Academy of Management Entrepreneurship Division Nontraditional Academics Committee

This committee focuses on the issues of non-traditional academics (NTA) that are involved in entrepreneurship teaching and research. It is among the standing committees organized under the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management.

Goals

We focus on the concerns of academics that have non-traditional career backgrounds — whether in the period prior to their academic career (i.e., extensive industry/entrepreneurship experience) or in their choices of their academic careers. While there are other possible definitions of a “non-traditional” academic, this definition fits most closely the interest we have attracted from members of the Academy.

One of our major concerns is making sure that the field of entrepreneurship successfully integrates new NTAs, particularly Ph.D. students trying to reconcile their own knowledge and experience with the socialization of a doctoral program and their own career aspirations.

We as with many of the division’s efforts, we see the committee’s efforts as being directly aligned to the division’s goal of “engaged scholarship” as defined by Andy van de Ven.

Our near-term goals are to create a community to allow NTAs to meet others in similar situations, and to find peer and mentor feedback for the unique issues they face in integration their academic and industry experience.

LinkedIn

We have created an NTA group on LinkedIn. The goal of the group is to build community by allowing NTAs to identify other members of the community, to enable discussion of issues facing NTAs, and to generally facilliate networking and collaboration. We encourage all entrepreneurship scholars who share our interests to join the group.

History

At the annual Academy meetings, committee has sponsored two preconference workshops and one panel discussion:

• 2007 meeting (Philadelphia): the “Doing Entrepreneurship Education Good by Doing Entrepreneurship Education Well” workshop (PDW) was organized by Brian McKenzie and Joel West
• 2005 meeting (Honolulu): “A New Vision Of Entrepreneurship: Traditional/Non-traditional Views Of The Entrepreneurial Domain” a symposium organized by Brian McKenzie
• Academy 2000 meeting (Toronto): the “Non-Traditional Faculty and the Growing Action Orientation of Schools of Business” PDW was organized by Norris Krueger and Pat Dickson.

Members

The committee was chaired by Brian McKenzie of CSU East Bay from 2004-2007. Since 2007, the chair has been Joel West of San José State. As of October 2009, current committee members are:

• Fern Evitt, University of Auckland
• Charles Fouche, Reims Management School
• Jonathan Giuliano, Manchester Business School
• Jason Perepelkin, University of Saskatchewan
• Carlton Lamar Robinson, University of Phoenix.
• Lee Thienel, Capella University
• Norris Krueger, Entrepreneurship Northwest
• Mukesh Sud, Fairfield University
• Helder Sebastiao, University of San Diego
• Joel West, San José State University

Last updated October 3, 2009