Charlie, thanks for asking this question. I actually came into the Academy of Management from another field. My background is in the field of spirituality, and my scholarship had been focused on spirituality and organizational leadership for a number of years. Friends (Rita Weathersby and Jim McGee) had told me I should get involved in the Academy of Management, because there was more interest there in my topic, in the new MSR group, than there was in the American Academy of Religion, which had been my primary academic home. So I submitted a paper to the MSR group in 2001. It was an overview of the field (like the article you mention below; I seem to be drawn to overviews of the field). My paper was accepted and Lee Robbins sent me reviewers' comments to help me improve the paper. I found the comments very helpful, reworked the paper, and presented it. It was great fun for me to meet, in the audience, many of the people I quoted and mentioned in the paper. I had entered a community of others who cared about the same weird (in some people's mind) mixture of things that I cared about. ________________________________________ From: Management, Spirituality & Religion <MSR@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU> on behalf of Charles Thomas Tackney <cttack@GMAIL.COM> Sent: Thursday, October 1, 2015 9:00 AM To: MSR@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU Subject: MSR Summer Retreat conversational extension II: First AOM paper / First MSR submission courage Dear MSR listserve community: First, thanks to Lee Robbins for his time and thoughts about the MSR founding. Comments from additional contributors enriched the conversation considerably - so thanks to each of you as well. Should other founding points come to mind, these remain most welcome. We'll likely return to the founding theme again, based on this first MSR listserv community chat. 2. I've recently learned that Margaret Benefiel not only was an early contributor to MSR, but was also brave enough to submit her very first AOM scholarly paper submission to MSR: 2001, was it? As the AOM 2016 filing deadline slowly creeps up on us all, this seems a nice time to ask her to share her thoughts about the decision for AOM in general and MSR in particular. The 2016 MSR Doctoral Consortium participants will certainly recognize Margaret's name and role in that session, organized by Julie Burkey. Margaret authored a paper with two others that offers a fine assessment of the field: Benefiel, M.; Fry, L.W.; and D. Geigle (2014). Spirituality and religion in the workplace: history, theory, and research. Psychology of religion and spirituality. 6:3. 175 - 178. - This is a paper sure to strengthen any form of AOM 2016 contribution being planned. 3. So, hello Margaret. You and I have met at Boston Friends meetings and the Lonergan Workshop at Boston College, but I've yet to hear how a successful academic and consulting practitioner gets the courage to submit her very first Academy paper to a new Interest Group called Management Spirituality and Religion. What's the story? Best, Charlie