Managing the Editorial Review Process:It’s the People That Matter

I served as the editor of the Academy of Management Journal (AMJ) from 1994 until 1996. I had served on the editorial boards of several journals (including AMJ) and I also served as a consulting editor under Mike Hitt’s editorship, prior to being appointed as the editor. I thought I understood the review process pretty well because of these earlier assignments, as well as because I had submitted a reasonable number of papers to journals myself, and had a variety of experiences with those papers. But, it was only when I actually took on the job that I came to realize how complicated the job of a journal editor really is. Sometimes people believe that being an editor for a professional journal is the ultimate in power in the field—they are mistaken. I don’t know what it is like to be the editor of Time or The N.Y. Times, but I have learned something about the job of journal editor. The most important thing I learned is that the key to being a successful editor is the ability to balance the needs and concerns of all the individuals who are involved in the editorial process. There are actually more parties that have a stake in what happens during this process than many people realize, and an editor must be a successful manager of various groups, all with different and potentially conflicting interests in the editorial process. Anyone contemplating accepting the job of editor must understand this situation, and so the focus of this chapter is to identify the relevant parties and to discuss some of the issues involved in managing them throughout the editorial process.