Revisiting the 2008 JOB Mission
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Revisiting the 2008 JOB Mission SUZANNE S. MASTERSON * Carl H. Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.A. In this editorial, I would like to revisit the JOB Mission (Ashkanasy, 2008), in order to share some observations from my years of experience with the journal, first as an author and reviewer and, over the past few years, as an Associate Editor and now Senior Editor. I hope that these will be of use to JOB’s readers, reviewers, and especially future authors. The Journal of Organizational Behavior aims to publish empirical reports and theoretical reviews of research in the field of organizational behavior, wherever in the world that work is conducted. The mission’s opening sentence highlights that, at JOB, we welcome the full spectrum of empirical research, including both quantitative and qualitative research, as well as conceptual manuscripts that review past research and develop theoretical models for guiding future research. In my time, I have had the pleasure of both reviewing and guiding through the review process all types of manuscripts and know that each one comes with its own challenges and opportunities. From my view as an associate/senior editor, the majority of manuscripts are traditional quantitative studies, proposing and testing hypotheses by using either multi-source data (e.g., employees and supervisors, employees and coworkers) or multi-administration data. Our reviewers are quite critical of any research that does not include multi- source and/or multi-administration data, and statistical controls are not generally accepted as a substitute for the “richer” dataset (Ashkanasy, 2010). Although this quantitative type of research is the “bread and butter” of our field, I hope that authors will also increasingly consider JOB for their qualitative and conceptual manuscripts. Our field moves forward through innovative inductive studies and thought-provoking theory development pieces just as surely as it does through high-quality deductive studies, and JOB welcomes the opportunity to review and publish more of this work—as we have been saying for years, we welcome and value methodological diversity (Greenberg, 2007). This opening statement also features our desire to publish research from around the world. I would add that, implicitly, this spotlights the important role context plays in understanding and interpreting research findings. More and more research is being conducted in non-Western settings, which is both heartening and challenging, as it both broadens our knowledge base and also requires authors to do more to help reviewers and readers to put their results into that broader context. Frequently, I find that authors provide contextual information when identifying their sample, but do not fully incorporate that same context when developing hypotheses and discussing results. At the same time, reviewers generally call them out for this practice and push for more consideration of the context throughout the paper, and not just in the methods section. I encourage all authors of empirical research, regardless of where their data are collected, to keep context in mind throughout their manuscript as appropriate. The JOB mission statement continues as follows: The journal will focus on research and theory in all topics associated with organizational behavior within and across individual, group, and organizational levels of analysis, including the following: • At the individual level: personality, perception, beliefs, attitudes, values, motivation, career behavior, stress, emotions, judgment, and commitment. *Correspondence to: Suzanne S. Masterson, Carl H. Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.A. E-mail: [email protected] Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 34, 581–582 (2013) Published online 23 May 2013 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.1876 Editorial
Transcript of Revisiting the 2008 JOB Mission
Revisiting the 2008 JOB Mission
SUZANNE S. MASTERSON*Carl H. Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.A.
In this editorial, I would like to revisit the JOBMission (Ashkanasy, 2008), in order to share some observations frommyyears of experience with the journal, first as an author and reviewer and, over the past few years, as an Associate Editorand now Senior Editor. I hope that these will be of use to JOB’s readers, reviewers, and especially future authors.
The Journal of Organizational Behavior aims to publish empirical reports and theoretical reviews of researchin the field of organizational behavior, wherever in the world that work is conducted.
The mission’s opening sentence highlights that, at JOB, we welcome the full spectrum of empirical research, includingboth quantitative and qualitative research, as well as conceptual manuscripts that review past research and developtheoretical models for guiding future research. In my time, I have had the pleasure of both reviewing and guidingthrough the review process all types of manuscripts and know that each one comes with its own challenges andopportunities. From my view as an associate/senior editor, the majority of manuscripts are traditional quantitativestudies, proposing and testing hypotheses by using either multi-source data (e.g., employees and supervisors, employeesand coworkers) or multi-administration data. Our reviewers are quite critical of any research that does not include multi-source and/or multi-administration data, and statistical controls are not generally accepted as a substitute for the “richer”dataset (Ashkanasy, 2010). Although this quantitative type of research is the “bread and butter” of our field, I hope thatauthors will also increasingly consider JOB for their qualitative and conceptual manuscripts. Our field moves forwardthrough innovative inductive studies and thought-provoking theory development pieces just as surely as it does throughhigh-quality deductive studies, and JOB welcomes the opportunity to review and publish more of this work—as wehave been saying for years, we welcome and value methodological diversity (Greenberg, 2007).This opening statement also features our desire to publish research from around the world. I would add that,
implicitly, this spotlights the important role context plays in understanding and interpreting research findings. Moreand more research is being conducted in non-Western settings, which is both heartening and challenging, as it bothbroadens our knowledge base and also requires authors to do more to help reviewers and readers to put their resultsinto that broader context. Frequently, I find that authors provide contextual information when identifying theirsample, but do not fully incorporate that same context when developing hypotheses and discussing results. At thesame time, reviewers generally call them out for this practice and push for more consideration of the contextthroughout the paper, and not just in the methods section. I encourage all authors of empirical research, regardlessof where their data are collected, to keep context in mind throughout their manuscript as appropriate.The JOB mission statement continues as follows:
The journal will focus on research and theory in all topics associated with organizational behavior within andacross individual, group, and organizational levels of analysis, including the following:
• At the individual level: personality, perception, beliefs, attitudes, values, motivation, career behavior, stress,emotions, judgment, and commitment.
*Correspondence to: Suzanne S. Masterson, Carl H. Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.A. E-mail:[email protected]
Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 34, 581–582 (2013)Published online 23 May 2013 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.1876
Editorial
• At the group level: size, composition, structure, leadership, power, group affect, and politics.• At the organizational level: structure, change, goal setting, creativity, and human resource management
policies and practices.• Across levels: decision making, performance, job satisfaction, turnover and absenteeism, diversity, careers
and career development, equal opportunities, work–life balance, identification, organizational culture andclimate, inter-organizational processes, and multi-national and cross-national issues.
• Research methodologies in studies of organizational behavior.
I know that submitters to JOB do not feel limited by the aforementioned exemplars, because we receive manuscriptson topics that are not mentioned earlier on a regular basis, including trust, justice, social exchange, networks, conflict,and citizenship and deviance behaviors, among many others. Still, I feel it is important to emphasize that contributorsshould feel encouraged to submit to JOB any research that focuses on better understanding individuals and groupswithin and across organizational contexts, including newly developed constructs and measures that are not in themainstream of organizational behavior research. Whether a particular topic has been widely researched or newlydeveloped is not as important as is how the authors frame their topic and demonstrate how it fits with and contributesto the broader organization behavior literature stream. Perhaps the top concern that reviewers identify acrossmanuscripts relates to the theoretical contribution that the research can make to the field. A meaningful contributiongoes beyond simply finding a gap that has not yet been filled, but entails clearly demonstrating how the researchadvances understanding of important organization-related phenomena.My hope is that both contributors and reviewers find the JOB mission statement to be a useful tool in guiding their
efforts toward the journal. By highlighting our desire for a wide spectrum of research methodologies as well asconceptual manuscripts, emphasizing the importance of context while welcoming research conducted anywhereacross the globe, and encouraging the submission of manuscripts that have a clearly identified contribution to theorganization behavior field as defined broadly, the JOB mission is a good starting point for all potential submitters,reviewers, and readers alike.
Author biography
Suzanne S. Masterson (PhD, University of Maryland) is an Associate Professor of Management at the Carl H.Lindner College of Business at the University of Cincinnati. Her research interests focus on organizational justice,social exchange relationships, and organizational quality. She is Senior Editor of the Journal of OrganizationalBehavior.
ReferencesAshkanasy, N. M. (2008). The new JOB mission. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29, 1–2. doi: 10.1002/job.510Ashkanasy, N. M. (2010). Publishing today is more difficult than ever. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 31, 1–3. doi:10.1002/job.676
Greenberg, J. (2007). A plea for methodological diversity. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 28, 929–931. doi: 10.1002/job.500
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Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 34, 581–582 (2013)DOI: 10.1002/job
