Editorial

Citation

Ribeiro Soriano, D. (2012), "Editorial", Management Decision, Vol. 50 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/md.2012.00150eaa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Management Decision, Volume 50, Issue 5

It is no mean feat for a publication to reach 50 years of age, and Management Decision publishes its fiftieth volume in 2012. MD has earned its place in academe as the world’s very first peer-reviewed management journal. In this issue, we wish to celebrate this event with a special issue which contains contributions from important figures in the field of Management from around the world. Besides being highly regarded in their respective fields of interest, they are also all editors-in-chief of some of the best-known and reputed journals. The following esteemed colleagues have contributed to this auspicious edition: David B. Audretsch (USA, editor-in-chief of Small Business Economics); Arch G. Woodside (USA, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Business Research) and Eunju Ko; Theresa M. Welbourne (USA, editor-in-chief of Human Resource Management), Heidi M. Neck and G. Dale Meyer; Donald S. Siegel (USA, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Technology Transfer) and Maija Renko; Sang M. Lee (USA, editor-in-chief of Service Business), David L. Olson and Silvana Trimi; Vishwanath V. Baba (Canada, editor-in-chief of the Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences) and Farimah HakemZadeh; Rick D. Hackett (Canada, editor-in-chief of the Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences) and Gordon Wang; J. Bruce Tracey (USA, editor-in-chief of Cornell Hospitality Quarterly); Slawek Magala (The Netherlands, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Organizational Change Management); Vlad Vaiman (Iceland and UK, editor-in-chief of the European Journal of International Management), Hugh Scullion and David G. Collings; Rodney Turner (France and UK, editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Project Management), Ann Ledwith and John Kelly; Alistair R. Anderson (UK, editor-in-chief of Entrepreneurship and Regional Development), Sarah Drakopoulou Dodd and Sarah Jack; and Gary P. Akehurst (UK, editor-in-chief of the Service Industries Journal), Carolina Afonso and Helena Martins Gonçalves.

This is a good time for retrospective reflections and for sharing with our authors and readers several guidelines that have helped to define the character of Management Decision. The success of MD is, was and will be due to the ongoing, dedicated efforts of a team: editors, editorial advisory board, regional and/or associate editors, book review editors, and obviously our publisher, Emerald. David Ashton was the founding Editor of MD when it was acquired by Emerald (formerly the MCB Group) in 1967. The journal then had a number of Editorial changes before John Peters took over in 1988, and retired in 2011.

Naming all the members of the editorial advisory board or those that have belonged to the board in the past and have been regular reviewers for MD, and those collaborators who have reviewed papers without belonging to the board would be an impossible task after 50 years of existence. However, it is patently clear that MD has benefitted enormously from the selfless work of reviewers, as have the countless authors whose work has been sculpted and corrected thanks to the invaluable advice received to finally produce the quality we see in the final published versions. Despite being extremely busy people, our reviewers have truly helped to achieve the success of MD, as have the contributing authors who have chosen to publish their manuscripts in MD.

The journal began with four issues per volume in 1967. This number then increased to six issues in 1973, and eight issues in 1990, until we were publishing ten issues per year in 1995 (volume 33).

The journal was accepted onto the Social Science Citation Index of the ISI in 2007 and was given its first impact factor by Thomson Reuters in 2009.

MD publishes, and will go on publishing, theoretical and research articles, case studies, book reviews and special issues. Papers are based and will be based on topics that offer advances for management decisions by introducing concepts or extending and developing existing theory in a significant way and that will stimulate future research. Due to the tremendously wide range of concepts that come under and are analysed within the term “Management”, the scope of MD is, and has always been wide-reaching, contrasted by the enormous number of manuscripts we receive and which can be seen in the list of contents which provides an idea of the central interests of the journal. We will publish an issue each two-three years devoted exclusively to critical studies. These will consist of a “State of the Art” article surveying management in the social sciences. MD imposes no rigid requirements regarding the length and presentation of texts, and though for the most part written in English, this journal is by no means Anglo-Saxon in its output.

I enjoy immensely the job of editing Management Decision. I would like to thank Emerald for their support and trust in me.

Domingo Ribeiro SorianoEditor-in-chief