Abstract
And just like that, a new year has begun! By now, our New Year’s Resolutions, for those who attempt them, may either be established habits or starting to fall by the wayside. If it’s the latter (which, admittedly, is often the case for us), keep in mind that we can always restart our goals at any point of the year!
Despite the multitude of tasks that we know everyone is juggling, we hope that some of these goals include moving your SoTL-related empirical and conceptual manuscripts, teaching and learning related essays, and avant-garde experiential classroom activities closer to publication! We are eager to read about the ways in which you are pushing key management education SoTL conversations forward and innovating to help your students learn.
For inspiration, we open this editorial with some information related to two of JME’s upcoming issues for 2024. Indeed, two topics receiving consistent attention in the mainstream, higher education, and management education domains are careers and technology (Barros et al., 2023; Lindebaum & Ramirez, 2023; Loon, 2021). It is therefore fitting that the special issues for 2024 will focus on these areas.
In April, the “Teaching About Contemporary Careers” Special Issue will release a collection of papers that address the fundamental question: How does one prepare for a career in this changing, uncertain global environment? The range of empirical research articles, essays, and instructional innovations will provide needed and necessary guidance for management educators in many areas—from HR, OB, strategy, and more. Their insights, suggestions, and provocations can inspire us to consider how we can and should teach differently to support our students. The second Special Issue of the year will be “From Taylor to Tableau: Technology as a tool, topic, and differentiator in management education.” This collection of papers will provide examples of new pedagogies that integrate innovative educational technologies in the classroom, as well as offer insights into the EdTech landscape and its impact on management education.
We hope that these two Special Issues encourage your curricular upgrades, reflection on teaching practices, and increase your motivation for moving forward with your own SOTL research! As part of our initiative to offer authors support along the entire pipeline of the research process, we will continue our online and face-to-face engagement. For online activities, the JME editorial team will host another write-a-thon (a time-limited event for writing sprints to encourage productivity) in advance of the next manuscript development workshop. These are expected somewhere at the end of Quarter 2 or early Quarter 3 of the year—stay tuned for the dates on our LinkedIn page! The online Editors’ Office Hours will also continue monthly, rotating from earlier to later in the East Coast time zone, where Melanie and Jennifer are both located, to offer access for those near and far. As always, we happily provide asynchronous email abstract consults for authors seeking feedback about the fit of their research with the journal. Finally, you will be able to see members of the Editorial Team at several Academy of Management Conferences (WAM, EAM, SMA, and AOM); AIB International in Seoul, South Korea in July; and all the MOBTS conferences this year—including MOBTS Oceania in Brisbane, Australia (late January), MOBTS in Salem, MA in the United States (early June), and IMOBTS in Singapore (late June). Please come see us at these sessions, connect with us during the breaks and social events, and even schedule meetings with us in advance to meet during the conference if you want to discuss your ideas.
In This Issue. . .
Our first issue of the year includes three research articles, an essay, and an instructional innovation.
First, in “Syllabus share: A new metric for gauging journal status,” Jason A. Colquitt, David M. Long, and Richard J. Gentry present a new measure for determining journal status—syllabus share, which reflects the “proportion of doctoral seminar syllabi comprised of articles from a given journal.” In their article, the authors detail the rigorous methodology that they undertook to develop and assess their metric, which will undoubtedly be of great interest to management doctoral students and faculty, as well as journals across the field.
Next, in “Socio-digital disadvantage within management education: A study of MBA students’ experiences of digital technologies,” Ahmad Timsal, Uzair Shah, and Vivien Hodgson explore how “students experience and use digital technologies as they adapt and respond to their socio-digital disadvantage within an in-person, full time MBA programme.” The findings from their qualitative study provide key insights on the experiences of the participants, with important take-aways for faculty and program administrators.
Mental health continues to be an issue for students, faculty, and staff in higher education. Carol Flinchbaugh, Whitney Moore, and Shammi Gandhi’s empirical research article, “Classroom-based stress management training: Evidence of student learning, application, and psychological gains,” offers specific insights on some potential best practices to support students. After reading the article, educators from all management disciplines will know how to better prepare students to address stress in their student roles and better prepare them with strategies for the challenges in future managerial and leadership roles.
Oliver Laasch’s essay, “Radicalizing managers’ climate education: Getting beyond the bull**** fairy tale of eternal economic growth,” is likely to evoke some emotions, which is the intention of the piece. In the essay, he argues that radical, not incremental, climate change education is needed, given the intensity of the climate crisis. The article details how this can be accomplished by disrupting the climate-damaging theories with anti-paradigmatic performative politics, by engaging ourselves, our students, and stakeholders in anti-paradigmatic thought, and by gaining insights by learning about radical climate movements’ civil disobedience. Educators across business schools concerned with climate change will find value from reading this essay, as well as those involved in teaching topics like strategy, organizational theory, and business ethics. Administrators would benefit from this essay as they set policies on curriculum and reward structures that reinforce or liberate educators’ actions to address change.
The last article in the issue is an instructional innovation titled “The structure-culture alignment activity: Aligning organizational structure elements with diversity, equity, and inclusion cultural values.” In this article, Nancy Hanson-Rasmussen offers students a more comprehensive understanding of centralization and formalization by giving learners the chance to connect these organizational structure dimensions to the cultural values of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). This experiential exercise will be of interest to HR and OB professors, executive education educators, and organizational development and change trainers working in DEI consulting.
Concluding Thoughts. . .
Inspiration for SoTL projects is all around us. The last article of the issue, for example, was the result of the author’s undergraduate student, as noted within the article. Their student, an aspiring entrepreneur, asked about how to link the structural elements to an organization’s DEI cultural values. Having spoken to many of you in the last year—both online and in conference meetings—we know you are doing great, creative, distinct, and quirky things in your teaching and learning. Pay attention to the questions your students are asking, your pain points as an instructor, and the conversations you are having with your peers. Then let these be catalysts for putting your ideas onto paper. We look forward to reading submissions presenting your interesting management education research projects, essays, instructional innovations, and interviews in 2024!
