Career Achievement Awards

Distinguished Educator Award

Over the course of a career, award recipient has made significant contributions in one or more of the following areas:

• Developing doctoral students
• Teaching effectively
• Fostering pedagogical innovations
• Developing effective methods, structure, and design

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Distinguished Service Award

Over the course of a career, award recipient has made significant contributions in one or more of the following areas:

• Enhancing a field of study
• Founding or creatively editing a scholarly journal
• Unusually effective service to a major professional institution

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Distinguished Scholarly Contributions to Management Award

Over the course of a career, award recipient has made significant contributions in one or more of the following areas:

• Conceptual, empirical, or theoretical developments
• Creating and disseminating new knowledge
• Advancing management knowledge and practice

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Distinguished Scholar-Practitioner Award

Over the course of a career, award recipient has made significant contributions in one or more of the following areas:

• Successful application of theory or research in practice and/or contributed to knowledge through extraction of learning from practice
• Authored scholarly works which have substantively affected the practice of management
• Integration of research and practice
• Their work will be respected by peers (both practitioner and academic)

Preparing a nomination package:

• Review the award criteria (listed below).
• Notify the nominee.

Submitting a nomination package:

• All completed nomination packages must be received by the deadline to be considered for the 2026 Career Achievement Awards.
• The nomination package should include the following:
  • A letter of recommendation [no more than two pages] to the committee chair that specifically describes the person’s accomplishments in relation to the award criteria. The letter should clearly identify the award the person is being nominated for, and justify why the person deserves the award.
  • We encourage up to three [no more than three] letters of support for inclusion in the nomination package.
  • A resume, CV or brief bio for the nominee (can be pulled from faculty webpage or other online source).
  • Submit nominations packet to Michael McShane, AOM Governance Manager. Deadline for submissions is 15 May 2026.

Additional notes:

• Renewable nominations. Candidate pools for these lifetime achievement awards can be quite competitive, and nominators may wish to renew their nomination to the following year’s candidate pool in the event that their submitted candidate did not receive an award. In order to renew your nomination of a candidate, the nominator must update the cover letter to the relevant year and may update other relevant material or request that previous materials be used as-is.
• Award Eligibility. Recent recipients of the Career Achievement Awards (any of the four distinguished awards, within the last 5 years) are not eligible for consideration for the awards. Nominations received for a recent award recipient will be automatically rolled over to the nearest year of eligibility.
• Additional Information. The committee may follow up to request additional information from the nominator and/or nominee during the selection process.
• Notification. Selected award recipients will be notified by mid-July of the nomination year. Award recipients may be asked to provide 1-4 image files (head shots, etc.) for promotional use and recognition.

• Sherry M.B. Thatcher (Chair), University of Tennessee, Knoxville
• Julio De Castro, IE University
• Ingrid Fulmer, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Luis Gomez-Mejia, Arizona State University
• Michael Hitt, Texas A&M University​