INTRODUCTION
It was almost the start of
December 2014 when Mr. Shafqat Bhatti, the senior manager of Case Research
Centre, was thinking about the arrangements of the upcoming conference in
Malaysia.
He was going over the problems
that were faced by the delegates in the earlier conference held at Bangalore
(India) and wondered how to go about avoiding these troubles in the upcoming
conference.
BACKGROUND
Ranked as one of the top business schools in the region,
SDSB LUMS does not only focus on the pedagogical techniques of the faculty but
also encourages them to be involved in academic and applied research globally.
For the latter purpose, SDSB has three research centers working namely
Strategic Sectors Research Centre (SSRC), Case Research Centre (CRC) and Social
Enterprise Development Centre (SEDC). This case will be focusing on the Case
Research Centre of SDSB.
Essentially, the CRC plays the
role of a coordinator and editor in the development of wellresearched case
studies written by the SDSB faculty. The CRC has also been granted access to
the teaching material produced by business schools in North America, Europe and
the Asia Pacific region and it manages an inventory of cases, research papers
and other teaching material for the LUMS faculty. One of the regular case
research journal published by CRC bi-annually is called the "Asian Journal
of Management Cases". Over the past 28 years, CRC has banked in its
database of more than 450 cases written by the faculty of LUMS from many
different disciples. There are approximately hundred more cases in the pipeline
for approval. The unique thing about these cases is that they are drawn by the
faculty of SDSB from real-life issues of the organizations in Pakistan.
The Case Research Center has a
very important role to play in accomplishing the mission of SDSB which is:
1.
To develop individuals with the integrity and intellectual
capacity to assume a leadership role in society.
2. To
impact the practice of management.
3.
To contribute to knowledge generation and
dissemination.
The CRC contributes towards the three-fold mission stated
above. The functions of CRC include the reviewing process of cases/research
papers, arranging training sessions, workshops, and monthly SDSB Faculty Case round table, publish cases in Asian Journal of
Management Cases (AJMC), maintaining database of cases and arranging conferences. The knowledge generation is done
through the Case Roundtables that facilitate the development of case studies by
encouraging discussion and peer-review of work-in-progress. The dissemination
of this knowledge is done through conferences that are held by the CRC.
Previously, the CRC had two conferences, namely AJMC (Asian
Journal of Management Cases) and IRMC (International Research Conference on
Contemporary Management Practices). They have now been combined under the name
of SAMRC after the international collaboration with IIMB (Indian Institute of
Management Bangalore).
South Asian Management Research and Case Conference
3rd South
Asian Management Research and Case Conference 2013 (SAMRC) was held in IIMB,
Bangalore, India on December
27-29, 2013. The theme of the conference was “Celebrating South Asia:
Explorations of the Contributions to Global Economy.”
The vision of the conference was
to “Increase the strategic role of South Asia in the global economy, especially
in the context of other emerging economies”. Moreover, the conference aimed to
“Bring together scholars engaged in research and case writing on the unique
business models and practices prevalent in South Asia” in the context of
management research and education.
Given the
theme of the conference, academic contributions were invited on the following
tracks:
1.
Teaching cases
2.
Research papers
3.
Panel proposals
4.
Proposals for doctoral colloquia
Important deadlines for the conference were following:
1.
Submission
deadline - August 15, 2013
2.
Review
decision - September 05, 2013
3.
Early
bird registration date - September 30, 2013
4.
Regular
registration date - November 30, 2013
5.
Doctoral
colloquia date - December 26, 2013
6.
Conference
date - December 27-29, 2013
The detailed conference schedule is attached (Exhibit 1).
Basic criterion for accepting submissions was based on their
“originality, rigor, and relevance to the conference theme”. Being a host, IIMB
was responsible for issuing the call for submissions globally. However,
conference committee members from LUMS also sent call for submissions to
related universities in Pakistan. The call for submissions states what sort of
papers the conference committee is looking for, the conference agenda and the
schedule. Refer to Exhibit 2 for a sample call for papers sent by Dr. Junaid Ashraf to
Dr. Farooq-e-Azam, Dean Faculty of Management Sciences, IBT Karachi.
Submissions were made on the conference website. According
to Abdul Karim, member of the conference committee, IIMB sent the Pakistani
articles to CRC. CRC filtered out the ones which were not aligned with the
conference’s main theme and then sent the rest to blind reviewers for
reviewing. Blind reviewers accepted, rejected or granted conditional acceptance
to the article along with feedback to the author via the CRC. The author makes
the necessary changes after which the CRC sends the review form back to IIMB.
IIMB then communicates the final decision to author via email.
In total 150 submissions were
received out of which 51 were from Pakistan and 15 were from LUMS. A total of
94 submissions were accepted out of which 42 were from Pakistan. It is notable
that all 15 papers from LUMS were accepted. Only 88 people were present in the
conference, either physically or virtually via Skype.
Conference fee for delegates
from South Asian countries (India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh)
was 3000 Indian Rupees and for delegates from all other nations was US$75.
The Conference managing committee comprised of renowned
Professors from LUMS and IIMB:
•
Abdul Karim Khan, Lahore University of
Management Sciences
•
Anjula Gurtoo, Indian Institute of Science,
Bangalore
•
Ganesh N Prabhu, Indian Institute of Management
Bangalore
•
Junaid Ashraf, Lahore University of Management
Sciences (Conference Chair)
•
Muhammad Naiman Jalil, Lahore University of
Management Sciences
•
R Srinivasan, Indian Institute of Management
Bangalore (Conference Chair)
•
Shazib E. Shaikh, Lahore University of
Management Sciences
This event was organized by the
research committee which made all the policies and supervised the organization
process while the administrators (e.g. directors and editors) implemented those
policies and organized the conference. The focus of the conference and content
of papers was decided by the research committee. The conference secretariat comprised four
members from each university. Junaid Ashraf was the conference chair from LUMS
and he had three faculty members namely Shazib E. Sheikh, Abdul-Karim and Abdul
Rehman Malik to assist him. R Srinivasan was the conference chair from IIMB.
Ayesha was the administrative editor (she looked after issues like publishing
and conference proceedings and proofreading) mainly but she also made academic
decisions (which mainly involved making sure that the theme of the papers is
aligned to the theme of the conference.) She acted as the first buffer check in
the system. Academic decisions were mainly done by the associate dean (Junaid
Ashraf). The conference was financed by various sponsors including SAGE and the
fee submitted by delegates. The logistics were handled by IIMB.
CHALLENGES AND HURDLES
The
conference fell short in some areas due to certain short comings in the
planning, management, and the communication strategies employed by CRC and the
organizing committee. Following are some of the problems that were identified
with regard to their communication strategy;
Communicate to Legitimize?
Once a conference is planned with its theme decided, CRC
announces a call for papers from scholars and institutes around the world. It aims at attracting a global audience,
however most of the time it fails. One major reason is the absence of
legitimacy for LUMS in general and the SAMRC as a conference amongst the
international community. People would not want to pay and travel halfway around
the world for a conference if they are not sure that it is going to be worth
the effort. “No one knows about SAMRC”, said Shoaib-ul-Haq, a teacher at LUMS
and a former participant in the 2013 SAMRC conference.
Moreover, the fields of study covered by the conference are
limited and many people are turned down due to the fact that their area of
specialization is not relevant to the conference theme. Similarly the issue of
legitimacy arises when CRC is trying to convince experts of different fields to
review the research articles on a volunteer basis. Most of the participants in
the conference are Indians and Pakistanis. There is a need to attain global
acceptability by ensuring attendance and participation of a diverse group of
renowned scholars from around the globe. For this, CRC needs more resources and
a larger budget to expand and modernize itself but at the same time there is a
need to effectively communicate the true worth, the mission, vision and
objectives of the conference to the general public to gain legitimacy.
Communication of criteria for evaluation:
The initial call for papers sent out by the CRC to
institutions all around the globe contains a brief description of the kind of
papers it is looking for the purpose of the SAMRC (Exhibits 3). It states that “management issues for sustainable
business, especially in the context of emerging markets” are the focus of this
conference. It also states that “submissions may take the form of research
papers or teaching case studies” and that all submissions will be reviewed
based on “originality, rigor, and relevance to the conference theme”. The call
for papers contains insufficient information to communicate effectively to the
delegates what the submissions should actually look like. In contrast, the call
for submissions for the Academy of Management- one of the leading global
conferences for Management (Exhibit 4) contains
detailed information about subject divisions and interest groups, code of
ethics, program session types and other relevant topics. Communication of
insufficient information about proper guidelines is a hindrance to the
development of trust and confidence among potential delegates and reduces the
likelihood of them to register and pay for the event.
Visa issue and contingency plan (Skype):
A major stumbling block for the success of SAMRC 2013 was
the non-issuance of visas by the Indian embassy. Many delegates from Pakistan,
most of which were from LUMS, did not get their visas issued on time and so
they could not attend the conference. As LUMS was a co-host of the event, the
non-issuance of visa became a greater problem. According to CRC, the Indian
embassy does not respond to telephone calls at all, so it was no use trying to
contact it to speed up the visa process.
A similar problem arose during
the previous conference (AJMC, January 2013) which was held in Pakistan. Eleven
people from India were supposed to attend it but only six people got their
visas and the rest were unable to attend. When asked about their opinion on the
thought that the
Indian government had denied the
Pakistani delegates’ visas in retaliation to this, the CRC officials appeared
to be divided over the issue. “It is always a mutual game”, said Mr. Shafqat
while Mr. Shoaib maintained a more optimistic stance and said, “I don’t think
it was reciprocated”. The CRC appeared to be convinced that IIMB tried its best
to negotiate with the Indian government to process the visas on time. “Indo-Pak
relations have always been very volatile. When the Pakistani government
denied/delayed the visas for the Indian delegates, the Indian government had to
reciprocate the gesture and deny our delegates Indian visas in the subsequent
conference. But if we had anticipated earlier we could have worked on a Plan B
instead”, said Abdul-Rehman Malik, a professor at LUMS and one of the delegates
of the conference who did not get their visas.
The delegates who did not get visas participated in the
conference via a Skype session that was organized by CRC at LUMS. However a
major failure on the part of CRC was that although a similar disaster had
occurred only a year ago and they had every reason to believe that it would
happen again they had failed to communicate this effectively to the delegates
and mentally prepare them for the fact that they might not be able to attend
the conference at all. Further, they had not thought of a plan B beforehand,
should such a situation arise, and so they had to plan the Skype session on the
eleventh hour. Only delegates from LUMS were able to attend the Skype session because
the details could not be communicated to participants from other institutes in
Pakistan. “When we did eventually encounter the issue, conducting a virtual
conference was one of the solutions but that did not work out as well as it
could have. We could have publicized the virtual conference beforehand, for
greater audience involvement. Advertisement would have been done on a larger
scale”, said Abdul-Rehman Malik.
Up to the date of the conference in India, the situation was
very ambiguous. CRC wasn’t clear on whether or not the visas would be issued or
not, so were the delegates. There was a grey area with regard to the issuance.
This highlights the extent of the communication gap between the event
organizers and the external parties vital to the success the event, in this
case the Indian Embassy.
Delay of Review?
The delegates have to first send in their case/ research
paper entries via the online portal. Once they are received by the Indian
Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB), the IIMB is responsible for filtering
the papers in accordance with their alignment with the conference themes and
the respective conference agenda. Once they have been filtered, they are sent
back to the CRC for further review, the CRC then assigns blind reviewers, mostly
instructors who further check for formatting. This paper will then be sent back
to the author of the paper for rectification of any errors.
Some faculty members do not
review cases on time, so some articles have to be submitted without the
necessary changes. One reason for this
is that reviewing takes time. To give a constructive feedback instructors need
time for review. Some cases are received ahead of time; however some are
submitted on deadlines which give insufficient time for review.
According to Muhammad Asim, one of the faculty members, “CRC
sends polite reminders, which may not always be enough.”
This
reflects how the CRC’s communication with the delegates and reviewers via
emails is not effective enough.
Review Status:
Usually the case processing works in such a way that after
the applicant submits his case an acknowledgement email is received which
states the review stage of the case. The delegates do not know whether the case
review has progressed or it is still with the desk editor. This reflects badly
on the CRC as many delegates who are participating from universities other than
LUMS may have difficulty in contacting the CRC. This might even be a hassle for
LUMS instructors who are already pre-occupied with their own work. As Adnan
Zahid mentioned; “The least effective way of communication is via email, and
the most effective, is, of course personal (faceto-face) interaction.”
After the paper has been reviewed and accepted, an email is
sent to the participants stating the due date for registration and the
requirements for acquiring a visa. The applicants then have to carry out visa
processing on their own.
Many delegates do not even check their emails; some delete
their emails before even skimming through them. The CRC does conduct a follow
up after emails on registration, but this is also feasible for only those
delegates situated at LUMS. For others, phone calls are made.
The SAMRC website was one of the
tools used for conference management; however, it lacked the kind of robustness
which is required of a web-portal which should be self-sufficient in guiding
and facilitating the conference delegates. Adnan Zahid compared the site for
Harvard
Business Review with that of SAMRC, stating that there is a
‘Chicken & Egg difference’. Such websites are expected to have proper
review progress for each participant, rankings for different case papers, top
researches as well as a user friendly interface. The AMRC website is not as
effective as a communication tool.
Live Updates:
In order to
facilitate delegates who are on their way to the conference, a conference
schedule is drawn up which lists down activities for the entire conference
period. This, of course, is a tentative plan as not everything can go as
planned.
According to Naiman Jalil, who was also one of the members
of the organizing committee, many conferences have a separate communications
department that broadcasts the various happenings. CRC lacks this kind of
communication. A schedule is available on the web portal (Exhibit 1) which
specifies the venues and the schedule. However, due to unforeseen circumstances
changes may have to be made and if all the delegates aren’t present at the same
place, these changes may be impossible to communicate at a moment’s notice;
resulting in slow and ineffective transmission of information to the delegates.
Such changes in schedule and venues by various media
(including blogs and twitter) for the participants as well as the general
public are available on other international conference portals, but was lacking
on SAMRC web site.
Development of Brand Identity:
The CRC had two conferences, namely AJMC (Asian Journal of
Management Cases) and IRMCP (International Research Conference on Contemporary
Management Practices). AJMC focused mainly on case studies while IRMCP focused
on research papers. In 2013, they were combined under the name of SAMRC after
the international collaboration with IIMB (Indian Institute of Management
Bangalore).
The next
conference is a collaboration with another institute from Malaysia namely
UniversitiSains Malaysia (USM). Since Malaysia is not a part of South Asia, the
name of the conference to be held in January 2015 has been decided to be AMRC
(Asian Management Research and Case Conference). This constant changing of name
of conference must have stunted the development of a brand identity for these
conferences. The basic elements, such as the name, of an academic event
identify and distinguish the brand in a participant’s mind. The absence of a
consistent name for the conference must have caused the global perceptions of
the conference to suffer by hindering the development of reputation of the
conference.
ALTERNATIVES
To help build awareness of their conference, increase paid
attendance and boost advertising, CRC needs to improve their promotion and
communication plan. Mr. Shafqat could consider many alternatives to solve the
problems faced in SAMRC 2013 for future success.
Objectives
The
objectives of developing a communication strategy would be as follows;
•
Improve feedback mechanism with stakeholders
•
Increase incoming audience and legitimize the
conference
•
Avoid obstacles through development of
contingency plan
Stakeholders:
Major
stakeholders in SAMRC 2013 could be divided into mainly three categories:
1. Partners: This conference was a result
of a joint collaboration between SDSB and IIMB and both were under constant
communication. The internal Departments managed responsibilities independently
and then discussed with HOD. Another partner was HEC Pak (Higher Education
Commission), which was also sponsoring the event.
2. Interested Bodies and Individuals:
i.
MNC’s
executives: Research papers document a phenomenon and add to the body of
knowledge. Papers submitted for this conference would be grounded in established
management theory and would pertain to any of the following disciplines,
including strategy, organization behavior, human resources management,
marketing, finance, accounting, operations management, information systems,
entrepreneurship, economics and social sciences, public policy, corporate
social responsibility, and natural environment. Furthermore brief (executive)
cases were also included. They are explicitly focused on the decision to be
made and therefore, these cases are structured with just the exposition of the
problem at hand, with a passing reference to the context. Managers who are
exposed to the research are eager to learn the practical implications
of the knowledge being offered and therefore focus their
attention on the search for improvements.
ii.
Business
Management Students: Teaching cases developed for the conference are
targeted at business management undergraduate/graduate students in South Asia
and elsewhere. These cases provide students with an opportunity to work with a
range of evidence, and improving their ability to apply the vocabulary, theory
and methods they have learned in the course. It enables them to devise and
defend solutions to the problems at the heart of each case.
3. Staff: This includes the internal
department staff of CRC and the organizing committee. The organizing committee
comprises of conference chairs from both LUMS and IMBB and other faculty
members.
4. Others: Moreover CRC was in constant
contact with the Indian Embassy through intermediaries; they hired agents in
American Express who would communicate with Indian High Commission for visas
status update.
Strategic options and Outline of approach
Legitimacy
To substantiate their
conference and increase incoming global audience CRC should be acquainted with
what is current in management research to keep their conference up to date. Mr.
Shoaib-ul-Haq, a former SAMRC participant, suggested, “CRC
should invite popular researchers who can provide legitimacy to the
conference”. However to improve their promotion and invite researchers, more
resources would be required. The conference’s goal of contribution and
dissemination of knowledge should be effectively communicated to the global
audience to substantiate the legitimacy of the conferences.
External Communication
Another important consideration for CRC in external
communication is the development of the current CRC website. Proper search
tools, ratings, new articles, top researches and review progress should be
incorporated. The name of the conference should remain consistent with a
constant URL, which would improve brand identity and make it easier for
participants to refer to it.
The organizing committee should have a separate
Communication & Public Relations Chair, responsible for publicity and
public relations for the conference. Managing lists of media contacts and past
and potential attendees should be efficiently handled. Key messages created
beforehand along with, press releases and other written material should keep
LUMS branding guideline under consideration in all the communication. CRC
should work with journalists and news outlets to publicize the conference.
Schedules for contacting media, sharing information and delivering key messages
and important points about the conference should all be arranged in time and
with collaboration with the host country.
IEEE, an association of technical professionals, uses an
e-Notice service to send e-mails to the entire IEEE membership database. IEEE
e-Notice is an electronic newsletter subscription service, which facilitates
e-mail distribution of newsletters, meeting notices, social events, and IEEE
conference materials.[1]
Likewise CRC should maintain a database of past participants and should keep
them in touch with new ongoing events. A similar service should be introduced,
which would aid in communication and retention of participants.
The publicity and communication plan of the conference
should be segregated in terms of Preconference and Post-conference. The post-conference communication
should aim at highlighting the success of the conference and the main events so
that readers and participants will be motivated to attend the next conference.
CRC should designate a photographer for its conferences.
Pictures from technical sessions, social gatherings, etc. should be used as a
publicity tool to communicate the legitimacy of the conference, to attract a
global audience.
The call for papers should contain sufficient information
about proper guidelines to develop trust and curtail confusions among potential
delegates and increase their likelihood to register and pay for the event. Like
the Academy of Management, CRC should also include the details of the various subject
categories that branch from the main theme of the conference. (Exhibit 4)
Communication in a crisis
If CRC had foreseen the potential issue of visa, LUMS could
have used some direct resources and contacts. For instance, Syed Babar Ali, one
of the co-founders of LUMS has links in the Indian High Commission. Hence,
something could have been done and a proper strategy could have been devised to
operationalize these resources to resolve the issue. CRC should have probed the
host, IMBB, to converse to the government and exploit the situation.
CRC should create an emergency response plan beforehand,
which defines who is responsible and what should be done if a crisis occurs.
There should be a contingency plan in place for situations such as visa
issuance. A Skype conference could be one of the alternatives; however the
time, venue and arrangements of a Skype conference should be planned and
communicated to participants in advance. CRC could have publicized the virtual
conference beforehand, for greater audience involvement. If CRC could introduce
a service like IEEE e-notice, last minute changes can be communicated easily to
the audience.
Delayed review
A few reviewers are not able to review cases on time due to
late submission of papers from participants and consequently from CRC.
Reviewers who do not have time to review on an urgent basis can ask CRC to send
cases in advance. A reviewer advised that editing should be done on an earlier
basis to minimize the delay. There should be an open feedback mechanism through
which reviewers can propose recommendations either through personal contact or
through online suggestion survey.
Resources
The delivery of the strategy
would be dealt by conference chairs of the organizing committee and Mr. Shafqat
from CRC.
• Dr
Junaid Ashraf (LUMS Conference Chair)
•
Dr R. Srinivasan (IIMB Conference Chair)
The increased costs associated would be of inviting renowned
researchers, improving quality of website, increasing publicity through press
release and journalists and developing an E-notice service.
The following table summarizes the
projected costs and time line for the implementation of the communication
strategy.
|
Audience
|
Communication Activity
|
Objective
|
Cost
|
Timeframe
|
|
Participants/
prospective participants
|
§ Maintaining social network presence
§ Photographs
|
Legitimacy
|
Negligible
|
After one
conference ends-call for papers for next conference
|
|
Participants/
prospective participants
|
§ Website quality: search tools, ratings, top
researches, review progress
§ Suitable
Call for papers
|
Legitimacy,
external communication
|
Negligible
|
Pre-conference,
initial stage
|
|
Participants/
prospective participants
|
§ Media coverage
§ Press Release
§ Working with journalists
|
Legitimacy
|
Hiring,
Publishing
|
During event
|
|
Reviewers
|
§ Feedback session
§ Blind online suggestions survey
|
Become aware of
issues and improvements
|
Negligible
|
One month after conference ends
|
|
Participants
|
§ E-notice service
|
Communicate
live updates,
contingency plans
|
Software development
|
During and
after conference
|
CONCLUSION
Considering the issues faced in
SAMRC 2013, Mr. Shafqat knew that the alternatives needed to be reflected on to
avoid similar challenges in the future and to make the Asian Management
Research and Case Conference (AMRC) 2015 a success.
