Editor’s Introduction

Abstract

It is a tremendous honor to take the helm as the new editor-in-chief of Management Communication Quarterly, the academic journal that has been the most important for my professional development and the intellectual home of our scholarly community. I’ve long admired the writings of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, so I can’t help but approach this endeavor with a bit of “fear and trembling.” Yet I’m reassured by the incredible support and encouragement I’ve received from so many, especially past editors and board members.

Our new editorial team is in place and we’ve been hard at work for the last few months, managing the transition and continuing the work of developing our research literature. But as my first public-facing act as the new editor, I want to express my extensive gratitude to former editor Rebecca Meisenbach and her editorial team.

It has been a smooth transition and I have been able to get started on several new initiatives, but only because I took over an enterprise that was in such good shape. This would be remarkable on its own, but it’s all the more impressive because Rebecca’s tenure coincided with the COVID pandemic and so much of the cultural and political upheaval that has challenged our scholarly community and broader society these last few years—all of which has had a notable impact on the editorial process and the volunteer labor that MCQ depends on. Thus, it is no small accomplishment that our journal is stable and flourishing after all we’ve been through. This demonstrates the competency and care of Rebecca and her team, who have also been extremely helpful in facilitating this editorial transition to ensure quality operations throughout the process. Thank you, Rebecca, for your tremendous stewardship of MCQ over the last four years.

When I applied for this editorship, I wrote in my application letter that my editorial vision for MCQ was simply to preserve and expand. By this I meant preserving the longstanding reputation of MCQ as the leading journal for organizational and managerial communication research and a place for quality scholarship from multiple disciplines. This also entails expanding the influence and scope of the journal in relevant and meaningful ways. Not as an overreach that would dilute the journal or stretch it too thin, but rather as a recognition that a scholarly journal is a living social system that requires continual growth and adaptation to survive and thrive.

I think a good editor should be like a good sports referee—you know they’re doing a good job when you don’t notice them very much (and if you notice them a lot something’s probably not going well!). So I’ll stay off-stage most of the time and let the amazing work of our scholarly community take the spotlight. Still, in times of transition like this I think it’s important for readers to have a general idea of a new editor’s vision and plans for the future of the journal. Accordingly, in this editor’s introduction I’d like to explain what this can look like and how I intend to pursue—and hopefully realize—this vision.

Several years ago, I was invited to write an essay for MCQ’s 25^th anniversary and offer some reflections on our journal from the vantage of a “younger scholar” in the field. Alas, how quickly those invitations to offer youthful perspectives have ceased!

In that piece I articulated several i’s I had an eye for: interdisciplinarity, identity, internationality, and immateriality (Koschmann, 2012). All of these represented the character of MCQ, as I saw it, both descriptive and aspirational. Recently, I re-read that article and I was struck by how much it still reflects my understanding of MCQ. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to give it a quick read if you want a better sense of how I approach our journal.

Today, I have my eye on another “i” that guides my editorial vision, the notion of inclusion. By this I mean expanding and enhancing the involvement of more people and more perspectives in meaningful and substantive ways. This entails everything from the composition of our editorial board and reviewer database to the genres and topics of research we aim to publish – and hopefully much more.

However, a vision isn’t worth much without implementation, so here are some specific things we’re working on to enhance the notion of inclusion at MCQ in ways that will both preserve and expand the character of our journal and scholarly community:

Continued IDEA/DEI Initiatives

Previous editor Rebecca Meisenbach formed a small IDEA subcommittee (inclusion-diversity-equity-access) of the MCQ editorial board members to revise our journal’s Aims & Scope. I’ve continued this work and you can view the revised language on our website. Some of the folks on this committee were also authors of the recent MCQ article “When Words Do Not Matter: Identifying Actions to Effect Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Academy” (Ballard et al., 2020), and I’m happy to report that we worked with our publisher, SAGE, to secure permanently free access to this article online.

SAGE has also launched a number of DEI initiatives in recent years aimed at enhancing the quality of published research, including new guidelines on global research ethics and a renewed commitment to the Global Code of Conduct for Research in Resource-Poor Settings. Additionally, Plain Language Summaries are now an option for authors on SAGE journals and SAGE is providing language editing service waivers over the next two years to a selection of international journals, all with the aim of improving representation of diverse voices in their publications. Finally, SAGE has installed specific forms to better facilitate name changes and flag problematic historical content. I will continue to coordinate with our liaisons at SAGE to make sure MCQ sustains this important work and is a leader in the field of organizational studies.

Expanded Editorial Team

I expanded our editorial team slightly to include more associate editors. This means we have more scholars with more expertise to oversee the manuscript evaluation process. We now have multiple associate editors outside of the United States, plus a range of departmental/college affiliations to better reflect the variety of our scholarly community. We also want to make our editorial team more visible and accessible so people have a better sense of who is making decisions and how the editorial process works. Look for expanded profiles of our editorial team on the MCQ website soon and in upcoming newsletters.

Expanding the Editorial Board

We are working to increase the size of our editorial board so that we have more scholars available to review manuscripts who are committed to MCQ and invested in developing our scholarly literature. Recently we unveiled a new board member application process that should bolster our ranks and ensure that every manuscript is reviewed by scholars who are experts in the topical and methodological areas of the study, and who are dedicated to the careful cultivation of specific research literatures.

Emeritus Board

To date we haven’t had a great way for folks to rotate off our editorial board but still be involved with MCQ in meaningful ways, as well as be recognized for the service they provided to our journal over the years. An emeritus board will give people the opportunity for both – to remain in our database for occasional reviewer invitations and be recognized on our editorial board website for all to appreciate their contributions. Plus, I know of at least one new editor who would benefit from the wisdom and insight our emeritus board members can offer to enhance the quality of our journal!

Emerging Reviewer Program

For most accomplished scholars, reviewing manuscripts was a key part of their professional development and helped improve their scholarly writing substantially. Therefore, we want to involve younger scholars in the review process sooner so they can benefit from this important aspect of scholarly work. Accordingly, we’re developing an emerging reviewer program that will enable senior graduate students to participate in our manuscript review process. There will be a special designation for emerging reviewers in our database that our associate editors will use to invite a fourth reviewer to assess relevant manuscripts. Our editorial team will provide guidance and mentorship throughout the process, and emerging reviewers will also be encouraged to coordinate with a more senior scholar at their home institution to offer further oversight and support. Additionally, this will be a nice opportunity for early-career scholars who may not have much experience reviewing manuscripts but want to get involved in a supportive environment as they get started.

Auditing our Reviewer Database

The biggest challenge for an academic journal like MCQ is securing enough qualified reviewers and receiving their reviews in a timely manner. This completely depends on the database of reviewers that our associate editors use to identify scholars and send invitations. However, after years of accumulation and inevitable changes, much of the information in our reviewer database is not current and needs to be updated or revised. Many people have changed institutions or left the field, while others have moved on to other topical areas and methodologies that are no longer reflected by the 3-4 keywords they listed on the profile they created several years ago. This makes it extremely difficult for associate editors to match reviewers with manuscripts and extends the review process unnecessarily (there’s nothing more frustrating for an associate editor than to wait several weeks only to learn that a reviewer’s contact information is outdated or they aren’t interested anymore in the research topics listed on their profile). Updating our reviewer database will be a long and arduous task, and we’re grateful for your help in accomplishing this important work. But we’re committed to improving this critical part of the editorial process that will have positive ripple effects for many aspects of our journal.

Upcoming Forums and Special Issues

MCQ has a longstanding tradition of special issues and topical forums to address new and important subjects that are relevant to our scholarly community. I will continue this practice and use these formats to focus our attention on timely issues and underrepresented voices. Currently, I’m in conversation with scholars from Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America to explore ways to incorporate more perspectives on organizational and managerial communication and shape the trajectory of our field. And look for a new special issue next year on CSR Communication in an Age of Digitalization and Polarization, with more special issues to follow on topics that are relevant to our readers.

New Manuscript Submission Genres

Finally, I recognize that inclusion can often go only as far as the limitations of existing structures. Therefore, we want to increase the kinds of manuscript submissions we will consider and thus expand the character of writing that constitutes our scholarly literature. The backbone of MCQ will continue to be conventional, full-length research articles, along with special topic forums and shorter research methods articles. But we are also working to develop some alternative submission formats that will enable us to include more voices and provide more opportunities for involvement. These consist of research cases, research proposals, replication studies, and book reviews.

Research Cases will focus on a specific dilemma or problem of organizational communication with an accompanying teaching note. Case studies are a common genre for our colleagues in business schools and we want to provide more opportunities for them to make valuable contributions to our scholarly literature, as well as all the insights we can gain from this important type of scholarly and pedagogical resource. One of our associate editors, Vidhi Chaudhri from Erasmus University Rotterdam, is taking the lead to develop the submission guidelines and assessment criteria and will be MCQs first associate editor of research cases.

Research Proposals will provide an opportunity for authors to get initial feedback from our editorial team on their proposed study before submitting a completed study/manuscript for consideration (though proposals will not be published). This is especially valuable for empirical studies so researchers can get additional feedback before embarking on data collection and analysis, plus are also relevant for conceptual/theoretical studies that would benefit from additional input prior to completion. Research proposals will be reviewed by an associate editor and at least one anonymous peer reviewer.

Replication Studies will provide an important opportunity for scholars to assess and validate our research literature. I’m sure most readers are aware of the so-called “replication crisis” that plagues much of the social sciences (Bergh et al., 2017; Block et al., 2022; Hensel, 2021), and our field certainly isn’t immune. We will benefit from critical assessment of our research literature to bolster our strongest insights while also rethinking some of our conventional wisdom. Plus, replication studies will be a great way for new and emerging scholars to get more involved in the development of our scholarship, but without the time and commitment needed to create and complete an original research project.

This new genre is a bit further down the road, but it’s something we’re working with SAGE on for future development. Replication studies are common in many other academic disciplines, so we want to make sure we develop something that is in line with established best practices but also distinct for our scholarly community. This may be slightly more applicable for our colleagues doing more quantitative and post-positivist work, but there are also relevant ways for interpretive/critical/qualitative/rhetorical scholarship to benefit from replication—or quasi-replication—analysis (see Bettis et al., 2016).

Single Book Reviews will provide additional opportunities for book-length scholarship to be reviewed in a more timely manner. Previously, MCQ introduced the multiple book review essay as the only book review genre we published. This is a superb way to put texts into conversation with each other and contribute valuable insights to our scholarly literature. But it is also very time-intensive and depends on the existence of multiple books on similar topics. Conversely, we know that new texts need to be introduced to our scholarly community sooner and need timely reviews for tenure and promotion considerations. Multiple book reviews will continue to be our primary consideration, but now we will also consider single book reviews of scholarly texts that are relevant to our readers. Our book review editor, Rebecca Gill from Wake Forest University, welcomes your ideas and inquiries about possible book review submissions.

Increased Volume and Issue Page Counts

How are we going to accommodate all these new submission genres? Even though we are a fully electronic journal, we still have page limitations in our publication process. But I’ve been working with our SAGE liaison to increase the page limit of each MCQ volume. This won’t change the scope and character of each issue dramatically, but it will allow us to get more articles in official volumes sooner, plus it will give us the flexibility to include more special issues, forums, and alternative genres more often without sacrificing the amount of full-length research articles we can publish in each issue.

All of these are notable changes for sure, but our hope is that they are seen as important expansions of MCQ that sustain and enhance our identity as the key place for organizational communication scholarship. And in addition to these more formal initiatives, look for a number of informal things in the future to increase the visibility of our journal and our editorial team so that more people can find meaningful and relevant ways to be more involved with our scholarly community – especially at upcoming conferences.

Admittedly, all of this may see a bit ambitious, and most of it will not show up for at least a year—we have a queue of 30+ in-press articles already posted on MCQ’s Online First website that will fill the remaining issues of 2023. But these are some of the key applications of the editorial vision I shared at the beginning—to preserve and expand—and what we’ll be working on behind the scenes as you continue to enjoy the current content of MCQ.

Thank you so much for the tremendous opportunity to serve our scholarly community as editor-in-chief of Management Communication Quarterly. I take this job with a profound sense of stewardship and accountability, and I’m grateful for your continued input and encouragement to help me do this job better each year.

With appreciation,

References

Ballard

Allen

Ashcraft

Ganesh

McLeod

Zoller

(2020). When Words do not matter: Identifying Actions to effect diversity, equity, and inclusion in the Academy. Management Communication Quarterly, 34(4), 590–616. https://doi.org/10.1177/0893318920951643

Bergh

D. D.

Sharp

B. M.

Aguinis

(2017). Is there a credibility crisis in strategic management research? Evidence on the reproducibility of study findings. Strategic Organization, 15(3), 423–436. https://doi.org/10.1177/1476127017701076

Bettis

R. A.

Helfat

C. E.

Shaver

J. M.

(2016). The necessity, logic, and forms of replication. Strategic Management Journal, 37(11), 2193–2203. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.2580

Block

J. H.

Fisch

Kanwal

Lorenzen

Schulze

(2022). Replication studies in top management journals: An empirical investigation of prevalence, types, outcomes, and impact. Management Review Quarterly, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11301-022-00269-6

Hensel

P. G.

(2021). Reproducibility and replicability crisis: How management compares to psychology and economics: A systematic review of literature. European Management Journal, 39(5), 577–594. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emj.2021.01.002

Koschmann

Matthew

(2012). An Eye for an I: Thoughts About Management Communication Quarterly From the Next Generation. Management Communication Quarterly, 26(4), 656–681. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/0893318912458761.