Last semester a professor in our department asked me whether I have some recommended readings for his PhD class on what constitutes a theoretical contribution in the field of management. Looking over the classes I took and papers I put aside over the years I was able to draft the following list.   There are [...]

At the beginning of the current semester I was asked to welcome our new PhD arrivals with a basic orientation to our department’s program. Since those PhDs have been briefed by our faculty and received lots of information about the program, so I thought it would be better to give them a few pointers on [...]

If you’re a PhD student, most chances are that at some point you’re going to go to a conference and present a conference poster. Most times this will present work in progress, something that you’re currently thinking of or have collected initial data for, but even if you have already written the paper putting it [...]

Talking to some of the management faculty at my university about qualifying exams I received a few tips and feedback on previous qualifying exam answers  that might be worth documenting and sharing. While those are somewhat subjective, and perhaps subject, context or culture bound, they do make general sense to me. Many of those are [...]

There comes a time in every management scholar’s life when one attempts to make a generalized summary of the field and contemplates what we – as management scholars – might be able to offer others – like managers.   Now that I’m forced into that stage the thought of what we might have have to [...]

One of the most important things prospect or current PhD students are not aware of perhaps till well in their 2nd or 3rd year of studies is what the academic paper publishing life-cycle looks like. Most of the students who enter a PhD program with a declared commitment to an academic life have no experience [...]

If your proposal/paper has been accepted to a conference, you will atleast be required to submit an abstract that will be included in the published proceedings. How to write the conference presentation abstract? Here’s some of what I learned in the process of writing those… Structure can vary, but this is what I recommend : [...]

If you looking for academic conferences in a specific region or research area, one of the best ways to keep track of what’s going on is by setting up an alert filter on one of the conferencing websites. The one I use is Conference Alerts (Facebook group here): Receive free e-mailed updates of conferences matching [...]

Sharing and discussing ideas with others is part of what’s exciting about being in academia and doing research. We do that with our colleagues when we get together in classes, seminars, workshops or personal meetings, but that often only offers a small chance for truly developing new ideas and discussions over issues of interest and [...]