The IJHRM Editorial Team and the publishing staff at Routledge were deeply shocked and saddened to learn of the sudden passing of Professor David P. Lepak, Senior Editor-in-Chief of IJHRM, on 7th December 2017 at the age of 46.
There will undoubtedly be many tributes to Dave’s life and work (https://www.isenberg.umass.edu/news/celebrating-david-lepaks-life), and memories shared by his colleagues and friends. In this piece, we would like to remember Dave’s achievements as a Journal Editor.
After the death of Professor Michael Poole, Dave began editing IJHRM in 2013 with Professor Michael Dickmann and Professor Peter Dowling. Taking on a large journal with around 1000 submissions per year is a big undertaking, and Dave made sure he got some more hands on deck. He led the formation of a group of Associate Editors to manage the peer review of papers, revamped the Editorial Board and continued with the experienced Editorial Office management of Penny Smith.
Dave quickly set about implementing his vision for the Journal. This involved tightening the acceptance criteria for papers, working with Peter to develop a programme of special issues and advocating for the appointment of an Editor to work directly with Routledge on promotional activities – Professor Emma Parry was later appointed as Senior Associate Editor for Communications, an experimental position which has proved to be a great success.
In a short period of time, IJHRM has been very successful and developed under Dave’s leadership. We could measure this by metrics – 2016 and 2017 saw successive record-highs for the Impact Factor and for full-text downloads. But it is perhaps best measured by the growing number of authors and high-quality papers the Journal receives, the positive feedback we receive from colleagues, and the large turnout at the IJHRM Editorial Board Meeting and Reception each year at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting. Dave was an integral part in making IJHRM a community journal and that is a legacy to be proud of.
We will remember Dave as an extremely talented, hard-working and driven Editor who was a genuine pleasure to work with – he was full of ideas, determination and energy. We will also remember him as a witty, caring and loyal friend, and for that in particular, we will miss him dearly. Our thoughts are of course with Dave’s family, friends and colleagues at this very difficult time.
Over the course of this year, IJHRM will join the academic community in honouring Dave’s life and his contribution to the field of HR research. We start this immediately in this issue. The Annual Review was another of Dave’s innovations and we are delighted to present the 2018 Annual Review, which contains invited contributions covering a wide range of interesting topics for HRM researchers. Dave co-authored one of the papers and the Editorial for the issue.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
The IJHRM Editorial Team
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