JACKSON, Tenn. — Nov. 13, 2009 — Union graduate and business professor Emily Lean received the 2009 Academy of Management Best Paper Award at the Academy of Management annual meeting in Chicago in August.
The Academy of Management is an international association which publishes the journal Academy of Management Perspectives six times a year, then picks one article from the year to be awarded the Best Paper Award.
Lean, instructor of business and a 2003 Union graduate, said about 6,000 articles per year are submitted and the journal has an acceptance rate of less than 10 percent. After they are accepted, the papers go through the process of being reviewed multiple times until the editors choose the articles to be published in the journals.
鈥淭his is the award of all awards,鈥� said Keith Absher, dean of the McAfee School of Business Administration at Union. 鈥淭his is the big time. There鈥檚 not any other award that can compare to this as far as scholarly activity is concerned.鈥�
Previous award winners have come from Stanford University, IBM, Microsoft, Boston University, Dartmouth College, Texas A&M, Penn State and HEC University of Geneva (Switzerland).
鈥淚 was happy for Union because I could bring that award back and put their name up there on the list of prestigious universities,鈥� Lean said.
The paper, which Lean co-wrote, was about the effects of domestic violence in the workplace.
鈥淎s a manager, if you have an employee who comes in and you can tell they have been abused you can鈥檛 ignore that,鈥� Lean said. 鈥淏ut then, how do you deal with it?鈥�
In the paper, Lean said the proper procedure is for a manager to refer an abused person to a local shelter or a counseling service, but not to get involved because it is unsafe.
The findings from this work have been presented in Honolulu, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago and New York.