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 Dissemination
Knowledge 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.
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.
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.
Please click to read and cite the full article from each of our AOM journals.
Full article in Academy of Management Annals
Full article in Academy of Management Discoveries
Full article in Academy of Management Learning & Education