Changes at the AJB

Citation

Reed, R. and Storrud-Barnes, S.F. (2012), "Changes at the AJB", American Journal of Business, Vol. 27 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ajb.2012.54027baa.001

Changes at the AJB

Article Type: Editorial From: American Journal of Business, Volume 27, Issue 2

As incoming Editors we would first like to thank the outgoing Editor-in-Chief, Ashok Gupta (Ohio University), for serving the Journal these past 12 years and for seeing this issue of the Journal through to publication. During his time as Editor-in-Chief, Ashok saw the number of sponsoring Universities increase to the current ten, he worked with numerous new Associate Editors drawn from the faculty at those institutions, he oversaw the name change from the Mid-American Journal of Business to the American Journal of Business, the passing of the journal’s publication to Emerald, and the move to electronic submission and communication. We also want to thank Bob Yonker (University of Toledo) who is stepping down from Associate Editor duties, and extend a warm welcome to his replacement, Stephen Callaway (University of Toledo). Stephen will be joining Aigbe Akhigbe (University of Akron), Jan Eighme (Miami University) Raj Javalgi (Cleveland State University) Kathleen McFadden (Northern Illinois university) Ray Montagno (Ball State University) Luis Perez-Batres (Central Michigan University) Sachi Sakthivel (Bowling green State University), and Roberta Schultz (Western Michigan University) on the Editorial Board.

At the last board meeting, sponsored by Dean Palan and hosted by Roberta Schultz at Western Michigan University, it was agreed to restrict the focus of the journal to the core business disciplines of accounting, finance, management, marketing, information systems, operations management, and strategy. That means that although the journal will accept work in the core business disciplines that draws on theories from economics, psychology, and sociology, it no longer be publishing work that is purely economic, psychological, or sociological in nature. The intent behind this restricted focus is to ensure that the articles published in the journal are relevant to the journal’s readership, which is the business community, both academic and practitioner. Within those core disciplines, the journal is positioned at the juncture of research and practice. As shown in Figure 1, it claims the sweet spot where theoretical research, empirical research, and practice overlap.

Figure 1 Positioning of the American Journal of Business

We will publish work that makes a significant contribution to the understanding of business by explaining how theories and empirical findings inform business practice. Research will be embedded in contemporary literature and, like other quality journals in the field, the requirements for publication include clear and logical theory building for conceptual work and methodological adequacy for empirical work. The emphasis on work that is relevant to the readership means that we welcome phenomenological research. Ontology and epistemology will, of course, remain core, but research that addresses business phenomena, or phenomena that is affecting business, is welcomed. For example, in accounting, firms are struggling with the move to international financial reporting standards; in finance, and as witnessed by J.P. Morgan’s recent losses, there is the problem of managing risk, particularly that attached to instruments like synthetic CDOs; in management there are phenomena like open innovation with its organizational, behavioral, and human-resource implications; in marketing, and per GM’s withdrawal from Facebook, there is the issue of the effectiveness of social media advertizing; in information systems there remains the nagging question of how best to use them to enhance absorptive capacity, particularly when knowledge is tacit; in operations management the internet and global business continue to transform the supply chain; and in strategy the changes in the laws surrounding intellectual property have implications for competitive interaction, economic rents, and governance structures.

Unlike most other journals in the field, the board decided to approve the proposal that the journal will welcome replication studies. Replication is one of the cornerstones of good science yet, in the business disciplines, it is shunned in favor of work that provides new, untested insights. Work that either confirms or disconfirms previous findings, by using different data or different methods, is valuable in solidifying a paradigm or in helping to eliminate erroneous ones. The journal will continue to offer insights and practical advice on business issues through executive viewpoints from leading business professionals, as well as providing an educational perspective via the Dean’s letter, which is provided, in turn, by the Deans of the Business Schools within the ten founding universities.

Organizational changes also are underway. The journal’s advisory board will feature scholars who have produced work that has had a major impact in each of the seven core disciplines, and can therefore be considered seminal. We also are establishing a review board, of about 40 research-productive individuals, drawn from universities not only in the USA but also from Asia, Canada, Europe, and the Middle East. The review board is relatively large to ensure that reviewing fatigue is not a problem and that all submitting authors receive quality feedback in a timely manner.

At the board meeting, Ashok reported that under his tenure the acceptance rate for the journal was 21 percent. While acceptance rates will remain a measure of quality, which is important in academia for tenure and promotion, impact factors have become more prominent as a measure. Consequently, it is intended that application will be made for ISI citation.

We are both pleased and excited to have been invited to be Editors for the journal. Again, we thank Ashok Gupta for his many years of service, and we look forward to working with the Associate Editors, the advisory board, and the review board.

Richard Reed, Susan F. Storrud-BarnesEditors-in-Chief