Please see –https://www.egos.org/2025_Athens/Sub-Plenaries.
The tensions and challenges of editorship in evolving contexts: enabling creativity and enacting control (Egos 2025, Sub-Plenary)
Background. Management scholarship and research and the institutions that produce these have been under-attack for a while. Our publication process is viewed as too demanding, lengthy and costly as well as generating research which is often lacking in novelty and relevance. For some at least, the norms of our publication process have stifled our ability to engage with practice and to help address key societal challenges. Others have criticised biases in current editorial and peer review practices, which have privileged certain voices over others and generally sanctioned the hegemony of North American approaches. Relations between different stakeholders in the publication processes are increasingly strained and there are serious concerns with regards to the sustainability of the current system.
Furthermore, we are on the cusp of epochal change as a number of wide ranging changes are in train. Whilst some of these may be intended to address some of the issues mentioned above, they are generating high levels of uncertainty. As we migrate to an ‘article based economy’ where the revenues of journals and their publishers will be tied to the number of articles they publish (via the article process charges that each article generates) there will be significant unintended consequences. Editors will be under increasing contractual pressures to publish more. Publishers will become more involved in the daily activities of their journals. Peer review will become ‘lighter’ or even be deferred post publication, raising concerns for quality control. Predatory journals and paper mills will become more common. At the same time article processing fees will be prohibitive to many scholars across the world, limiting their ability to publish. Furthermore, AI is raising all sorts of ethical dilemmas and redefining the very notion of authorship.
Main Focus. Against this backdrop, we have created the Organization and Management Editor Network (OMEN) which brings together editors of management journals (broadly defined) to discuss areas of common concern and to respond and ideally influence developments in our field. This event is part of this project. Our speakers, who are drawn from the OMEN network, will explore, reflect on, and discuss the current status of the academic publishing field and of its core institutions whilst seeking to suggest some creative ways in which editors can add value to both the authors and the users of academic knowledge. The main argument developed in this sub-plenary is that more creativity is needed to refashion the institutions of academic publishing to make sure that we overcome the limitations of the past and to resist some of the unintended consequences arising from current changes. As such, this sub-plenary (1) provides an important opportunity to discuss the role of peer reviewed journals and their editors in a rapidly changing publication landscape, 2) to think of ways in which we can enhance creativity in the editorial process, and 3) to introduce OMEN, its objectives and activities to the broader EGOS community.
As clear from the text above, our proposal is explicitly focused on the conference’s main theme of creativity as it tries to inject more of this within the peer review system and in the academic publishing field. This theme is critical to the EGOS community given the centrality that publishing in peer reviewed journals has for the production of knowledge and the development of academic careers. This is all the more important in the current context where peer reviewed journals and their editorial practices have been subjected both to extensive criticism and to radical changes.
Structure. The proposed sub-plenary is coordinated by Daniel Muzio and Gavin Schwarz. Confirmed speakers are Matthew Cronin, Tine Koehler, Shuang Ren and Kevin Rockmann. Whilst these scholars represent a variety of different journals and academic traditions they have all placed creativity and innovation at the heart of their practice. As such they will provide some opening reflections on how editors can add value to authors and avoid some of the more negative features which affect the current publication process.
Proposed program (outline):
- Introduction to theme by coordinators (5 minutes)
- Presentation by speakers on theme (4*10 minutes)
- Responses by speakers to statements in other presentations and questions from coordinators (15 minutes)
- Q&A and open discussion (30 min)
On the basis of this sub-plenary, the organizers will develop a proposal for a special issue or edited book on editorial best practices to be submitted to a leading journal/publisher.
People. Coordinators and confirmed speakers:
- Matthew E. Cronin is a Professor of Management at George Mason University and a co-editor in chief at the Academy of Management Annals
- Tine Koehler is a Professor Of International Management at the University of Melbourne and a co-Editor-in-Chief at Organizational Research Methods
- Daniel Muzio is a Professor of Management at the University of York and a General Editor at the Journal of Management Studies
- Paolo Quattrone is a Professor of Accounting, Governance & Society at the University of Manchester and Editor-in-Chief of Organization Studies
- Shuang Ren is a Professor of Management and Queen University Belfast and a Co-Editor in Chief at the British Journal of Management
- Kevin Rockmann is a Professor of Management at George Mason University and a former editor in chief at the Academy of Management Discoveries
- Gavin Schwarz is a Professor of Organization Studies at the University of New South Wales and Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science
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