Dear AIB 2002 Discussant:
You are on on my list of discussants/responders at the 44th annual meetings of the Academy of International Business, to be held in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Jun 28-July 1, 2002.
My purpose in sending you this email is to provide some suggestions for how to ensure the success of your session. Many of you will be very experienced at being a discussant at an AIB conference; for others, this will be a first time experience. In either case, I hope you find these suggestions helpful.
If you have comments (criticisms, additions) please email me at leden@tamu.edu <mailto:leden@tamu.edu>. A revised version of these notes will be put on the AIB2002 website shortly, so I'd appreciate any suggestions for change, comments, etc.
1. GET ALL THE PAPERS, HANDOUTS AND PRESENTATION MATERIALS AHEAD OF TIME
Please check the details of your session by going to the AIB 2002 website and clicking on:
<https://www.aibworld.net/events/2002/advanceprog.pdf>.
A slightly older program, which includes Abstracts for all the papers, can be found at:
<https://www.aibworld.net/events/2002/proceedings.pdf>.
Please download the information for your session (you can COPY and PASTE the text into MS WORD) and pull together all the email addresses for everyone in the session.
I have already emailed all the session chairs, all the paper givers and all the presenters, asking them to collect the emails for, and send papers to, everyone on their panel. This means that you should be receiving emails from everyone on your session over the next couple of days. However, my advice is to "carpe diem" (don't wait, seize the day), assemble everyone's email address and email EVERYONE in your session.
Identify yourself as the discussant and request an electronic copy of all the papers, including an handouts and audio-visual presentations that the authors will have for the actual session. If you are going to be out of town or are leaving early for the conference, give a firm "due date" for receipt of the conference papers. You are under no obligation to discuss a paper that is given to you at the conference. You are, however, as discussant, under some obligation to make every reasonable attempt to get the papers from the authors ahead of time. Tell the papergivers that if you do not receive their paper by date X (somewhere before you fly to San Juan), you will not discuss them at the meetings and then hold firm to that date. This gives them a deadline to work towards and should ensure that you receive all of the papers before you leave for the conference.
2. THE ROLE OF A DISCUSSANT
The discussant has a critical role to play in a conference session. In many ways, it can be compared to the jobs of a trip guide, interpreter, critic and counsellor all wrapped up in one package. You have two key groups that have to be satisfied. First, you are responsible to the audience at the session. They see you as the person who can best provide a road map for research in this area and interpret the papers in the context of that road map. Second, you are responsible to the authors of the papers. They are looking for meaningful and constructive feedback on their papers. You have to do all of this in a very short period of time! What NEITHER group is looking for is for you to talk about YOUR OWN research. That is not the purpose of a discussant! Please retrain from treading down that path.
After the session is over, please do give the papergivers a copy of their papers, with your handwritten notes attached, along with a typed set of comments on the paper. This will make it easier for them to incorporate your comments into any subsequent revision of the paper.
The Academy of Management, at its 1999 conference, had a workshop on improving the effectiveness of AOM sessions. I attach below the specific suggestions they made for the role of discussant, which are quite detailed. I hope you find them useful.
3. EFFECTIVELY MANAGE YOUR PRESENTATION TIME
Almost all sessions are one and one-half hours (90 minutes) long. To figure out how much time you should have for your discussant comments, divide the number of presenters plus 2 (1 for the time used by the discussant and chair, and 1 for the time for Q&A; Harvey Arbelaez gave me this suggestion) into the total number of minutes. For example, if there are three presentations, 90/5 = 18 minutes each. In this case, plan for 15 minutes, so you have a bit of “wiggle room” in case you go a bit longer. If there are four presentations, 90/6 = 25 minutes each; plan for 12 minutes. Therefore, the rule of thumb for the paper givers is:
· Three papers: 15 minutes each paper
· Four papers: 12 minutes each paper
· Five papers: 10 minutes each paper
I assume the chair takes, at maximum, 2-3 minutes to simply introduce the session and the participants. You should therefore expect to have somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes for discussion.
4. MAKE A QUALITY PRESENTATION
You may want to prepare a short audio-visual presentation of your discussant comments, using an overhead projector or PowerPoint projector (see below). To figure out how many individual overheads you can reasonably present within your time slot, divide the number of minutes you have by two (that is, if you have 15 minutes, prepare no more than 7 or 8 overheads). (This suggestion is from Harvey Arbelaez.] Your overheads should be printed in a minimum of 18-20 point font (preferably ARIAL as it is easier to read from a distance) in order for your text to be seen from the audience. Do use color if you have access to a color printer. If you are using overheads, you might find it helpful to bring a few blank ones and an overhead marker with you to the conference, in case you want to make changes before the session.
The Academy of Management, at its 1999 conference, had a workshop on improving the effectiveness of AOM sessions. I attach below the specific suggestions they made in terms of WHAT TO present and WHAT NOT to present, in terms of the content of your presentation, which you may find useful.
5. THE AUDIO-VISUAL EQUIPMENT
There will be an Overhead Projector in each room. We also have access to a PowerPoint projector but you need to book it. If you want to use it during your session, please email your session chair and tell him/her NOW. Do not wait until the day of the session as it will not be available unless you request it early. The equipment is expensive so we will need to move it from room to room; please do not request the equipment unless you will use it.
Also, it is probably safer to bring “old technology” (overhead transparencies) than to rely on the PowerPoint projector.
6. OTHER SUGGESTIONS RE YOUR PRESENTATION
When I have chaired a session, I have found it helpful to ask the participants in my session to meet 10 minutes BEFORE the session starts so that everyone can be introduced, the equipment can be checked, handouts can be distributed, and so on. Please come early to your own session. At the very least, your arrival relieves the chair of the anxiety of worrying whether you are there or not. It also means the session can start on time.
It also helps to give your session chair and the participants your room number in the hotel, or a telephone number where you can be reached should an emergency occur. If that unwelcome emergency does occur and you cannot make the session, please let your session chair know ASAP as he/she will have to find another discussant (or, more likely, take on the role him/herself). Please also inform the AIB Registration Desk at the conference so the information can be passed along to me and to Arleen Hernandez, the Local Arrangements Chair. An email to aib2002@tamu.edu would also be very welcome.
7. NOTES ON SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO
We will be in San Juan during the summertime so it is bound to be hot. Here are the temperatures for June-July: Average High: 88°F, Average Low: 71 °F, Mean: 80 °F, Aeverage Rainfall: 6.7-7 inches, Record High: 95 °F (1995), Record Low: 55 °F (1994). While the hotel is, of course, air conditioned and there will be a breeze off the ocean, you may find it more comfortable to leave your dark wool suits at home and adopt the Caribbean dress code. I, as Program Chair, am going to take the initiative and recommend that everyone follow Barbara Bush's admonitions when she invites people to a semi-casual dinner: "please, no ties, no pantyhose"; that is, leave your formal, dark suits and ties at home! Bring "semi-casual Friday clothes"; that is, chinos, short-sleeved shirts or polo shirts, a light sports jacket for the evening (men may want bring a tie if you have a fancy dinner engagement in old San Juan).
Also, bring a bathing suit. The hotel has several swimming pools and you will want to take advantage of them. You may enjoy seeing photos of the Caribe Hilton, which I took during our Board meeting in mid-March. They are on the OFOTO website at:
<http://www.ofoto.com/I.jsp?m=14641726303&n=1858203664> .
To view the pictures, copy and paste this address into your internet browser. When you get to the home page of OFOTO, for the log-in, put: "aib2002@tamu.edu" and the password as "caribe". Don't buy any of the photos! You can right-click on any of them and save them to your desktop if you want copies.
The University of Puerto Rico has a website on the conference at: http://aib2002.uprrp.edu/. The website includes photos, maps, practical travel information, and lists of things to do. See: http://aib2002.uprrp.edu/Website/thingstodo_main.htm.
Some time ago, I also assembled a list of websites with information on Puerto Rico, that you might find it useful to peruse before your trip. They are up on the AIB 2002 website at: http://www.aibworld.net/events/2002/prinfo.htm.
UPR has arranged, through a local travel company, for some side-trips during and after the conference. You can find information on these in the draft Final Program, which is up on the web at: http://www.aibworld.net/events/2002/tourinfo.pdf. You can schedule tours outside of these times by emailing ahead of time to npadilla@destinationpuertorico.com. If you, for example, decide to go to see El Yunque (the rainforest), remember to bring closed toe shoes suitable for getting wet, sunscreen and a hat (particularly if you are not used to the tropical sun).
I look forward to seeing you all in San Juan!
With all best wishes,
Lorraine Eden
AIB Vice President and 2002 Program Chair
423B Wehner, TAMU 4221
Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843-4221 USA
Phone: 979/862-4053 Fax: 979/845-9641
Email: aib2002@tamu.edu
Website: http://aibworld.net/events/2002/index.htm
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The Role of the Discussant *
* Abstracted with permission from “Making AOM Sessions Exciting!” by Jing Zhou (Texas A&M) and Russ Coff (Emory). The report was based on an AOM workshop, August 8, 1999, Chicago, IL, where the panel members were the two co-authors of the report, Sally Blount-Lyon (Chicago), Michael H. Lubatkin (Connecticut), Karl Weick (Michigan) and Edward J. Zajac (Northwestern).
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· Discussant: Discussants should view their role as tying the papers together and engaging the audience in the session. It is not to do a stand-up critique of each paper individually.
Broadly, discussants should integrate the ideas and, at the same time, encourage audience interaction:
· DON'T do a standard stand-up 'reviewer' routine for each paper one at a time.
· Try to identify shared constructs, linked findings, and contradictory results that emerge across papers
· Try to identify on-going debates, themes, and puzzles within the topic domain and how the group of papers contributes to them.
· What future directions are suggested by the group of papers - are there any holes?
· Turn the task on the audience and facilitate a discussion on how to integrate or take the next steps.
Realistic job preview of discussant role
1. You'll get none of the papers in advance.
2. At the session there will be no time left for you to make your comments.
3. If there is time left, you'll be introduced as the person who will pull all of this together.
4. The audience wants you to sit down so they can ask their questions.
5. It's fun to do because you have a chance to spot connections and you don't have to scramble to write a quasi-paper during the December holidays to get a slot at the annual meeting.
The psychology of a symposium [Eden insert: substitute “session” for “symposium”.]
1. Participants want to publicize and call attention to an emerging body of neat stuff. Or they may want to talk to see if among them they may have stumbled onto some neat stuff. Or they want to clear the air on a contentious issue. Symposium is like a special issue of a journal.
2. Part of audience has come to see what speakers look like, some want to learn what all the fuss is about, some should be on the panel rather than in the audience, some have come to give moral support, some want to meet speaker afterward, and some are just tapped out on the convention and want a place to rest.
3. Safest assumption is that participants are thinking what they want to say and are not listening to others, at least not until they give their talk. Thus, the 1st speaker will have heard more of what is said than the 2nd, etc. The first speaker often has been at a different symposium than the last speaker. First speaker is more of an ally for discussant. Because participants are preoccupied with talking rather than listening, they will not have picked up on many connections between the papers. When the discussant mentions some obvious ones, which will usually be the first time the participants have thought of them.
4. Also, because listening may be very uneven, it is a huge help if discussant says what the core idea is in each paper. This is tough and risky. Many papers were written in haste and don't have a core idea (possible remark: “this overview touched on several timely issues but I want to discuss just one.”)
5. Participants and the audience as well want the discussant to give a context that makes sense of the papers, be enthusiastic about the work, and improve it by extending it and by making constructive replacements of poorer methods and arguments with better ones. Chances are you weren't their first choice as a discussant. Being a discussant is like being a book reviewer; it's an acquired taste and not a lot of people are eager to do it.
Building the commentary itself
1. Start a folder on the topic right away.
2. Act as if the proposal is all you'll know. Given that title, what might she say? That prediction will be an anchor for you to listen to what they do say.
3. Read their stuff multiple times. Each time you'll see something different because you will have had different intervening experiences and you are a different reader.
4. Have definitions of key terms. Authors may not do this. You can always say, these people are not talking about this phenomenon, as it is usually defined. It is usually defined as X. They ignore x1, and they add x1+n. Does that help them or not?
5. Sample leads
a. Do you realize who's in trouble if these people are right?
b. You can do even more with this argument than what we've heard here. For instance,…
c. Notice what these panelists didn't say. They could have asserted that X. They didn't. Why not?
d. The predominant citation in these papers is X. What if it had been Y?
e. We came to this symposium with assumptions that act as filters to determine our reactions to what we hear. There are at least four reactions people can have: That's absurd (deny assumption), that's interesting (disconfirm weak assumption), that's obvious (affirms assumptions), that's irrelevant (do not speak to assumptions). What is the pattern of reactions to what we have heard?
f. Given this topic, I expected these people to say X. Much to my surprise they said Y. What can we make of that?
1. Give each panelist a copy of your remarks. You've thought about their work more than most people. Leave your observations with them so that they can think about them in quieter times.
How to cope when you didn't get the papers in advance
1. Take notes on 2-column paper so you can write comments in left-hand column. “Remember when she said X. There is a body of data that are inconsistent with that.”
2. Write key phrases on post-its so can arrange sequence.
3. To get your bearings. Why did she title the paper this way? Is there a better title? Is this the correct sequence for these papers?
4. Draw audience in: “before we get to your questions, let me ask you in the audience to take on the role of discussant for the moment. What do you think are the big ideas we heard, what surprised you, what's controversial, what will you take away, what symposium should we propose next year?
5. Skim a recent newspaper prior to session. Something in it will have been relevant to the topic. “There is a certain timeliness to these presentations, at least judging from this item in today's NYT.”
Possible Questions
1. Should your discussion focus on individual papers and comment on each paper?
Ans. You probably will do this because it's an obvious way to organize the discussion. I usually do this because I like to point out really neat stuff that may have gone unnoticed. Also sometimes, due to time pressure, authors leave out good stuff. I like to use some of my time to put that material on the table. But, if you do go paper by paper, each author expects equal time and if you don't give equal time that feels evaluative (less discussion implies a poorer paper). What is really troublesome is that some papers, often good ones, are self-contained and there just isn't much to say about them. So the implied evaluation is precisely the opposite of the actual evaluation.
2. How to get audience involved?
Ans: That's a non-starter for me. I don't worry about that. They'll wade in when given a chance.
3. Isn't being a discussant just the same as being a manuscript reviewer?
Ans: Probably, but it shouldn't be. In symposium author has a chance to correct misperceptions of discussant right away. Mindset of discussant is not, show me why this is a major contribution to the literature. Mindset is, you wouldn't have put all this work into this topic unless you thought there was something important to be said. Let's be sure we talk about what that important thing is.
4. How do you make AoM sessions exciting?
Ans: My definition of “exciting” is a session in which motivated people prepare, do their homework, make a coherent argument within their allotted time, and have something interesting to say. For me that's “exciting”, in part because it is so rare. Here are particulars of how you make sessions exciting: 1) By people preparing for them rather than blowing them off. 2) By being engaged with the topic. 3) By having handouts so people can follow you, take notes, and follow-up. 4) By pointing out implications for teaching that people can put into use in a month when school starts. 5) By being enthusiastic about your topic. 6) By not taking yourself too seriously. 7) By staying within your time limits and organizing the presentation so that it coheres within those time constraints. 8) By having examples. 9) By knowing when you have an argument that needs to be studied closely, and keeping it out of an AoM session. 10) By reading your paper out loud before the session and smoothing out places where you stumble while speaking or where you run out of breath. 11) By telling people upfront, early why this IS an exciting session (turn the self-fulfilling prophecy to your advantage).
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