Publishing in the Academy of Management Journals

Abstract

Academy of Management Learning & EducationVol. 20, No. 2 From the EditorFree AccessPublishing in the Academy of Management JournalsKevin Rockmann, J. Stuart Bunderson, Carrie R. Leana, Paul Hibbert, Laszlo Tihanyi, Phillip H. Phan and Sherry M. B. ThatcherKevin RockmannAcademy of Management Discoveries, J. Stuart BundersonAcademy of Management Annals, Carrie R. LeanaAcademy of Management Annals, Paul HibbertAcademy of Management Learning & Education, Laszlo TihanyiAcademy of Management Learning & Education, Phillip H. PhanAcademy of Management Perspectives and Sherry M. B. ThatcherAcademy of Management Review Published Online:29 Jun 2021https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2021.0159AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsDownload CitationsAdd to favoritesTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail Perhaps you are a doctoral student, mapping out how to parcel your dissertation; perhaps you are a junior scholar, strategizing your research plan; perhaps you are a senior scholar, who is thinking about what you want to say to the field. No matter what stage you are at as a management researcher, you might be looking to the Academy of Management (AOM) journals as a natural home for any and all of these creative research pursuits. However, it might not always be crystal clear how you should craft your work for the AOM journals, what contribution you might make at each journal, and consequently to which journal you should target your intellectual contributions.As editors of the AOM journals we see many of the pitfalls that authors fall into when submitting to our journals, and we wish to be as transparent and helpful as possible about the type of work that is likely to be successful. Our goal here is to take you beyond the mission statements while describing, in our own words, what drives successful papers at each journal.KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND DISSEMINATIONKnowledge creation and dissemination are central to the mission of the Academy of Management. We can see this in the AOM’s strategic goals:By 2022, AOM will be the premier global community for management and organization scholars and for advancing the impact of management and organization science on business and society worldwide…AOM will fundamentally advance knowledge creation and content dissemination for greater relevance and impact on a diverse set of stakeholders and institutions around the world.One critical way in which the AOM achieves this goal is through developing and maintaining its portfolio of journals. While impressive in scope, a question we often hear is: “Why does the AOM have so many journals?” or, perhaps more pointedly, “Why does the AOM have these journals?” While it is not in our purview to recollect or relitigate the journal creation process, as editors we strongly believe in each journal’s mission and the role each journal plays in creating and disseminating knowledge.The process of knowledge creation can start in any number of ways, including observing a phenomenon, having an intuition or hunch about how something works, pondering prior contradictory findings, searching for gaps in current theory, or mining data. What we do with this information is to create likely explanations for why we are seeing the things we are. Over time, as evidence accumulates about the stability of these explanations, they develop into a working explanation for the phenomenon. These likely explanations develop into theory, a process we often refer to as “building theory” or “generating theory” (see Sutton & Staw, 1995). Such theoretical explanations can then be synthesized or examined together, whether empirically (such as in a meta-analysis) or by examining the literature (integrated review), in efforts to build toward programmatic theory (Wagner & Berger, 1985).Knowledge can also be disseminated in a number of distinct ways. Such disseminations can differ in terms of intended audiences (manager vs. academic), type of contribution (theory vs. practice), and even medium (written vs. whiteboard). Our stance is not that one type of dissemination is better than another but rather that we should work as intently as possible to reach the most appropriate audience for each paper. For a more thorough discussion of the knowledge production cycle, see Starbuck (2006).As you will see below, each journal plays a different role in this journey of knowledge creation and dissemination. The strength of the AOM journal portfolio is that the journals complement one another regarding their missions, as well as their stances on knowledge creation and dissemination. That is, you should not think of the AOM journals as competing with one another for ideas. Rather, each journal provides a unique and impactful venue to say something different to the academic and nonacademic worlds.We can see this synergy between the journals in the two curated collections of published works that the Academy of Management offers: AOM Insights and AOM Collections. AOM Insights is the platform where actionable evidence is curated from the entire journal portfolio and provided to practitioners. AOM Collections, also curated from AOM’s portfolio of journals, contains thematic groupings and commentaries of peer-reviewed research. These venues demonstrate how the knowledge produced across the journals fit together under common themes.In the next sections we will discuss each journal in turn, outlining not only what is central to the journal but also the characteristics of typical papers that appear in the publication.THE JOURNALSAcademy of Management AnnalsThe mission of Annals is to publish integrative reviews of the different streams of research that have received scholarly attention within the field of management. This mission builds on the progressive and cumulative nature of academic research. For example, a groundbreaking study on Topic A may lead to several follow-up studies that elaborate elements of A, which then spark criticisms of how Topic A has been studied, which in turn lead to a burst of interest in Topic A’, which then prompt a theoretical integration of A and A’, and so forth. At some point in the progression of this academic conversation it is useful to step back from the individual “trees” that have sprouted up in this part of the management forest in order to evaluate what we have learned about this particular “grove.” For example, we might ask questions like: What can we say with confidence about the answer to the original question that motivated these studies? What questions remain unanswered and why? What are the central debates within this stream of research, and on what issues do they hinge? How have researchers tended to conceptualize or operationalize key variables, and how has this affected our ability to address the central question motivating work in this area? What questions are researchers not asking but should be asking? Are there insights or approaches from other “groves” that might help us to see Topic A in a new light? These are the kinds of questions that are addressed in Annals papers—questions that help us to better understand and more thoughtfully manage the different groves that make up the management forest.A successful Annals paper first identifies a stream of research within the management literature where an integrative review would help to advance the scholarly conversation. The paper is very clear regarding how to define that stream, what its boundaries are, and why a review is needed. It then provides a summary and integration of research within that stream based on a comprehensive and systematic review of that literature. Finally—and this is critical—an Annals paper must move beyond summary and integration in order to provide insights, frameworks, or suggestions for how we can take that research stream to the next level. This is what we mean when we say that Annals papers are “reviews with an attitude.” At Annals, we often apply the “PhD seminar test” in evaluating which proposals we will develop into manuscripts. That is, we ask “Would this paper be included in a PhD syllabus to give aspiring scholars a sense of what is happening—and what should or could be happening—in a particular domain of research?”Authors aspiring to publish in Annals are invited to submit a proposal (not a full-length article) describing their focus, review process, and intended contributions. Once a proposal is accepted, the Annals editorial team guides the authors in the development of their manuscript.Academy of Management Discoveries (AMD)The goal at AMD is to describe previously unidentified or poorly understood phenomena and to explore those phenomena empirically. The end point of any AMD article should include plausible explanations—the generated theory—that will open up new lines of inquiry. The driving motivation of an AMD paper is to first describe the compelling nature of the phenomenon, and then demonstrate why there is no strong preexisting theory to explain its occurrence. This lack of understanding should motivate the research question(s) and empirical exploration. This is why AMD articles are said to be phenomenon-forward rather than theory-forward. AMD papers should not have hypotheses or theory-driven predictions. The findings of an AMD article should present the empirical explorations, providing compelling evidence for one or more discoveries. Such discoveries should provide insight into the phenomenon, and should be of sufficient interest and novelty to open new theoretical doors for exploration.AMD strongly supports creativity in writing, presentation, and dissemination. For all AMD papers authors should think creatively about how to situate the reader in the context as much as possible; this provides nonacademics with an understanding of how to manage such phenomena and gives academics the raw material to engage in down-the-road theorizing and testing. AMD Discoveries-in-Brief are designed to promote this objective specifically. With Discoveries-in-Brief our goal is to work with authors to use their own voice to turn stylized facts (with the same level of methodological rigor) into compelling stories for any audience. This type of paper should read more like a newspaper or magazine feature article reporting on the empirical explorations, without the standard academic headings or sections. To enable this creativity we encourage authors to put methods and even some findings in appendices, and to keep the overall text brief (no more than 20 pages and no more than 20 references).As a journal that endorses the principles of responsible research, AMD is pleased to welcome registered reports. Submitting a study idea as a registered report promotes transparency in scientific research by making a clear distinction between a priori and post hoc procedures or analyses. For AMD, registered reports are particularly beneficial for research questions where the presence of a finding or nonfinding would be equally compelling or challenging to the field.Academy of Management Journal (AMJ)AMJ is an empirical journal (i.e., all papers use data to examine scientifically driven research questions). As the premier empirical journal in management, the goal of AMJ is to publish papers that offer nonincremental changes or challenges to advance management theory, across all areas of micro and macro management. AMJ values papers that contain both theoretical (advancing understanding about relationships between constructs) and empirical (cutting-edge, rigorous methodology using best practices) contributions toward these goals. AMJ includes deductive, quantitative, and hypothesis-testing research, as well as inductive, qualitative approaches to advance management theory. AMJ also seeks papers that advance the practice of management, as papers published in AMJ need to be relevant for employees, managers, or organizations, thereby generating practical implications that can be used in education—though the audience of AMJ is primarily intended to be scholars rather than practitioners.A successful AMJ paper makes a novel contribution by testing or building management theory. The paper provides a transparent report of empirical findings that are relevant for managerial practice or organizational processes. If it is a deductive, theory-testing paper, it provides detailed information on preregistration, sample, measures, and analyses. Authors of an inductive, theory-building paper ideally share their interview protocols and describe the analytical process and data collection phases. After submission, the paper enters AMJ’s double-blind review process and receives three detailed reviews—two of which are usually by members of the Editorial Review Board and one of which is by an ad hoc reviewer—as well as a decision letter by an assigned associate editor. A successful AMJ paper goes through two or three full revisions prior to publication.Academy of Management Learning & Education (AMLE)AMLE is interested in making a difference to management education at every level, from first degrees (undergraduate) up to doctoral education, as well as management learning in organizational contexts. Our focus on management education includes a concern for management educators, so we also address sector-wide organizational and career issues in the “business of business schools.” We take the view that the most important, effective, and enduring way to make a meaningful difference to this field lies in enhancing the theoretical understandings that inform practice. Our aim at AMLE is to enhance learning theories, reveal the underlying philosophical issues or tensions in management learning (ontological, epistemological, or axiological), explain the effects of critical and ethical concerns on learning, and add to theoretical debates on particular aspects of management and organization studies where learning and education are key issues (e.g., entrepreneurship, leadership).Successful articles at AMLE contribute effectively to theory development or theoretical debates that are relevant to management learning and education, or enhance our understanding of the business of business schools. The most common focus is on learning theories, but any theory that helps to explain the dynamics of education processes (e.g., identity, power, culture), is appropriate. While a theoretical focus is absolutely primary, given our mission to make a difference to the field AMLE articles must also use their theoretical insights to speak to educators or policy-makers. This means that the theoretical implications must underpin some operationalizable ideas for practice or policy. Practical recommendations are rarely prescriptive and are more often reflective, with the end result that AMLE is able to support educators interested in enhancing management education through theoretical development and the critique of unexamined assumptions.Academy of Management Perspectives (AMP)The mission of AMP is to motivate discourse around questions in business and management research that are unresolved, conflict in terms of evidence, or have gone dormant. AMP’s editorial mission is not to develop or test theory but to provide answers to questions that may seem settled but are not when evidence is interpreted from different disciplinary perspectives, temporal horizons, or contexts. In this regard, AMP is designed to draw interest from scholars that may not usually focus on the implications of their articles. Therefore, when drafting their manuscripts authors are encouraged to think of themselves as domain experts talking to nondomain experts in order to extend or motivate conversations.AMP articles must have relevance to concerns that are of public interest. We ask authors to think about what their discourse might mean for policy in public settings, or for populations of organizations, industries, or individuals. Further, we encourage AMP authors to consider the types of public interest questions that might be raised because of the paper they have just written. That is, for AMP papers to be useful authors have to be specific about the particular policy issues (regulation, rule, or policy statement) they are addressing. This means that authors need to be aware of the geographic, temporal, cultural, institutional, and other boundaries of the phenomenon in question.For example, an author might be interested in helping industry or government experts think differently about their pandemic responses. Management research on individuals, teams, or organizations are replete with information to help policy-makers reframe how they might deal with such issues as social distancing, business disruption, diffusion of contagion, and so on. It is in such an application that the benefits of AMP are seen—by bridging the divide between academic and public interest (see, e.g., November 2020 issue).Publishing in AMP is supposed to be fun for authors, reviewers, and readers. This means that successful publications are well-written and easily accessible to nondomain experts. For discourse to occur successfully, papers must be engaging, so that any member of the academy can participate by writing responses to broaden or deepen the conversation. To foster such conversation, AMP publishes Exchanges, which encourages authors to submit short contributions to air their disagreements with specific articles and offer alternative explanations from their own perspectives. Authors should understand that Exchanges (or AMP articles, for that matter) are not soapboxes. AMP articles convey the observations of domain experts that are grounded in evidence from the literature. They are written to motivate conversations, especially across disciplines, that result in novel questions, perspectives, and insights for management scholarship. Authors who are interested in submitting to AMP should read articles from recent issues to get a sense of the policy-oriented style of discourse that typifies AMP contributions.Academy of Management Review (AMR)The mission of AMR is to publish theoretical or conceptual insights that advance understanding of management and organizations. Theory, generally speaking, can be thought of as a system of ideas intended to explain something. In the field of management and organizations, theory has been thought of as something more akin to “a statement of concepts and their interrelationships that shows how and/or why a phenomenon occurs” (Corley & Gioia, 2011: 12). Four of the most common ways in which researchers can make a theoretical contribution are to: (a) develop new theory; (b) significantly challenge or enhance existing theory; (c) synthesize recent advances and diverse ideas into fresh, if not entirely new, theory; and (d) craft ways in which to improve the process of theory development.The starting point for AMR articles is the current state of knowledge of the phenomenon of interest. The knowledge comes from some combination of a review of the literature (e.g., Annals, AMJ, and AMLE articles) and specific new empirical discoveries that are lacking theory (e.g., AMD articles). Knowledge can also be grounded in the “normal science disciplines” of economics, psychology, sociology, or social psychology, as well as nontraditional perspectives such as the humanities. When a strong theoretical insight has been developed, it has important ramifications for the theoretical discipline in which it is housed, for related theories and disciplines, and for how empirical research in this theoretical space should be conducted. The end point of an AMR manuscript is that it changes how we think about the theoretical area of interest and that any researcher doing work in that theoretical area must now consider these new insights.Successful AMR papers substantially advance the conversation about a particular topic or theoretical area of interest. In order for manuscripts to achieve this, they must be grounded in the literature that is most central to the conversation. Thus, the manuscript should include a clear and focused literature review that gives the reader a clear and current understanding of the topic or theoretical area of interest. The end point of this review should clarify where the current state of the literature has gaps or assumptions, which will form the focus of the contribution. The main section of the manuscript fills the gap or addresses the assumptions by developing new theory, extending existing theory, or synthesizing theory. The discussion section then informs the reader as to how, why, where, and when the theoretical contribution can be applied. In this section authors need to explain how their theorizing substantially moves or changes the conversation. Ideally, AMR papers inspire new streams of research that are impactful for managers and organizations. For helpful overviews about positioning and structuring AMR manuscripts, please read the AMR editorials by Lange and Pfarrer (2017) and Barney (2018).Figure 1 provides a brief summary of each journal.FIGURE 1 Submitting to an AOM JournalStudying identity: An exampleWhile Figure 1 may be helpful in summarizing the basic parameters of each journal, what this figure does not show is how the different journals deal with similar research domains but in very different ways. In an effort to provide more concrete differentiation between the journals, we thought it would be helpful to show what research on a single topic looks like in each of the journals. Imagine, for instance, that you are a researcher interested in identity and identification. How might you engage each of the journals at AOM? Table 1 lists sample papers from each of the six AOM journals that focus on the topic of identity or identification, along with a short excerpt from each paper. What you will find is that each paper discusses identity, but with different goals and, most importantly, producing quite different contributions.TABLE 1 IdentityResearch at the AOM JournalsJournalPaperExcerptAnnalsGioia, D. A., Patvardhan, S. D., Hamilton, A. L., & Corley, K. G. 2013. Organizational identity formation and change. Academy of Management Annals, 7(1): 123–193.“A great deal of conceptual and empirical work has been accomplished within the last three decades—especially concerning the phenomenon of organizational identity change. More recently, work has been devoted to studying the processes and content associated with identity formation. Given the amount of scholarly work done to date, it is an appropriate time to reflect on the perspectives, controversies and outcomes of this body of work.” (123–124)AMDHertel, C., Bacq, S., & Belz, F. M. 2019. It takes a village to sustain a village: A social identity perspective on successful community-based enterprise creation. Academy of Management Discoveries, 5(4): 438–464.“This article examines the powerful yet overlooked role of community-based enterprises (CBEs)—enterprises that are collectively established, owned, and controlled by the members of a local community…Using abductive data analysis, we uncover several collective identity mechanisms that spur community mobilization and entrepreneurial action…Through identification with the entrepreneurial project, supporters develop a lasting commitment to it—reinforced over time through artifacts, rituals, and celebrations—which further feeds and sustains its implementation.” (438)AMJMell, J. N., DeChurch, L. A., Leenders, R. T. A., & Contractor, N. 2020. Identity asymmetries: An experimental investigation of social identity and information exchange in multiteam systems. Academy of Management Journal, 63(5): 1561–1590.“In three studies, we investigate how identity ‘asymmetries’— differences between teams in terms of whether the team or overarching system constitutes their primary focus of identification—affect interteam information sharing and performance.” (1561)AMLEKothiyal, N., Bell, E., & Clarke, C. 2018: Moving beyond mimicry: Developing hybrid spaces in Indian business schools. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 17(2): 137–154.“We analyze the identity work of Indian management educators and scholars as they seek to establish, maintain, and revise a sense of self in the context of business school globalization.” (137)AMPZobel, A.-K., & Hagedoorn, J. 2020: Implications of open innovation for organizational boundaries and the governance of contractual relations. Academy of Management Perspectives, 34(3): 400–423.“To create value in an open innovation context, firms need to increase the permeability of their organizational boundaries to enable knowledge exchange with a broad set of partners. Yet to capture value, firms also need to consider how to govern their cooperative efforts and prevent unintended knowledge leakage. This paper develops a novel framework for researching this paradox of openness…an established problem in the [organizational identity] domain…and deliver a new perspective for researching this problem.” (400; 417–418)AMRAshcraft, K. L. 2013. The glass slipper: “incorporating” occupational identity in management studies, Academy of Management Review, 38(1): 6–31.“Management theorists have yet to digest this evidence (that we judge the nature of work via social identities) because of a unilateral view of the work-practitioner relation (i.e., people derive identity from work), which conceals a reciprocal relation (i.e., work derives identity from associated people). I build a bilateral view that accommodates available evidence by theorizing a new glass metaphor—the glass slipper—to capture occupational identity by association as it yields systematic forms of advantage and disadvantage. The metaphor elucidates how occupations come to appear “naturally” possessed of features that fit certain people yet are improbable for others.” (6)As a journal for integrative reviews, the Annals paper (Gioia, Patvardhan, Hamilton, & Corley, 2013) has no original data. Rather, the data for this paper come from a systematic review of the entire literature on organizational identity and change. The contribution of such a review is that the authors are able to take on the debates of the field, such as the degree to which organizational identity is more enduring versus dynamic. Through this cogent analysis the authors are able to provide a roadmap for scholars of identity to astutely engage this literature going forward.The AMD paper (Hertel, Bacq, & Belz, 2019) starts from a question on a phenomenon: How do community-based enterprises (CBEs) successfully come into existence? Given the lack of theory to explain this phenomenon, these authors use an abductive approach and find that, among other things, collective village identity lays the groundwork for successful CBE formation. This article opens new lines of inquiry related to identity in the areas of entrepreneurship and collective action, especially in communities.The AMJ paper (Mell, DeChurch, Leenders, & Contractor, 2020) starts with the question of how information exchange happens across multiteam systems. These authors use an identity lens to hypothesize how identity asymmetries—differences in whether each team in the system identifies with the team versus with the overarching system—affect such information exchange. This study pushes the field to adopt a nonlinear approach to investigating the relationship between identity, information exchange, and multiteam system performance.The paper published in AMLE (Kothiyal, Bell, & Clarke, 2018)—that is, the journal focused on management education and the business of business schools—begins with a research question focused on business school globalization. Specifically, these authors are interested in how Indian management educators come to see themselves—an important question given their precarious interactions with Western business schools. To understand the journey of these educators these authors take an identity work lens, finding that such educators are faced with identity ambivalence: facing the need to mimic Western schools to gain legitimacy while being regarded as “inferior” by those same schools. The authors propose a hybrid strategy to disrupt the status quo and support diversity.The paper published in AMP (Zobel, & Hagedoorn, 2020)—the journal interested in questions in business and management research that are unresolved, conflict in terms of evidence, or have gone dormant—starts with an apparent paradox in the organizational identity literature. Specifically, firms must be both permeable to outside partners to enable knowledge exchange and closely govern such collaborations in order to prevent knowledge leakage. A problem for both researchers and organizations alike, these authors propose solutions centered on redefining value, configuring firm boundaries, and designing contracts.As a theory journal, the AMR paper on identity has no data (Ashcraft, 2013). In this investigation the author provides a specific insight regarding occupations—namely, that individuals do not just derive identity from work, but that work too derives identity from its associated people. The author suggests that how we think about occupations, work, and diversity must be more closely aligned, and that when we take this stance we can better see how occupations have evolved along with social identities, often in discriminatory ways. The paper culminates with a call to more closely entwine research on work, identity, and diversity, acknowledging that identity is derived not only from what we do, but with whom we do it.This collection of papers shows us that authors can make different contributions to the same field via the different journals. Your choice of journal is of course based on what, ultimately, you wish to say.COMMON QUESTIONSAs editors we continually field questions regarding specific differences among the journals or relating to the missions of the journals. In this section we take on some of these most common questions in the hope that you will be better able to craft your paper