RISE Conference

Revisiting the reward and motivation systems

The human person is intrinsically social. Companies, administrations, and associations cannot reform, transform, or reveal their potential while adopting erroneous theories that reduce the human drive to self-interest. Organizations are anthropological fields. They are the engine of value creation and the source of income for society. Their performance is contingent on the amount of intelligence, experience, and education of the workforce, but also the social connections. Economic motivation intertwines with sociological, psychological, and aesthetic cues.

Citizens, workers, and managers are highly social beings, yet self-interest is pervasive in reward systems. Reward systems have been blindsided by the doctrine that workers are only motivated by their self-interest and the misconception that friendly, agreeable workplaces provide well-being. They fail to read the interest of human nature in the fortune of others.

Neuroscience has demonstrated that far less self-interested than commonly thought. It has shown beyond the shadow of a doubt that material well-being is transient. Being respected and valued are social rewards that the human brain experiences exactly like material rewards. Lacking respect, recognition, and being left out is experienced like physical pain. It has also shown that caring for and giving to others, supporting fellow workers, volunteering, having friends, seeing neighbors, and other social goods, have more impact on the productivity of people than self-interested reward. Well-being in the workplace requires psychologically safe environments which allow decoding one’s and others’ motivations and acting upon them.

Incorporating the social dimensions with the economic dimension brings psychological safety and well-being to the people and enhances the organizational bottom line. 1 Reward systems have blindsided this phenomenon and disregarded care, or outright pitched people against each other. There are certainly some contexts in which financial incentives increase performance, but there are others in which money actually produces small or no performance improvements. Increasing productivity is about optimizing individual intelligence and hard work through social connections in the organization.

Recognition, certainty, empowerment, belongingness, and fairness have demonstrable effects on the bottom line. Enhancing those factors is a low-cost and efficient strategy to improve workplace outcomes. Reward systems are also contingent on cultural differences. Being likable to others is deprecated as conformity in a certain mindset while in others it is praised as harmony. Impersonal prosociality is more valued and guilt is stronger in individualistic communities, while shame is more punishing and interpersonal prosociality is more valued in kin-based societies.

The conference committee invites papers and workshops that tackle improving the quality of management in general, and the reward system in particular.

The committee favors practice-oriented papers and invites scholars, consultants, practitioners, and doctoral students to submit their abstracts before June 30, and their full papers before August 15, 2023. See timeline and submission types and guidelines below.

Submission guidelines

Manuscripts should follow the APA 7th edition style, not exceed 35 pages all-inclusive, be double-spaced, and use the font “times new roman 12”.

• Two separate word documents should be submitted:
  
• A title page that includes the title of the article, the author(s) name(s), their affiliation(s), and their full contact details.
• An anonymous manuscript that does not mention the authors’ details.
• Submitting authors are invited to review at least one manuscript.

All submissions involve a commitment to register and participate in RISE 2023

Presentations during the conference should not exceed 7min each.

Types of Submissions

A. Paper Submissions

We invite submissions that fit any of the nine categories below. You should indicate directly in

the submission, beside the abstract, the type of submission you choose.

1. Conceptual Papers

These are papers with a focus on theoretical, conceptual, philosophical, or methodological

development and contribution to the field of consulting.

2. Empirical Papers

These are fully developed based on empirical analyses with practical and theoretical implications

for management consulting.

3. Application Papers

These are the results of scholarly work applied to practices or, in reverse, where practitioners

demonstrate that their practices were used to enhance academic work.

4. Practice Reflection Papers

Short, well-developed papers about new trends, observations, policy assessment, implications,

and critical topical issues as recorded and interpreted by management practitioners across the

societal, public, and private sectors.

5. Dissertation Reviews

This allows graduates, doctoral students, and candidates to engage and write a short paper about

their dissertations focusing on the empirical and theoretical findings and implications for the

management consulting field.

6. Case Studies

Case studies provide reports based on an in-depth analysis of one organization or an in-depth

study using a comparative inquiry of two organizations to generate a conclusion that might

become useful to similar organizations in the same industry or sector.

7. Field Reports

These are the results of methodological documentation and analyzes of observed phenomena,

people, places, events, behaviors, and processes to identify solutions for problems of practice.

8. Poster Presentations

This allows submitters to present their research ideas, conceptual frameworks, research

questions, problems of practice, research methodologies, work in progress and study plan,

etc. The goal of the poster session is to provide feedback that helps the authors to further develop

their research studies.

The poster submission consists of an extended abstract (1.5 pages maximum) formatted in

Research Object, Question, Hypothesis, Theoretical Framework, Methodology Used, Results or

Expected Results. Accepted poster presenters will be required to present three slides maximum,

5 minutes per panelist. The poster session will appear in the RISE program as a regular

submission.

9. Symposia

This allows all scholars, including researchers, practitioners, and industry executives who are

experts on a particular topic in management consulting, to present and deliver their opinions and

viewpoints.

B. Workshop Submissions

10. Professional Development Workshop

The Professional Development Workshop (PDW) is a unique occasion to create an interaction

between participants and experienced presenters around topics of practical importance.

PDW proposals must include the workshop title, full description of the workshop, activities,

roles, and time requirements for the session (shorter workshops are preferred). The proposal

must identify the proposal submitter(s), workshop chair(s), and presenter(s), including their

names, contact information, phones, email addresses, and affiliations. Each workshop should

present at most two chairs or co-chairs and at most five presenters/panelists/discussants.

11. Doctoral Consortium

The doctoral consortium is a subset of the PDW. It provides a venue for collegial interactions

among doctoral students and unique access to senior scholar-practitioners who make their

expertise available to students.

12. Caucuses

These are planned by authors as informal discussion sessions. Submissions are no more than two

pages in length, detailing the idea(s) to discuss by members with shared interests.