Business and management scholarship should be more relevant to practice. You're not hearing this for the first time from me right here. No, it's been shouted from the highest perches of management academia since the prior millennium. Our primary accreditor, the AACSB, agrees. Politicians want us to demonstrate our practical worth as well. In short, it's well past time to matter more.
What's the holdup? Our bread is buttered via publications, and our most revered journals are largely theory driven, with nominal focus on practical relevance. Or so we think.
I'd like to announce the Practice-Oriented Publications Network (POPN). The editors-in-chief of prominent practice-oriented journals in business and management have teamed up to show that there are well-reputed outlets for rigorous work that is highly relevant to practice. We want to show that you have great options, if you seek to matter more. Moreover, we want to help you develop capacity, across the globe, to conduct robust work that managers can use.
POPN's founding members are Academy of Management Perspectives (Mike Barnett, EIC), Business Horizons (Idie Kesner, EIC), California Management Review (David Vogel, EIC), MIT Sloan Management Review (Abbie Lundberg, EIC), and Organizational Dynamics (Daniel Tzabbar, EIC).
We have created a website. Please check it out: practiceorientedpublications.org. It's an early draft.
We are in the formative stages. On our website, we list some initial ideas on how we might encourage and develop global capacity for relevant research. But we want your input. What can we do to best aid you in developing and publishing relevant research in business and management?
Can you please take a few minutes to complete a survey? We hope to generate ideas that we can act upon jointly to help turn the tide. Imagine if tens of thousands more scholars focused their energy and expertise on rigorously and objectively addressing our mounting problems in business and beyond. We can get there, together. Please lend your thoughts here
Thanks,
Mike
------------------------------
Mike Barnett
Professor
Rutgers University
Newark NJ
------------------------------