Research that Matters in an Age of Disruption: Preface to the Tenth International Conference on Engaged Management Scholarship

The Tenth International Conference on Engaged Management Scholarship (EMS 2020) was hosted virtually by Case Western Reserve University on September 10 - 14, 2020. It brought together doctoral students, alumni, and faculty from executive DBA programs as well as organizational managers and leaders to accelerate engaged management research and evidence-based management to share and strengthen multi-disciplinary applied research. It celebrates the 10th anniversary of such annual conferences hosted by EDBAC schools around the world. The inaugural event in 2010 was held at Case Western Reserve University. The conference theme, "Research That Matters in an Age of Disruption," highlights the growing need for practitioner-scholarship to address and understand ongoing disruptions created by climate change, growing social inequalities, digital technologies and new realities of the geo-political environment. During the planning of the conference yet another driver of disruption emerged - that of pandemic, specifically the COVID-19 pandemic which is shifting the values, business plans and processes, and geopolitical dynamics on a fast and unprecedented scale. The call of the conference is to review how engaged management scholars can make a difference through their research and involvement in a world fraught with significant economic, social, and global challenges. It appreciates scholarship that is future forming, through research and theory-building that seeks to shape awareness, decision models, and associated institutional policies and actions that underlie today’s businesses. Building future-fit scholarship is viewed as a collective affair, where each adjacent innovation—whether in theories or practices—adds to the number of achievable innovations and change. Such action research programs build on Kenneth Gergen’s idea for Generative Theory proposed over forty years ago.