FUNAI don delivers keynote paper at the British Academy of Management Conference in London
Afam Icha-Ituma, Reader, Dean, Faculty of Education and Director, Centre for Internationalisation, Linkages, Advancement and Global Ranking, Federal University Ndufu-Alike Ikwo (FUNAI), Ebonyi State gave an invited key note paper at the British Academy of Management Conference held at Roehampton University London on June 14th 2017. The British Academy of Management (BAM) is the leading authority on the academic field of management in the United Kingdom. The conference was organised by the British Academy of Management (Gender in Management Special Interest Group) to honour Professor Ruth Simpson’s contributions to Gender in Management and Education, Organization Studies, and Gender, Work and Organization.
Dr. Afam Icha-Ituma (on black suit) speaking at the conference
Professor Simpson was co-founder and director of the Centre for Research in Emotion Work (now Work and Organization Research Centre) at Brunel University for three years. She has been Visiting Professor in a number of institutions including University of Kent, University of Macquarie, University of Technology, Sydney and University of South Australia. For five years she was co-editor (and founder of) the International Journal of Work, Organization and Emotion and is currently associate editor of Gender Work and Organization. With over 140 publications spanning the last 20 years, Ruth Simpson’s work has been published in some of the most influential journals in her field both in the UK and internationally. Professor Ruth Simpson was honoured for developing ground-breaking work that has garnered national and international recognition, in particular in the topics of gender and management education, gender and careers, and the largely under-researched areas of ‘dirty work’ and of men in non-traditional occupations.
Speaking on the topic Gender, Feminization and the MBA: A review of the contribution of Ruth Simpson, Dr. Icha-Ituma pointed out that Simpson’s work on management education has significantly advanced theoretical understanding, informed empirical knowledge and has gone a long way to address the perceived underinvestment in ‘soft skills’ and the picture of the MBA programme as deeply masculine in its values and practices. He pointed out that Simpson’s work particularly advances our understanding of potential deficits in MBA programmes as well as how the MBA can be reformed to address the extensive critique, positioning it to fruitfully serve multiple stakeholders. He also noted that: ‘Professor Ruth Simpson is a quintessential academic and a leading figure in organisation studies and management education. It has been my great pleasure to have had the privilege of being mentored by Ruth Simpson for over a decade and to have collaborated with her on a number of international research projects’. While delivering his keynote presentation, Icha-Ituma also talked about the vision of Federal University Ndufu-Alike Ikwo (FUNAI) to become a world class institution and the opportunities for British Universities to collaborate with FUNAI in research and delivery of academic programmes.
Other speakers at the conference who discussed the various strands of Ruth Simpson’s work were Dr. Patricia Lewis (University of Kent), Dr. Natasha Slutskaya (Sussex University), Dr. Savita Kumra (Middlesex University, Dubai) and Professor Alison Pullen (Macquarie University, Australia). The interactive session was facilitated by Professor Sharon Mavin (University of Roehampton) and Professor Gina Grandy (University of Regina, Canada).
The conference provided participants the opportunity to learn about both seminal contributions to Gender and Management Education, as well as recent developments, discussed in the context of Professor Simpson’s contributions. The conference also provided participants the opportunity to celebrate Ruth Simpson’s contributions and to hear from her co-researchers what contributions her scholarly work, and Ruth personally has made. The papers presented in the conference will be published in a special issue of Gender in Management: An International Journal (Vol 32, Issue7) indexed by Scopus. Professor Simpson has also accepted to visit FUNAI soon to facilitate a professional development workshop on Academic writing and Publishing in High Impact Factor Journals.
Dr. Afam Icha-Ituma with some of those that attended the conference