President’s Message – Fall 2023 SiGNAL

Greetings IACM community,

It was wonderful to see so many of you at our International Association for Conflict Management Conference this past summer in Thessaloniki, Greece. It turned out to be such a professionally and personally engaging conference with 375 people registered. It was one of the largest of our IACM conferences, and our membership numbers are healthy, approaching 400 members.

We had many wonderful events at the conference, including numerous intellectually stimulating sessions, a celebration of Don Conlon’s Mentorship Award, and the Doctoral Student Workshop sponsored by the Conflict Management Division (CMD) of the Academy of Management. We have many people to thank, including the immense efforts of Nicholas Hayes (Program Chair), Brandon Charpied (Executive Director), and the IACM Board (Niro Sivanthan, Rachel Campagna, Siyu Yu, Scott Wiltermuth, and Linda Putnam). Also, special thanks to Deborah Cai, Michael Gross, and Laura Rees for organizing the second edition of the Doctoral Student Workshop.

In addition to the conference’s academic and professional aspects, it offered meaningful personal experiences that strengthened the bonds among attendees. Many of you had the opportunity to participate in our special events, which included guided tours of Thessaloniki, dinner at a local taverna with live music, wine-tasting at a nearby winery with a lecture about the wine industry, and a memorable trip to Mount Olympus with an invigorating swim in the Aegean Sea. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to Evita Psoni and Illias Kapoutsis for their invaluable assistance in planning these exceptional events.

We also want to express our gratitude to our wonderful sponsors: The Dispute Resolution Research Center at the Kellogg School of Management, Columbia University Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Program, Athens University of Economics and Business, Carnegie Mellon University Library Publishing Service, iDecisionGames, and McGraw Hill for their support. Additionally, we want to thank the sponsors of our student fellowships and activities: the Negotiation and Team Resources Institute, the Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity at Columbia University, and the Conflict Management Division of the Academy of Management.

Our upcoming conference is scheduled to take place in Asia from June 23-26, 2024, where we will convene at INSEAD in Singapore for the 37th Annual IACM meeting. The call for paper submissions will be announced soon by this year’s program chair, Simone Tang. We are already diligently planning special events and sessions and look forward to sharing updates with you in the near future. A special thanks goes to Roderick Swaab from INSEAD and David Daniels from the National University of Singapore for their planning efforts, ensuring that every participant will have a memorable and unique experience while exploring and learning about conflict management in Southeast Asia.

Beyond our annual conference, IACM remains engaged with its membership throughout the year through various initiatives. Our fundraising efforts for the “Donate to the Campaign for the Future of IACM” have yielded significant success. The rationale behind this campaign is to ensure the prosperity of the next generation of conflict management scholars by annually hosting a doctoral workshop, providing support for graduate student travel, and nurturing the professional development of emerging scholars. Up to this point, IACM has relied on external funding to sustain these activities, and these funds are limited. You can view the progress of this campaign at https://iafcm.org/campaign-for-the-future-of-iacm/ and our wonderful donors on our donor wall at https://iafcm.org/donor-wall/.

We also continue to host the IACM virtual seminar series (https://iafcm.org/vss), and we express our gratitude to Jessica Li and Siyu Yu for their ongoing efforts in organizing these seminars. I thoroughly enjoyed the seminars, which covered diverse topics ranging from the importance of having ombuds within organizations, as shared by our new Ombudsperson, Natalie Gibson, to Ryan Fehr’s insights on ‘Gratitude at Work,’ and Jackson Lu’s valuable career advice for young scholars on managing their academic careers.

Furthermore, our commitment to advancing cutting-edge research in negotiations and conflict management remains evident in IACM’s journal, Negotiation and Conflict Management Research. We extend our thanks to Jimena Ramirez Marin, NCMR’s Associate Editor, for her dedication to advancing this outstanding journal, which is a Platinum Open Access (OA) journal committed to promoting open science.

After extensive effort, the IACM leadership has also now finalized a comprehensive policy and guidelines that outline rules and expectations for professional conduct. This is a pivotal step, aligning with the practices adopted by many associations, aimed at safeguarding the association and its members. We extend our sincere appreciation to the task force members who contributed to this significant work: Taya Cohen (IACM Past President), Laurie Weingart (IACM Fellow), Zoe Barsness (IACM Past-President), Peter Carnevale (IACM Fellow and Advisory Council Past-Chair), William Hall, and Brandon Charpied (IACM Executive Director). You can access the finalized code of conduct at https://iafcm.org/iacm-professional-conduct-policy/

Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to Brandon Charpied, our Executive Director, Tony Kong, the SiGNAL Editor, and McKenzie Rees, our Secretary, for their ongoing dedication and service. I also want to extend my heartfelt appreciation to our departing Board of Directors members, Board Representatives Niro Sivanthan and Rachel Campagna, as well as our Advisory Council Chair, Linda Putnam. As we bid them farewell, I am thrilled to welcome Julia Bear as our President-Elect and Nazli Bhatia and Einav Hart as new additions as our Board Representatives. We have ambitious plans ahead, and I am excited to work together to achieve them!

I wish everyone an amazing remainder of the year and look forward to continuing our interactions with you until our next gathering in Singapore during the summer of 2024.

Best regards,

Cynthia Wang

IACM President