Dear Members of the Management History Division,
Dear colleagues and friends in management, business, and organization history,
As we enter the new year, I would like to extend my warmest wishes to all of you for a happy, healthy, and fulfilling year ahead. I also want to take this opportunity to reflect, in a transparent and substantive way, on what we have accomplished together over the past period and on the direction in which the Management History Division is now heading.
Over the last eighteen months, the Division has pursued a clear and ambitious agenda: to strengthen our community, expand participation, improve transparency and trust, foster year-round scholarly engagement, and significantly increase the visibility and voice of management history within and beyond the Academy of Management. Thanks to the collective commitment of officers, volunteers, ambassadors, and many engaged members, we have been delivering on all the priorities outlined in our action plan.
One of the most visible transformations has been in how we communicate. In mid-2024, MHD’s communication was fragmented and largely confined to the period around the Annual Meeting. At that time, the Division had 143 LinkedIn followers and had published only 13 posts in eight months, with very limited engagement. Today, we operate a continuous, structured, and data-informed communication system centered on AoM Connect and LinkedIn. Between August 2024 and November 2025, our LinkedIn following grew to 2,781 followers—an increase of more than 1,800%—placing MHD among the most visible divisions in the Academy despite our relatively small membership base. Over the same period, we published more than 340 posts and generated nearly 7,000 engagements. Communication is no longer limited to announcements, but now includes regular scholarly content, calls for papers, historical reflections, member spotlights, and live coverage of Division activities. Internally, AoM Connect has been reorganized with clear tagging (“From the Division”), faster moderation, and streamlined email settings, enabling timely, transparent, and coordinated communication throughout the year.
We have also moved decisively toward sustained, year-round scholarly engagement. Since December 2024, the Division has organized multiple virtual initiatives, including paper development workshops (i.e., three) and research-focused webinars. Our first Virtual Paper Development Workshop drew submissions from various regions and featured three papers, each of which was discussed in depth. This initiative expanded in 2025 into a broader Virtual Workshop Series, which included sessions on research funding strategies and preparing submissions for the Annual Meeting (32 presentations in total). All events were recorded, captioned, and archived, ensuring accessibility across time zones. These initiatives reflect a clear shift: MHD is no longer active only once a year, but provides continuous intellectual support to its members.
Inclusivity and leadership development have been equally central. In 2025, we launched a Volunteer Programme to create meaningful opportunities for engagement beyond formal leadership roles. We received 13 applications from across multiple continents and retained 9 volunteers for short- and medium-term roles supporting communication, programming, and governance. In parallel, we initiated an Ambassador program designed to strengthen connections with underrepresented regions; now, we have four ambassadors. These efforts are complemented by open, transparent calls for service and leadership positions, which are now systematically advertised on AoM Connect and LinkedIn, with clear timelines and regular reporting back to members.
We have also invested in strengthening governance and trust. Executive Committee meetings are now structured, regularly minuted, and documented; conflict-of-interest procedures are enforced for all selection processes; a leadership climate survey is conducted on a six-month basis; ombuds training is provided to all executives; and progress updates are shared with members on a recurring basis. These measures are not merely procedural. They are part of a broader commitment to ensuring that MHD operates in a fair, accountable, and transparent manner, aligned with AoM best practices and responsive to member concerns.
A further milestone was the renewal of the Division’s visual identity. What began as a requirement to align with updated AoM branding standards evolved into a participatory process involving thematic analysis of our domain statement, multiple design iterations with AoM headquarters, and two rounds of member voting on AoM Connect and LinkedIn. The resulting logo—approved by AoM in mid-2025—captures the Division’s intellectual core: human agency, historical scholarship, the centrality of time, technological evolution, and scientific rigor. The process itself reinforced our commitment to transparency, inclusivity, and shared ownership.
In parallel, several important initiatives are already underway and are expected to come to fruition in the coming months. We are currently restructuring the Division’s website to make it more coherent, accessible, and informative, so that it better reflects who we are as a scholarly community and serves as a stable reference point for both members and external audiences. This includes consolidating previously fragmented materials and systematically populating our webpages with a complete record of past award winners, Division leadership, and service roles—an essential step to preserve institutional memory, recognize contributions, and strengthen continuity over time. At the same time, we are actively working on building partnerships with other scholarly associations and selected organizations at both national and international levels, with the aim of expanding our networks, increasing the visibility of management history, and creating new opportunities for joint events, outreach, and collaboration. Together, these ongoing efforts signal that the Division’s renewal is not a one-off achievement, but a sustained process focused on long-term infrastructure, credibility, and impact.
Looking ahead, our focus shifts from transformation to consolidation and depth. The coming period will be dedicated to sustaining year-round engagement, further strengthening international and interdisciplinary collaboration, expanding mentorship and leadership development—especially for early-career scholars—and continuing to embed inclusivity, transparency, and reflexivity into all our activities. We will also continue to position management history as an essential lens for understanding contemporary organizational challenges, particularly in a world shaped by technological change, uncertainty, and complex social demands.
Above all, the future of the Management History Division depends on you—your ideas, your participation, and your willingness to engage, mentor, question, and collaborate. MHD is not just a division; it is a community built on shared intellectual curiosity, mutual respect, and a commitment to understanding how the past informs the present and the future of management.
Thank you for your trust, your energy, and your passion for management history. I very much look forward to continuing this journey together in the year ahead.
With my very best wishes,
Matteo Cristofaro
Division Chair, Management History Division
Academy of Management
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Pier Luigi Giardino
Executive Communication Director, AoM MH Division
University of Trento
Italy
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