IN TWO MONTHS OUR CONFERENCE WILL BE RUNNING ONLINE: Anticipations from the Conference Programme

(7th July 2020)

This year we have worked harder than ever to offer a rich, exciting and up-to-date programme for the Sinergie-Sima 2020 Conference. The theme was chosen in advance, before the COVID crisis, but is very topical now. It is time for business to take its role in addressing future sustainability grand challenges!

Here are some anticipations from the Conference Programme, which will be released in August in its final version.

The parallel sessions will include around 150 discussions of full papers, extended abstracts, case studies both on the Conference topics and on management studies. In the weeks preceding the Conference, pre-recorded video presentations will be made available on this website for registered participants.

The plenary sessions will host a group of top-notch keynote speakers, who will touch upon different subjects of the business & sustainability agenda: Ans Kolk (Amsterdam Business School) is a world expert on international business and sustainability; Andrew Crane (Bath University) is one of the few management scholars to work on modern slavery; Mette Morsing (Copenhagen Business School) has been recently appointed as Senior Advisor of the PRME Foundation for the Global Compact, while Philip Shapira (Alliance Manchester Business School) will join us to discuss how to redesign research universities to address societal needs, inclusiveness, and sustainability.

In addition, the Conference sponsoring firms – Acque S.p.A., KME and Pharmanutra, as well as other supporters – are all invited to talk about their business models and strategies to ensure a more sustainable future.

The panel on “predatory” journals will have great panellists – Graziella Bertocchi (Uni More); Francesco Ciampi (Uni Florence); Anna Severin (Swiss National Science Foundation) and Mauro Sylos Labini (Uni Pisa) – talking about the phenomenon of predatory publishing and provide suggestions about how to avoid it. We think this is a great occasion to know more about this form of exploitative academic practice and its consequences for academic careers and society as a whole.

Another new feature is the Paper Development Workshop (PDW), chaired by Elisa Giuliani (Uni Pisa), Valentina De Marchi (Uni Padova) and Francesco Rullani (Ca’ Foscari). The PDW is meant to offer expert advice to younger scholars with a promising paper in order for them to reach a standard that is publishable in a top tier management journal.

We are also planning a thrilling “meet the editor session” representing top field journals like the Journal of International Business Studies, Research Policy, R&D Management, among others (more to come soon).

Last but not least, at this Conference, we care about gender issues in the academia. We have tried as much as we could to ensure gender balance in the panels and to give voice to female scholars, who we know do less often than male colleagues occupy leading and highly visible positions.

We hope you will enjoy this forthcoming Sinergie-Sima Management Conference!

The Chairs