Nordic Academy of Management (NAM)
A Strong Northern Neighbor

1. Board Membership

Denmark

Kai Kristensen, Handelshøyskolen i Aarhus (until October 2005)

Jan Mouritsen, Handelshøyskolen i Kjøbenhavn (until May 2007)

Peder Skærbæk, Handelshøyskolen i Kjøbenhavn (from May 2007)

Finland:

Malin Brannback, Åbo Akademi

Eero Vaara, Svenska Handelshøgskolan i Helsingfors (until May 2007)

Wilhelm Barner-Rasmussen, Svenska Handelshøgskolan i Helsingfors (from May 2007)

Iceland:

Runolfur Smari Steinthorsson, Islands Universitet (chair until October 2006)

Norway:

Frøystein Gjesdal, Norges Handelshøyskole (chair from October 2006)

Frode Mellemvik, Handelshøyskolen i Bodø

Sweden:

Maria Bengtsson, Universitetet i Umeå

Rolf Solli, Gothenburg Research Institute

Editor of Scandinavian Journal of Management:

Janne Tienari, Lappeenrannan teknillinen yliopisto, Finland

IFSAM Council members (current):

Rolf Lundin, Internationella Handelshøgskolan, Sverige

Frøystein Gjesdal, Norges Handelshøyskole

The board has had six meetings during the period.

2. Membership

NFF currently has 110 individual members and 10 institutional members. The number of participants at the conference in Bergen is close to 300. The next conferences will be in Turku (2009) and Gothenburg (2011).

3. Organization

Marianne Risberg retired as secretary of NFF effective December 31. 2005. The board would like to thank Marianne Risberg for her support of NFF for many years. The Board decided to move the business office from Copenhagen to Turku and entered into an agreement with Åbo Akademi to supply administrative services to NFF from 2006 - 2010. Tuija-Liisa Pohja will serve as NFF coordinator in a 50 % position. The coordinator will be responsible for maintaining membership register and archives, collect dues and keep accounts. She will also in cooperation with the Board develop and maintain the new NFF website (www.nordicacademy.org) which in the future will be the most important information channel for NFF. The move from Copenhagen to Turku has been completed smoothly.

The Board has decided to update the statutes of the NFF, and a proposal for changes in the statutes will be put before the membership in Bergen. The Board’s proposal will introduce some further structure to the organizational processes. The Board would like to thank Eero Vaara for his work on preparing the new statutes.

4. The Winter conference

The major innovation in the current two-year period has been the introduction of the Winter Conference as a meeting place in addition to the biannual conference. This conference will be a smaller and more focussed meeting to be held every other year when there is no main conference. The first Winter Conference was organized by the University of Umeaa in March 2006 and was a great success. The theme of the conference was “Perspectives on Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability”. Around 50 abstracts were submitted. The next winter conference will be held in Reykavik in 2008.

5. Challenges

The NFF was originally started as a regional meeting place for academic researchers and teachers in management. As the field has grown and specialization has developed, the competition from more specialized international academic associations has become more intense. The NFF Board believes very strongly there also in the future will be an important role for regional organizations such as the NFF. The Board further believes that NFF should remain a broad association embracing management academics of all specializations. To this end actions that may narrow the scope of NFF should be avoided. On the other hand NFF could have a role to play in facilitating more specialized Nordic cooperation in the various fields of management.