Editorial

Citation

Larraza-Kintana, M. (2017), "Editorial", Management Research, Vol. 15 No. 4, pp. 378-379. https://doi.org/10.1108/MRJIAM-08-2017-0771

Introduction to Issue 4: a quick look at the most recent past

Dear colleagues,

You have in your hands the fourth issue of volume 15 of Management Research. As another proof of the progress of the journal, volume 15 is the first volume with four issues in the history of Management Research. This is a good moment to look back and list other achievements of this year. Management Research was first included in Thomson Reuters’ Emerging Sources Citation Index and lately became a part of the Scopus. The presence in these two prestigious rankings was a great achievement and will be instrumental to sustain the journal’s future growth and expansion. They added to the list of other databases and journal rankings such as ABI Inform, EBSCO, ERA, Qualis or Latindex that already list the articles published in Management Research. In addition, we have witnessed a steady increase in the number of readers. The number of downloads has been increasing on a yearly basis: an average 22 per cent since 2013. Importantly, the journal has attracted the interest of readers and authors all around the globe. The base of readers in countries like Malaysia or India has increased, and we have published papers authored by researchers in Vietnam or Israel. This international expansion of the journal has also been reflected in the composition of its Editorial Advisory Board members, who now include academics from countries such as Australia or China.

But while encouraging this, achievements are just part of the journey and more work and commitment is needed to move the journal to the next level and consolidate it in the landscape of scholarly management journals. While the journal is gaining increasing visibility through its presence in indexes and the quality and relevance of the paper it publishes, it is still necessary to attract more good quality submissions. While the number of submissions has been increasing, the quality of those submissions is quite heterogeneous, and more submissions in the high end of the quality distribution are desirable. The journal will only grow if it publishes good scholarly research, and that would only be possible if we receive good quality submissions. It is our aim to continue working to build a strong, reliable and visible journal to be more attractive for management scholars across the globe. We need to lay strong foundations to build a brilliant future. That is our goal.

This last issue of 2017 contains four interesting research articles and another interview of our section A Life in Research. In this case, Prof Santiago Ibarreche interviews Prof Joan Enric Ricart from IESE Business School, and reveals the views and thoughts of Prof Ricart about building a successful academic career in management.

The paper by Della Piana and Vecchi seeks to further explore the importance that different dimensions of socio-emotional wealth may have in determining the decisions of family firms, by analyzing the internationalization process of a family business group. After an extensive analysis of the process, followed by the family business group over the years, they conclude that family ownership, family leadership and the presence of trusted people are pivotal factors in the internationalization process of family enterprises. It highlights the importance of, and the instrumental role played by, the socio-emotional wealth preservation.

The article by Posthuma, Gónzalez-Branbilla, Fowler and Al-Riyami, on the other hand, proposes a comprehensive model aimed at enhancing business school education in Latin America in the increasingly turbulent environments that businesses face. More specifically, Posthuma and colleagues modify and adapt prior meta-analytic research on workplace training programs to create a model that is applicable to the context of business school education in Latin America. Based on this approach, they provide several research propositions, as well as specific suggestions on the methods for data collection and analysis.

In a different study, Delgado-Márquez, De Castro and Justo examine the effect that the presence of women in top teams has on firm performance, and the influence of three factors that may affect that relationship: the overall percentage of women in the business, the level of participative decision-making and top management team compensation. Using a large database of Brazilian businesses whose main economic activity is production and commercialization, which were included in the Solidarity Economy Enterprise Database, they found evidence that the presence of women in top teams can result in better firm performance, but that there is an inflexion point where more women in top teams is detrimental for firm performance. Their research provides important evidence and insights on the importance of women in top management teams and the conditions under which their presence is beneficial for the business.

Finally Nguyen validates an integrative model that investigates the structural relationships among consumer social resources (including social capital and social exchange), co-creation behaviors (as outcome of social resources), as well as satisfaction and positive word-of-mouth (as joint outcomes of social resources and co-creation practice). Using data from 334 individuals in HCM City, Vietnam, he observes that social capital and social exchange, as interconnected operant resources, influence consumer co-creation that further affects consumer satisfaction and positive word-of-mouth. This paper not only provides evidence on key relations but also uses information from a country (Vietnam) that has been seldom explored.

As stated before, we continue working to offer to our community a selection of high-quality research help to enlighten our understanding of the central issue, which is management. If you want to contribute to this endeavor, then please send your research to Management Research. We will be glad to review and consider it for publication in our journal.

Stay tuned, we are preparing more interesting contents for 2018.