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Cited by 176Academic Writing and PublishingPublishing and Scholarly CommunicationPsychology Research and Bibliometrics

Writing Nonempirical Articles for Journal of Management: General Thoughts and Suggestions

Cropanzano, Russell·2009·Journal of Management
DOI 10.1177/0149206309344118
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Abstract

Most of the articles that appear in Journal of Management (JOM) are empirical. Generally, these report original data collected from one or more samples and deployed to test a social scientific theory of work behavior. Empirical articles are crucial to JOM’s success as they are for most other scholarly journals. But JOM goes further. In addition to our many empirical articles, JOM also published a sizable number of nonempirical ones. These usually, though not necessarily, appear in the two or more special issues that are published each year. To illustrate how important review articles are to JOM, let me consider two indicators— impact and online viewings. Both these indices are available on the JOM Web site (http://jom. sagepub.com/). “Impact,” or the number of citations in scholarly articles, is the best known and more widely used measure of success. As of June 2009, the top five most cited (i.e., highest impact) articles in this history of JOM were all review articles. More recently, with the rise of the World Wide Web, we can count online viewings. Three of the top five most frequently viewed articles are from review issues. As can easily be seen from these data, nonempirical articles are important for JOM. When I was serving as editor from 2006 to 2008, our team received literally hundreds of proposals and articles that were submitted for the small number of slots in our review issues. Sifting through these articles was a massive task, but it came with recompense. I was forced to think long and hard about successful and unsuccessful articles, and I learned to do so through two criteria—which submissions survived the editorial review process and which were later cited (or viewed online) by others scholars. (Probably my most unanticipated editorial task was reading old articles to ascertain what made them interesting.) In this short article, my goal is to share what I learned and, if I am successful, to thereby save contributors a lot of their time by helping them focus their efforts. I will discuss three different types of articles that I saw a lot of and discuss problems that are commonly associated with each. I understand that such observations can seem abstract. I learned by seeing concrete examples, and I suspect the same may be true for others. Therefore, I promise to “name names,” referring directly to articles that illustrate each point.

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  • Systematization is especially helpful when research on a given topic is fragmented across different literatures, helping to identify and underscore commonalities that build coherence.

    “This kind of systematization is especially helpful when research on a given topic is fragmented across different literatures, helping to identify and underscore commonalities that build coherence (Cropanzano 2009).”

    From Designing conceptual articles: four approaches (2020) · cites this paper as Cropanzano 2009

  • A lack of elegance occurs when authors attempt to hammer together separate research ideas in a series of minireviews instead of attending to a single conceptual theme.

    “A lack of elegance occurs when authors attempt to hammer together separate research ideas in a series of “minireviews” instead of attending to a single conceptual theme (Cropanzano 2009).”

    From Designing conceptual articles: four approaches (2020) · cites this paper as Cropanzano 2009

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Authors
Cropanzano, R.
Affiliations
University of Arizona (US)
Corresponding author
Cropanzano, Russell
ORCID
Cropanzano, Russell
Venue
Journal of Management
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2009-12
Volume
35
Issue
6
Pages
1304-1311
ISSN
  • 0149-2063 (ISSN-L)
  • 1557-1211
DOI
10.1177/0149206309344118
OpenAlex
W2073480450
Cited by
176
References
33
Citations by year
2026: 10 · 2025: 23 · 2024: 20 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 26 · 2021: 24 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 5 · 2013: 3 · 2012: 4
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations
Journal of Management (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Academic Writing and Publishing
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Publishing and Scholarly Communication
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Psychology Research and Bibliometrics
Keywords
academic writing, editorial review, citation impact, scholarly publishing

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