Life begins at 45!

Citation

Foster, K., Snowden, K. and Peters, J. (2007), "Life begins at 45!", Management Decision, Vol. 45 No. 10. https://doi.org/10.1108/md.2007.00145jaa.001

Life begins at 45!

Dear all,

Welcome to the last issue of Management Decision in the 45th volume, 2007, and what a year it has been!

As you may have heard, Management Decision was honoured to have be accepted onto the Thomson Scientific (ISI) Social Science Citation Index during 2007, with coverage starting from the first issue of this 2007 volume. The inclusion of the journal on ISI is a testament to the hard work that the Editor, Regional Editors, Executive Editor and all the editorial board has put in over the years. The Social Science Citation Index is a key service used by academics and librarians to measure the quality of journals, so inclusion provides an excellent message in terms of the consistent quality of the journal.

Another testament to the quality and relevance of Management Decision is the ever-increasing usage figures, which have more then doubled since 2004. Many things can be credited as reasons for this increase (quality of papers mainly, although improving access to the journal has helped), but in a world where open access and self-publishing loom large at our door, this is extremely encouraging and really shows how important the journal is to the working researcher. We are getting such a high calibre of submissions through that we are now rejecting or referring about 75 per cent of papers submitted.

It has been a year for special issues, with five of the ten issues dedicated to specific themes and topics, as follows:

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  Issue 1: “Theory, practice, strategy and sustainability”, guest edited by Andy Adcroft, Spinder Dhaliwal, Graham Miller and Phil Walsh.

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  Issue 3: “Hierarchy of strategy – the state of play”, guest edited by Abby Ghobadian, Nicholas O’Regan, Howard Thomas and David Gallear.

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  Issue 5: “Investor influence on company management”, guest edited by Tahir M. Nisar and Roderick Martin.

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  Issue 8: “Alleviating poverty through trade”, guest edited by David Lamond and Rocky Dwyer.

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  Issue 9: “Strategic business valuation”, guest edited by Nick Bontis, Chris Bart and Patricia Wakefield.

A particular success story was the “Alleviating poverty” issue, published in conjunction with the International Trade Forum. The issue was launched at the 2007 Academy of Management Conference in Philadelphia, and, in a first for Emerald, we produced the issue on CD-ROM for the conference, in a contribution to the environment and to the delegates, who may have struggled for luggage space! We have had very good feedback from the issue, which has prompted hours of debate and raised serious questions. David and Rocky did a great job in bringing these important issues to the table.

May we take this opportunity to thank the Guest Editors of all the special issues for their hard work in preparing these contributions. The work of an editorial team is not easy, chasing reviewers and authors, constructing feedback, and battling the administrative mountain of forms and figures, all amongst the normal pressures of academic life. We are hoping the recent move to Scholar One’s “Manuscript Central” online submission system will make this all much easier from now on, for authors, reviewers and editors alike. Do let us know if you have any feedback.

This particular issue contains a special selection of papers from the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) annual conference on innovative practices between business schools/education providers and institutions/corporations. These three papers on “Excellence in practice in leadership development programmes” were all presented at the conference in Brussels in June 2007, and make extremely interesting case studies.

We also have seven regular papers, all offering insights and theories to the world of general management. Taran Patel uses Douglasian Cultural Theory (CT) to address the transactional level of culture in Indo-French alliances, providing a systematic framework for discussing the viability of international alliances. This paper won the “Management and Governance” category in the 2006 Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards sponsored by Management Decision.

Josie Fisher and Ingrid Bonn present a paper which explores the complexities and tensions that international organisations face in managing ethics, offering practical guidance to managers by providing a framework for better understanding the challenges faced by head office and subsidiaries when operating in international markets.

James Hoyt, Faizul Huq and Patrick Kreiser’s paper presents a validated survey instrument to measure certain organizational conditions which enable firms to develop the ability to respond to change, utilizing a survey performed on companies operating in uncertain and dynamic environments.

Our next paper by George Panagiotou addresses weaknesses in the literature associated with competitive benchmarking and the impact and effect that this has on strategy development, placing attention on the individual in this case.

Posing the question whether management style is changing in response to global market convergence is Stephanie Slater, Stan Paliwoda and Jim Slater, as they review the internationalisation strategies of Japanese and Singaporean firms within the context of Dunning, Hymer and Rugman.

Karl Erik Sveiby then analyses the issues that prevent knowledge sharing in organizations, with the aim of not just adding to the theoretical body of knowledge, but also identifying practical implications that go some way to overcome these issues, which sadly still persist despite the study of knowledge sharing practices becoming one of the most researched fields within knowledge management.

Our Current Research Development piece is by Leah A. Platz and Cecilia Temponi, who identify commonalities that exist within the contracts between customer and vendor companies, identify the nature of the problems commonly associated with these contracts, and provide a theoretical model that exists between customer and vendor companies.

We hope you have enjoyed this year with Management Decision, it has been a great journey for us and we look forward to another year (with a new book review section!) with you: the readers and contributors who shape and mould this great journal with us.

Best regards.

Kim FosterPublisherKate SnowdenExecutive Editor John PetersEditor