Peter Bamberger Wraps Up Successful Run as AOM President

At the 85th Academy of Management Annual Meeting, held in late July in Copenhagen, Denmark, Peter Bamberger, ’82, M.S. ’84, Ph.D. ’90, both literally and figuratively, “passed the gavel,” ending his run as president of the world’s largest professional association for management and organization scholars. He will spend the next year officially serving as past president. 

Bamberger has led the Academy of Management (AOM), a global community with more than 22,000 members, since 2022. 

During his time at the helm, Bamberger focused on three areas: internationalization; shifting the organization from a “conference” organization to a 24/7, year-round platform organization; and leveraging the evidence-based content published in AOM’s journals to enhance the field’s real-world impact and relevance.

“Even though the Academy of Management has always been global, it was largely focused on serving its members in North America and Western Europe, doing little to develop scholarship in other parts of the world, particularly the Global South,” said Bamberger, who serves as the research director of the ILR School’s Smithers Institute. 

“So, one of the things our leadership team started pushing was really building tighter relationships with AOM’s affiliates outside of Western Europe through institutional membership efforts aimed at jointly developing future scholars and facilitating collaboration with members in other countries. For example, in Eastern Europe, the Balkan countries, and China, we signed agreements with those local affiliates, allowing us to work together to truly boost the quality of research and teaching in those countries.”

Thanks to the efforts of Bamberger and his leadership team, the AOM has already seen a 10% increase in membership and projections show that membership could exceed 30,000 within the next four to five years. 

Building on this internationalization initiative, this summer’s conference in Copenhagen was the first time the annual meeting was ever held outside the United States. It was also the first time that one conference center accommodated all the attendees. 

“Usually, we get between nine and 10,000 people at our conference, but this year we had over 13,000. It was huge,” Bamberger said. “Normally, the academy is spread out, with each division running its program in a different hotel. So, you could be in the HR division and never, ever meet up with someone from the entrepreneurship division. In Copenhagen, everyone was together.” 

Moreover, AOM has shifted its decades-old tradition of holding its annual meeting in the United States. According to Bamberger, “meetings have already been scheduled for Toronto, London and Amsterdam, with plans in the works for meetings in Latin America and Asia.”

Summing up his experience, Bamberger noted, “It’s been an immense honor to serve on the leadership team of the Academy, not to mention incredibly rewarding personally to have had the opportunity to set and execute a strategy aimed at expanding the science and ensuring that our evidence-based insights have real-world, practical impact.”