Editorial Board Membership of Management and Business Journals: A Social Network Analysis Study of the Financial Times 40

Abstract

We apply social network analysis to editorial board membership data for 36 of the 40 high‐ranking journals forming theFinancial Timeslist for grading business schools. Data are presented by individuals, journals, organizations and countries. Using cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling, journals are allocated to academic fields. Distributions of journals, editorial board members and business school staff by field are compared. Academics affiliated to US organizations predominate and highly ranked US organizations occupy the top positions for number of board memberships. Academics with high multiple board memberships come from a more diverse set of organizations but are still predominantly North American and male. We suggest that the domination of the sampled journal production system by special interest groups could permit academic patronage to prosper. We characterize the academic area of management (and business) as a loosely connected grouping of mono‐disciplinary fields. Organization behaviour, strategy and enterprise/small business fields are over‐represented in theFinancial Timeslist while accounting, finance, marketing and operations research/management information systems are under‐represented. We argue that domination by an elite and its fragmented mono‐disciplinarity is not healthy for the management academic area.