This summer I moved from my position as an associate professor in political science to an associate professor in International Business at George Washington University.

During the summer I attended my two disciplines two flagship conferences.  The Academy of Management (AOM) conference and the American Political Science Association (APSA) conference.

For my political science readers, APSA is all too familiar.  Every Labor Day (yes, on Labor Day) we converge to a city and give very short paper presentations to tiny audiences.  We mostly tell ourselves that the conference is more about seeing colleagues, setting a hard deadline for a paper draft, and for professional development and networking.  This last part is very important to the many graduate students on the academic job market that kicks off as early as September 1.  So we go through a lot of effort and expense for a conference that is mostly valuable for the informal networkings.  And it is on Labor Day.  For now.

Many of the motivations for attending AOM are the same and the structure of panels (4 papers to a panel leaving each presenter 15 minutes if you’re lucky to present months of work) is mostly the same.  But there are some significant differences.

While APSA kicks off the academic job market, very few schools actually use APSA for interviews.  One reason for this is that APSA is just a little too early and most schools haven’t even started collecting applications yet.  But my take is not using our flagship conference to help to make better hiring decisions is a wasted opportunity.  We should probably move to after Labor Day.

But what I find even more odd is that all of this infrastructure could be harnessed for better research and networking experiences.  Here are two things that APSA could learn from AOM.

1.  A huge percentage of the panels, most of the panels in the first two days, are formally devoted to professional development.  I attended a day long event for junior faculty/new to management scholars.  I learned as much in this one day about my new profession as I probably learned in my first two years fumbling around with my career.  The highlights included a panel with journal editors and a breakout session on grant funding.

APSA has these professional development opportunities but the scale is quite different.

2.  AOM has a much more serious review process for paper and panel proposals.  Many of the management conferences require mini papers (something like 10 pages) and have external reviews of these proposals.  Unlike section heads in APSA who are required to pick and choose proposals based on a page or so abstract, AOM papers are at least partially vetted and authors are given feedback from the peer reviewers.  For my AOM panel we responded to peer reviews and made comments on the other presenters projects.

I think the AOM model institutionalizes better research and professional development.  The obvious major drawback from the AOM model is time.

I’m not sure if the AOM system is better, but it is at least worth considering.  We should also move it from Labor Day.

There is a lot that management could learn from political science.  More to follow.