfield, Andrew Thomson, David Otley, Enid Mumford, David Weir and Derek Pugh.  Its aims were:

• To encourage the sharing and development of a research knowledge base for all management disciplines.
• To act as a forum for the various disciplines in management and to encourage the development of an integrated body of knowledge commensurate with management as a profession.
• To encourage and promote disciplinary research and collaboration amongst the various management disciplines.
• To further the development of management education in the UK.

Today we have close to 1800 members.

How many journals do belong to BAM and what is their role within the Association?

BAM has two internationally renowned journals: The British Journal of Management (BJM) and The International Journal of Management Research (IJMR).  Both journals have high impact factors and libraries throughout the world subscribe to our journals. They are of vital importance to BAM because they enable us to showcase what is good in management across the globe.

Are there innovations that BAM introduced in the last years and that proved to be appreciated by BAM members?

We are a membership organization and exist to serve the interest of our members as well as the wider business and management community.  We have redesigned our web-site, making it easier for our members to concert with the society. We have introduced PDW to our annual conference and this proved a great success. We produced a booklet with AcSS that shows the impact of business and management research. Finally, we are also trying to link with policy makers and others so that we have a strong voice in debates affecting our discipline.

What are the main issues that you see for the future of BAM?

The key issue for us is how to better serve the needs of our members. Capacity building and forging a European management identity is also an important issue. Finally, we would like to build alliances with other learned societies to collectively have a strong voice. 

Why is BAM interested in making alliances with other sister Associations? How does this issue fit with BAM strategy?

Because we realized that collectively we have a stronger voice than on our own.  We want to ensure that there is plurality in management scholarship.  We respect other traditions and learn from them but we believe the interest of all our communities is better served if there is plurality. We are interested in enhancing the standing of the European based journals and in being involved in policy to contribute to the development of more robust policy. We cannot achieve these aims on our own, but only in partnership with other learned societies such as your learned societ