Information on the conference:
While remote work is here to stay, organizations have responded dramatically differently to it. Many organizations have accepted remote work opportunities in some form. Other organizations, though, have assertively pursued return-to-office (RTO) mandates, even for remote-capable jobs, pitting managers against employees and fostering an “us vs them” mentality among employee groups who are loathe to give up the gains in work-life balance, general well-being, and working flexibility. Remote work technology is widely available, and generally, remote workers have shown high quality work outcomes. Why do so many managers resist remote work? How can we understand recent RTO requirements, especially among companies with huge workforces, often distributed geographically, with access to the best technologies, like Amazon, Starbucks, and PwC? In this talk, Kathy will share recent remote work vs RTO practices among companies, describing why no group of employees has been more challenged by remote work than line and middle managers. Remote work has revealed that management practice assumes the phenomenological principle of “being there” day-by-day and has not been modified for remote workers in helpful ways. Using a seminal management skills framework, Kathy walks through specific gaps between remote and in-person management practices, suggesting practical ways in which managers of remote workers must modify their skill set to support their employees.
Bio:
Kathy Lund Dean is Professor of Management and holds the Board of Trustees Distinguished Chair in Leadership & Ethics at Gustavus Adolphus College, Minnesota, USA. Kathy’s research covers two major arenas: examining how organizational shocks or interruptions impact managerial practice, and assessing research, practice, and ethical aspects within experiential pedagogy. Most recently, Kathy’s research has explored reasons why managers resist remote work so strongly, resulting in widespread return-to-office mandates. Recent experiential pedagogy work examines executive education learning gains when using very compressed, immersive, and emotionally significant learning activities.
Books include The Ethical Professor: A Practical Guide to Research, Teaching and Professional Life (2018; Chinese translation 2022) and Course Design & Assessment (2022), part of Elgar’s “Teaching Methods in Business” series. Her new book, How to Become An Effective Editor of a Scholarly Journal: A Guide to Developing Authors was published in 2024, part of Elgar’s “How To” series.
Kathy was an editor at the Journal of Management Education for 19 years and co-founded/ co-edited Management Teaching Review. She serves on the editorial review board of Journal of Management Education, Journal of Management Inquiry, British Management Journal, and Academy of Management Learning & Education. As a Fulbright Specialist, she helped faculty in under-represented regions and institutions develop their scholarship, engaging scholars in Japan, Malawi, and South Africa. Kathy holds joint appointments as honorary professor at the University of St. Andrews, UK and adjunct professor at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
Kathy actively engages with local government decision-making processes and inclusion best practices. As a certified mediator and a Minnesota Courts Rule 114 qualified neutral, Kathy leverages early collaborative conflict resolution strategies among community and municipal leaders to improve service outcomes and enhance leadership capacity.
