Women in the Academy of International Business 2011 Conference Report

Citation

(2012), "Women in the Academy of International Business 2011 Conference Report", International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship, Vol. 4 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijge.2012.40904aaa.001

Women in the Academy of International Business 2011 Conference Report

Article Type: Conference report From: International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship, Volume 4, Issue 1

Practitioner Section

Outgoing President, Janet Murray, outlined the tremendous success enjoyed by Women in the Academy of International Business (WAIB) as the group distributed WAIB pins to celebrate its tenth anniversary at the 2011 AIB Conference held in Nagoya, Japan in July 2011. A record 250 attended the three WAIB panels, reception and meeting at the annual conference, and with 216 new members joining in the past year, it seems the group is set to go from strength to strength.

This year the three panels discussed themes such as “Perspectives from women at different points in their careers” which took a lifelong, lifecycle approach to discussing women’s career development and sustainability. A second panel, “Women in business: challenges and opportunities” which discussed critical issues facing women in business, was also very well attended. The third panel celebrated the life and work of Susan P. Douglas of Stern Business School, New York University. Unfortunately, Susan passed away in January 2011 and panellists made personal and poignant contributions about the impact Susan had on the field and on their lives.

For the fourth year, Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) sponsored two Best Paper Awards which were adjudged by Udo Zander (SSE) and Ulf Andersson (Copenhagen Business School). The SSE/WAIB Best Paper for Increased Gender Awareness in International Business Research was awarded to Raj Aggarwal and John W. Goddell, University of Akron for their paper entitled: “Explaining international variations in pension plan wealth redistribution: important roles of gender, culture, and inequality”. The authors received US$1,000 from SSE, a plaque from WAIB, and an invitation from Emerald Publishing to submit their paper to Gender in Management. The runner-up paper in this category, “Misery loves microfinance sometimes: a cross-national investigation of patriarchal logics and the emergence of microfinance organizations” by Eric Yanfei Zhao and Tyler Wry of the University of Alberta, received a WAIB Certificate of Recognition.

For the third year, Emerald Publishing and the International Journal of Gender and Entrepreneurship (IJGE) sponsored the “Emerald IJGE/WAIB Annual Emerging Scholar Award in Women’s Entrepreneurship”. The judging panel comprised Professor Colette Henry (IJGE editor), Martyn Lawrence and Matthew Burton (Emerald Publishing), and Janet Y. Murray (WAIB President). This year’s award was made to the paper entitled, “The effects of resources and competence on growth of women owned businesses: a study of two countries” by Chun Guo, Sacred Heart University and Crystal Jiang and Sam Beldona of Bryant University. The authors of the winning paper received a cash award of US$500 from Emerald Publishing, a plaque from WAIB, and a complimentary subscription to IJGE 2011.

WAIB certainly seems to be enjoying a period of growth and development and the new President for 2011-2013, Joan Mileski, is taking the reins at a very exciting time. The AIB Conference in 2012 will be held in Washington, DC, USA from June 30 to July 4, 2011.