Call for Scholarly Program Submissions: Careers Division

Program Chair: Jos Akkermans, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands, j.akkermans@vu.nl

The Careers Division is pleased to announce the Call for Submissions to the 80th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, held 7-11 August 2020, in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Mission Statement: The Careers Division exists to foster the general advancement of research, teaching, learning, and practice in the field of careers, to encourage the extension and unification of knowledge pertaining to careers, and thereby to enhance the practice of management.

Careers Domain:  Research in the field of careers addresses people's lifelong succession of work experiences, the structure of opportunity to work, and relationships between careers and other aspects of life. Submissions for the conference may reflect any topic that fits within the careers domain and extends our understanding of careers. The careers division is open to qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method approaches as well as conceptual and theoretical submissions. Topics include, but are not limited to:

• Individual career development, career (self-)management strategies and behavior, career planning;
• Career outcomes, such as career success, employability, and career sustainability;
• Organizational career management practices and systems, relationships between HR systems and careers;
• Internal labor market structures, functions, and mobility;
• Work-family and work-life interaction, meaningfulness of work, and career calling;
• Careers of disadvantaged groups, labor force diversity, race, culture, and gender effects in careers;
• Cross-cultural careers and expatriate experiences;
• Effects of (social) context on careers, including organizational, occupational, and social context;
• Careers of specific groups, such as entrepreneurs, flexible workers, project workers, manual workers.

2020 Conference Theme:   We encourage contributions that relate to the theme for the 2020 meeting, "20/20: Broadening Our Sight". This theme focuses on the – often self-imposed – dichotomies that exist in our ways of producing knowledge. Examples include being either a macro or a micro researcher, being either a qualitative or a quantitative scholar, focus either on research or on teaching, prioritizing either knowledge creation or its dissemination. As the AOM 2020 theme describes it: “it is unlikely that we will be able to make impactful contributions to addressing major organizational, societal, and professional challenges if our scholarship and teaching adopt an “or” rather than an “and” approach. These self-imposed choices restrict our sight and create a narrow and often incomplete view of organizational phenomena.”

The core aim of the 2020 conference is to move beyond these dichotomies and search for integration and synthesis. In other words: to think outside the box and come up with novel ideas and solutions that take the field further. For example, how can theories and constructs from the fields of management, psychology, entrepreneurship, project management, organizational sciences, and sociology inform research on careers, and vice versa? How can we enrich our research by using novel and/or complementary research designs that would shed new light on existing questions? Are there ways for further mutual enhancement of our research and teaching strategies? What would be effective ways of designing and executing research that has an impact both on the scholarly and practitioner/policy maker communities?

We encourage submitters of scholarly papers and symposia to consider, yet not be bound by, this year’s conference theme. As the broadening of our sight is certainly relevant for people’s careers, we hope to see many thematic submissions. However, we very much welcome new original research in any area of careers studies.

Submission Guidelines: The program will include both papers and symposia. Details of the requirements for each session type (paper versus symposium) are outlined in the Scholarly Submission Guidelines. Please also keep in mind that symposia (including panel discussions) have a higher chance of acceptance when they indicate potential co-sponsorship by other relevant divisions. More information is available on submission types.

Please note that all papers should be submitted using the AOM Submission Center. The Submission Center opens early December 2019 and closes on Tuesday, 14 January 2020 at 5:00 PM ET (NY Time). Earlier submissions are encouraged, but any submissions after the deadline will not be processed, so please ensure a timely submission. Also, note that there is limited space on the scholarly program and, consequently, not all submissions can be accepted.

Being a Reviewer for our Division. Please consider reviewing for our division. Whether you are a in an early or a late career phase, AOM provides excellent support for reviewing and we are extremely happy with your support. Without our reviewers, we cannot create a great program. In other words: we need your help!

You can sign up now to review for the Careers Division. The actual review period is from mid-January to mid-February 2020.

Careers Division Awards: The Careers Division offers several awards, including the Best Overall Paper Award; the Best Symposium Award and the Best Student Paper Award. The award winners will be determined by committees of around 3-5 scholars, and the winners will be announced during the AOM 2020 conference.