Journal of Management Studies 46:1 January 2009

0022-2380

So, Farewell Then . . . Reflections on Editing the

Journal of Management Studies

Timothy Clark and Mike Wright

Durham Business School; Nottingham University Business School

‘Don’t send me no more letters, no . . .’ Bob Dylan, Desolation Row.

This issue of Journal of Management Studies ( JMS ) marks the end of our term of office as
General Editors of the Journal. In the six years it has been a considerable privilege to
follow in the footsteps of the distinguished previous editors and work with Joep Corne-
lissen and Steve Floyd (the other General Editors), Andrew Corbett, Colin Hales, and
Andrew Delios (our Associate Editors), Brad Jackson (Reviews Editor), the Members of
our Editorial Board, the Members of the Council of the Society for the Advancement of
Management Studies (SAMS) that provides a governance structure for the Journal, our
colleagues at Wiley-Blackwell and all the authors and reviewers of the manuscripts we
have edited during this period. Our particular thanks are reserved for Jo Brudenell and
Margaret Turner who respectively manage and service the Editorial Office. Apart from
keeping us fully informed about the status of all manuscripts for which we had respon-
sibility to ensure timely decisions, their ‘personal touch’ in all their dealings with authors
and reviewers has been a crucial part of building, extending and maintaining a vibrant
JMS community which now numbers around 9000 people.
On becoming General Editors at the beginning of 2003 our aim was to build upon the
traditional strengths and distinctive ethos of the Journal established by the previous
editors, to whom we owe an enormous debt, and so ensure the Journal’s continuing
pre-eminent standing within the international business and management community.
We placed particular emphasis on enhancing JMS’s long-standing, but sometimes for-
gotten, tradition as an independent, broad based management journal of international
standing that attaches no priority to either the subjects of study or the theoretical and
methodological approach adopted. Like our predecessors, our concern has been to
ensure that JMS avoids ‘being taken over by any one approach to management studies
at the expense of others’ (Legge, 1998, p. U1).
The fact that the Journal is relatively autonomous, in that it is not part of a large and
well-established membership-based society that actively supports the importance of
research and its dissemination, is both an advantage and disadvantage when pursuing

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2009. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK
and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
2 T. Clark and M. Wright
this broad objective. The Journal is free of the need to bend to and reflect the emerging
policy concerns of a particular body that inevitably occurs as the priorities of different
constituencies rise and fall. In this respect the Journal is able to remain consistently
broader by developing and signalling the importance of a wide range of intellectual
areas. At the same time, it does not have a ready-made community who regularly receive
and read the Journal and view it as a conventional outlet for their work. Given that
authors can submit their papers to an ever increasing range of journals, securing a
regular flow of high quality manuscripts was therefore critical to ensuring the long-term
viability and reputation of the Journal (see also Baruch et al., 2008).
To achieve our broad objective we instigated the following:

• Widening the intellectual base of the Journal by reconnecting with a whole range of
communities that had developed their own specialist outlets or no longer viewed the
Journal as a natural ‘home’. At the same time, we emphasized that we wanted to
continue to maintain a strong flow of contributions from existing communities of
interest. To encourage this, our aim has been to develop a review process, regardless
of topic, that ensures that those papers which are published are theoretically
grounded and the methodological approach is appropriate to the particular research
question. We particularly wanted to continue the JMS tradition of being a preferred
leading outlet for qualitative research. Given our intention to encourage diversity,
reviewers’ judgements of papers are based on the highest standards of whichever
theoretical and/or empirical paradigm the authors chose to adopt. This has been
underpinned by developing a cadre of reviewers who shared the same perspective
on the mission of the journal and were able to identify papers that had the greatest
likelihood of making a contribution.
• Improved service to both authors and reviewers, which included a shift to an
electronic manuscript submission and review process via email, more detailed deci-
sion letters, more timely turnaround of reviews and the dissemination of reviewers’
comments to all reviewers of a paper (Clark et al., 2006). Decision letters are
individually written and synthesize the key points from reviewers, demonstrate that
the editor has read the paper and provide clear informed developmental guidance
to authors regarding how to strengthen the paper further and clarify and elevate the
contribution, whether our editorial decision was to revise or reject.
• To be fair to authors, and in line with practice in other leading journals (e.g. De Nisi,
2008), we adopted a developmental rather than ‘post box’ editorial policy which
meant that in reaching a decision we did not just ‘count the votes’ but carefully
considered the three sets of reviewers’ comments alongside our own reading of the
paper. Despite evidence to the contrary, we found that often the essence of review-
ers’ comments can be quite similar even if their recommendations are different.
• Given that editors and reviewers can make mistakes we established an appeal
process where a third party (another editor and/or Editorial Board member) would
read all the correspondence and reviews on a paper and make a recommendation to
which we and the author were bound. In the vast majority of the few cases where
appeals have been made we have been able to discuss issues and sources of mis-
understandings directly with authors and agree a way forward.

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 Reflections on Editing 3
• Appointment of a broader, more international and active Editorial Board (currently
comprising 127 members) that has a range of expertise that reflects the diversity of
the field and its ever-changing dynamics.
• Holding regular meetings, open to all Editorial Board members, such as at the
Academy of Management, British Academy of Management, EGOS and other
conferences. These meetings provide a useful forum for us as editors to receive
feedback and suggestions from our Editorial Board members in relation to existing
focus and practice as well as developments in the field and how best the Journal
could respond to these.
• Adopting a more strategic focus on the selection and management of special issues
to ensure the topics/themes represented cutting edge advances in the subject area
and that articles published within them were of equivalent quality to those published
in ‘normal’ issues.
• Inaugurating: (1) a new debates section entitled ‘Point–Counterpoint’ with a rapid
turnaround in order to promote lively discussions about contemporary issues; (2) a
new literature review section featuring reviews of newly emerging important areas in
management; (3) a new Book Review section featuring composite reviews of impor-
tant books. Whilst the first two have served their intended purposes well, we felt that
the last has been less successful and have decided to discontinue it as from next year.
• Establishing a biennial JMS conference. The first took place in 2006 and was on the
topic of ‘Beyond Knowledge Management: Advancing the Organizational Knowl-
edge Research Agenda’. The second was held in September 2008 and was titled
‘Trajectories, Paths, Patterns and Practices of Strategizing and Organizing’.
• Publically recognizing the critical contribution of authors and reviewers by intro-
ducing Prizes for Best Paper and Best Reviewer. The first were awarded in 2005. In
addition we now print the names of all reviewers in Issue 3 of each Volume.
• Contributing to regular ‘meet the editor’ sessions at leading international manage-
ment conferences and publishing workshops to communicate the ethos of JMS to
new and emerging scholars.

The Journal has seen a 392 per cent increase in manuscript submissions to regular
issues over the past six years, from 242 in 2002 to 618 in 2007 (Table I). This put an

Table I. JMS trends in submissions and impact, 2002–07

Number of % Increase over Impact Ranking in ISI Ranking in ISI

submissions previous year factor Business list Management list

2002 242 0.41 0.856 24/54 27/65

2003 342 41.3 1.104 21/57 26/67
2004 438 28.1 1.180 16/57 19/67
2005 538 22.8 1.326 15/61 18/71
2006 508 -5.5 2.00 11/64 11/78
2007 618 21.7 1.926 10/72 16/81

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4 T. Clark and M. Wright
increasing pressure on us and so over a period of years we have increased the editorial
team from two in 2003 to six today.
Over the past six years, JMS’s impact factor has increased from 0.856 to 1.926, and
the Journal’s ranking has risen from 24th to 10th in the Business list and from 27th to
16th in the Management list (see Table I).
Although we recognize that the broad standing of a journal within an academic
community is the result of a range of inter-related factors, during our tenure as General
Editors not only have the ISI Web of Knowledge™ journal rankings assumed even greater
significance but so have a range of newly-emerged Journal lists (Ashkanasay, 2007). There
are, for example, attempts to develop national journal lists in Australia (Australian
Business Deans Council), France (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique – CNRS)
and the UK (Association of Business Schools). The European Science Foundation has
developed an ‘initial’ journal list for Humanities – the European Reference Index for
Humanities (ERIH) – and is presently discussing the possibility of such a list for the Social
Sciences. This list is based on the principle that it can be used to assess the quality and
impact of science in Member countries and so is intended as a cross-national standardized
benchmark for research quality. In addition, a number of publications, such as Business
Week and the Financial Times, have developed their own lists of journals in order to assess the
research quality of faculty as part of their assessment of School programmes. As a
consequence of these developments, editors now have to be aware of a range of rankings
that all draw on impact factors but use different methodologies to determine the broad
standing of journals within the business and management community. The community’s
control over such assessments is gradually lessening. A corollary to these trends is the
diminishing freedom of researchers to choose the outlets for their research. As we noted in
an earlier editorial (Clark and Wright, 2007, p. 613) ‘Whereas the ranking of journals in
which people publish has always had implications for personal reputation, peer recogni-
tion and career advancement, increasingly it is impacting much more directly on institu-
tional reputations and department rankings and in turn on access to resources and
potential recruitment of staff and students. Individual publication choices and success are
therefore assuming ever greater institutional significance.’ As institutional and individual
factors increasingly overlap there is a tendency for authors to narrow the field of journals
to which they initially submit their article. Consequently, submission rates, desk rejection
rates and overall rejection rates in ‘top tier’ journals have increased ( Judge et al., 2007;
Monastersky, 2005). If journal lists increasingly drive the choices of where researchers
submit their manuscripts then this presents challenges to how editors manage a journal.
The point is that the lifeblood of any journal is the regular submission of high quality
manuscripts that have the potential to make significant advances to thinking within a
field. If manuscripts dry up, a journal atrophies and dies. If journal editors are to
maintain a flow of high quality manuscripts, not only do they need to establish a
manuscript review process that is ‘customer-focused’ by being prompt and developmen-
tal whatever the outcome, they also need to ensure that the Journal is being read and
articles are being cited since citations underpin the position of a Journal in the different
rankings referred to earlier. The latter can no longer be left to happenstance since being
perceived as second or third tier lessens the chances of attracting a continuous flow of
manuscripts, whatever the quality.

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 Reflections on Editing 5
With this in mind, since the beginning of 2003 we have overseen a number of
important changes that have sought to enhance the dissemination of papers published in
JMS. Papers are now published more quickly. The average time from acceptance of a
paper to its publication in the hard copy of the Journal is now below one year. The
contents of the next two issues are printed on the back cover of every issue and articles
are made available through OnlineEarly. This means that papers can be accessed well in
advance of the hard copy of the Journal appearing, thus quickening their circulation
within relevant research communities and so increasing their chances of citation. In
conjunction with Wiley-Blackwell we have also sought to increase electronic access to the
Journal. Every volume since its inaugural issue has now been digitized with the conse-
quence that the full content of the Journal is now available. Widening electronic access
to the Journal has had a dramatic impact on the downloading of articles. Since 2003 this
has increased by 241 per cent with 383,441 downloads in 2007. Furthermore, in the near
future all authors will be able select a number of people to whom a pdf of their paper will
automatically be sent. Authors and reviewers already receive a pdf of the article they
have written or reviewed. We also send copies of Special Issues to up to 50 individuals
identified by the Special Issue Editors as having a major interest in the theme of the issue.
By substantially increasing the access and visibility of work published in the Journal we
hope to partially address a point made by Glick et al. (2007, p. 821) that ‘99.26 per cent
of our research efforts do not have a major impact on the field’.

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
The international scope of submissions to JMS continues to broaden (see Table II). Some
important changes are especially worth noting. Although the number of submissions
from the UK increased by a quarter from 2003 to 2007, their share of overall submissions
fell quite markedly. The number of submissions from the USA and Canada almost
doubled while their share of all submissions rose only slightly. Submissions from conti-
nental Europe more than doubled and are now the largest regional source. Submissions
from Asia increased almost two and half times, with their share of submissions also
increasing markedly.

Table II. Countries and areas of origin for submissions to JMS in 2003–07

Country 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

No. % No. % No. % No. % No. %

UK 105 30.7 118 26.9 151 28.1 94 18.6 132 21.4

USA and Canada 82 24.0 112 25.6 136 25.3 108 21.4 156 25.2
Continental Europe 82 24.0 96 21.9 131 24.4 145 28.7 180 29.1
Asia 44 12.9 83 19.0 85 15.8 113 22.4 104 16.8
Australia and New Zealand 27 7.9 21 4.8 24 4.5 30 5.9 31 5.0
Rest of World 2 0.5 8 1.8 10 1.9 15 3.0 15 2.5
Total number of submissions 342 100.0 438 100.0 537 100.0 505 100.0 618 100.0

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6 T. Clark and M. Wright
Given the importance of international submissions, we have developed the Editorial
Team and the Editorial Board over the last six years to reflect this diversity. Two general
editors are based in the UK (one of continental European origin) and one is based in
continental Europe (of US origin). Among the associate editors, one is based in the UK,
one in the USA and one in Asia (of Canadian/UK origin). At the time of writing, the
Editorial Board includes eight members from the Asia-Pacific region (plus others with
Asian origins based in the USA), and 16 based in continental Europe (plus others with
European origins based in the USA). The scope of the Editorial Board was also increased
to reflect the wide subject range of submissions, including areas where submissions were
increasing, such as entrepreneurship, innovation and knowledge, and corporate social
responsibility.

CHALLENGES
Whilst these hard figures indicate some of the changes and developments that have been
made since 2003, they tell us little about the challenges we see in producing and
publishing impactful research. Given the reasserted ethos of JMS, we sought to publish
papers that are theoretically grounded and where the methodological approach is appro-
priate to the particular research question. As such, we held no a priori standard position
on what these might constitute. Papers were judged on the highest standards of which-
ever theoretical and/or empirical paradigm they chose to adopt and these were deter-
mined in large part by the reviewers as subject experts in the domain and method
relevant to a particular paper.
The management field in general has witnessed a major improvement in the quality
of contributions in recent years. We placed considerable importance on JMS contribut-
ing to this sea change in the field. Through our review and active editorial processes we
sought to raise the threshold both of theoretical contributions and of the methodological
rigour of papers published in JMS. Indeed, a number of the Point–Counterpoint sections
have been devoted to methodological issues (see, e.g. Echambi et al., 2006; Shah and
Corley, 2006).
Yet, as we noted above, while we, along with many other journals have witnessed a
proliferation of articles submitted, it is hard to conclude that this has been accompanied
by a corresponding increase in papers that add significantly to the discipline. More is
being produced but the big impact papers remain elusive. It is unclear to what extent this
has arisen because the management discipline is becoming more like normal science,
or whether it is down to weak paradigms, or whether it is a function of the audit and
incentive system that are proliferating. The emphasis on improving the rigour of theo-
rizing and of empirical method, which was needed, may have led to more incremental
research questions being addressed.
The impact of the audit culture and incentive system is likely to affect the extent to
which both junior faculty and, somewhat surprisingly, highly competent senior faculty
(McMullen and Shepherd, 2006) engage in consensus-challenging research. The empha-
sis on ‘gap filling’ seems to assume that we know what the boundaries of a field look like
and tends to dissuade examination of new areas outside this matrix.

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 Reflections on Editing 7
As we noted above, the development of incentive systems that over-emphasize pub-
lication in a limited set of so-called ‘top-tier’ journals, almost to the exclusion of much
else, may lead to other important and deleterious shifts in behaviour that impact pub-
lishing behaviour. For example, authors may be dissuaded from submitting to second tier
journals or from writing research monographs, with the consequence that important
avenues for research dissemination which support well-cited output may wither. Given
the limited publishing capacity of these top-tier journals and the fact that lower tier
journals also publish high impact articles (Starbuck, 2005), this may serve to hamper the
development and dissemination of potentially important knowledge. Furthermore, if
authors simply give up on pursuing papers that have been rejected within this group of
journals then, as Glick et al. (2007) point out, the field will be characterized by a high exit
rate. Hollenbeck and Mannor (2007) counter this argument by encouraging young
academics to maintain high levels of activity and resilience and not to focus ‘narrow-
mindedly on a single work that takes over 5 years to write in the hopes of creating a
classic’ (p. 941). As they conclude:

. . . analyses of papers that turned out to be classics in terms of citation counts suggest
that the authors viewed these works as regular parts of a larger program of research,
not discontinuous experiences that were divorced from steady streams of published
articles . . . even if one defines success in terms of generating a citation classic, the best
approach is to be active and resilient, and constantly working on improving your true
score through professional developmental experiences. . . . (pp. 941–2)

A further issue associated with shifts in the incentive system is that they may have led
to a reluctance to engage with practice/policy through consultancy and advice. As a
result, many researchers may be locked into a closed loop of the existing literature.
Historically, JMS placed considerable emphasis upon the relevance and application of
research findings for practice. Indeed, from its inception the aims of the Journal stated
that it was ‘designed to contribute to the advance of knowledge directly related to the
practice of management’, and this was reasserted by subsequent editors (Legge and
Lockett, 1990; Lockett, 1977). In recent years, much of this seems to have disappeared.
The rigour-relevance debate has, however, re-emphasized the need for papers to devote
attention to considering the implications of their findings for practice but this remains a
major challenge (Hodgkinson and Rousseau, 2009; Kieser and Leiner, 2009; Starkey
et al., 2009).
Perhaps more fundamentally, engagement with practice may contribute to the obser-
vation of empirical regularities or puzzles that challenge existing theory and whose
explanation opens the way for the development of novel theory (see Cornelissen and
Floyd, 2009).
Such theory may be multi-disciplinary. Developing multi-disciplinary research in the
pursuit of explaining complex observed puzzles may be a more fruitful means to generate
significant insights than seeking to find gaps in existing theories. This may be a way for
management to develop its own theories rather than relying on other disciplines or fields.
While there is a continuing and lively debate about the role of multi- or inter-disciplinary
research, as a forthcoming Point–Counterpoint in JMS shows (Markoczy and Deeds,

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8 T. Clark and M. Wright
2009; Zahra and Newey, 2009), we believe that the view expressed some 30 years ago by
one of our predecessors still holds good:

Business school academics, perhaps more than conventional discipline specialists, I

think, have the obligation to tackle organizational problems from a multi-disciplinary
standpoint – precisely because problems do not come in neat discipline specific
packages. (Legge, 1977, p. 230)

In closing, it has been an honour and a privilege to edit JMS for this brief period of its
long life. Six years would seem to us to be an optimal period to edit such a major journal
as JMS, for the sakes of both the Journal and ourselves. We have also immensely enjoyed
working with our editorial colleagues to whom we now pass on the baton. No doubt our
successors will and should reassess the approach we have taken and the changes we have
made in order to maintain the Journal’s standing and vibrancy. We wish them every
success.

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 Reflections on Editing 9
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