Dirk Lindebaum is a Senior Professor at Grenoble Ecole de Management and a Visiting Professor at the University of Alberta School of Business. He currently serves as an Associate Editor of Academy of Management Learning & Education, and beginning July 2023, will begin accepting manuscripts as editor-in-chief.

Dirk obtained his PhD from Manchester Business School and has been a member of AOM since 2010. He is currently part of the Organization and Management Theory and Critical Management Studies Divisions. He is curious about “values” as meta-theme in his research, particularly in relation to theory building, learning, technology, and emotions at work. His work regularly appears in journals of international distinction, and he is the author of the book Emancipation Through Emotion Regulation at Work. 

Despite his theoretical pursuits, the practical relevance of his research is regularly recognized in news outlets, such as the Financial Times, New York Times, BBC Radio 5 Live, Wirtschaftswoche, Daily Mail, Independent, and Bloomberg Businessweek. Additionally, he has published several practitioner-focused articles in MIT Sloan Management Review, one of which has been accepted into the Honor Roll of the Responsible Research in Business and Management network (RRBM), a distinction that his research serves the greater good. 

Dirk answered a few questions about his career trajectory and vision for AMLE below.  

How would you describe your career path? 

It was anything but linear, from carpentry to degrees in civil engineering and project management, to finally a PhD in Organizational Psychology. I have waved goodbye to these earlier interests as my concentration increasingly turned to values as a meta-theoretical theme in relation to theory building, technology, emotions at work and learning. It’s safe to say that following my interest has always been the leitmotif in my research, and where it takes me in the long-term remains to be seen. But I find this exhilarating rather than discomforting.  

What inspired you to become an editor? 

In today’s academic environment, incentives used by institutions tend to emphasize individual outputs. Being first an associate editor, and now the incoming editor-in-chief at AMLE, enables something very different, namely, to create conditions of possibility for a community of management learning and education researchers to develop their work in cooperation with the editorial and reviewer team through peer-review. Beyond that, what really enthuses me is the ability to curate diverse MLE scholarship, and to influence debates in ways that equip us better to deal with the pressing theoretical and practical challenges in our field and our time. 

What is your vision for AMLE? 

I envision a future for the journal where its legitimacy is enhanced through the quality of studies published. The way I see that happening is through ‘raising the theoretical bar’, which in turn should enable authors to articulate clear, targeted, and actionable recommendations for practice. This vision is enthusiastically shared by the new editorial team and has been shared with members of the new editorial review board to inform future reviews.  

What advice would you give someone looking to become involved with volunteering within AMLE? 

Don’t be shy to get involved as a reviewer or author.  Dare to care about AMLE and the community of scholars that it serves. Great things can happen when people who care for something come together. My very first article was published in AMLE. Later, I started as an ad-hoc reviewer, then became a member of the editorial review board. And having received multiple best reviewer awards for AMLE, one day Paul Hibbert queried if I would be interested in becoming an AE for AMLE. The rest is, well, history…. 

As a scholar, how do you see yourself shaping the future of management?   

The future is here already, at least in terms of how AI and ChatGPT not only affect processes and outcomes at work and in wider society, but actually shape reality. When technology shapes reality, it is vitally important to understand what kind of design assumptions are at play, whose assumptions and values inform the design of the technology, what outcomes can be observed from that, and who is affected by these outcomes. These are the questions that preoccupy me right now, and they provide the fuel to keep me going and write academic and practitioner-focused essays , even against the techno-enthusiasm that dominates academic and public debates right now.

AMLE’s mission is to contribute to management learning and education by publishing theory, empirical research, reviews, critiques, and resources that address the processes of management teaching and the learning that results from it. Additionally, AMLE publishes work that addresses important issues in the institutional environment and administration of business schools and their stakeholders. The journal’s emphasis is on the study of management learning and education in all types of settings—schools and universities as well as businesses and public and non-profit organizations. Learn more about AMLE.

This is part of a member spotlight series highlighting incoming AOM journal editors.  

Learn more about 2023’s incoming editors here.