The process of finding the next editor-in-chief for this journal, effective 2017, is in motion. In the last issue we announced this process, so this is to remind you that if you are interested in applying for this position or you know someone who would make a good nominee, you should contact me or professor Kathleen Barnes, president-elect of the Eastern Academy of Management and chair of the search committee ([email protected]). Naturally, I will be a very active helper as the new editor learns the ropes, for at least 6 months leading up to his or her first issue, volume 14, number 1, in 2017.
Also, I would like to alert anyone who might be interested in submitting an article having to do with accreditation and the AACSB to check the end of this introduction to see details about our special issue with Kathleen of University of New Haven (New Haven, CT) along with George Smith of the University of South Carolina–Beaufort, and Sarah Vaughan of La Rochelle Business School (France) as editors for the issue. As I mentioned in the last issue, we have published articles on this subject in the past (see “An Assurance of Learning Success Model: Toward Closing the Feedback Loop” by Bonita L. Betters-Reed, Mindell Reiss Nitkin, and Susan D. Sampson, in volume 8, issue 4, 2008, for an example). Any experience you can recount or advice you can provide in an article with an international perspective would be especially interesting to the editors.
ARTICLES FOR THIS ISSUE
We have four articles from three sections and two reviews this winter. In the Current Empirical Research section, Kimberly K. Merriman and Dae-Il Nam, authors of “A Managerial Perspective on Risk and Return for Corporate Innovation Projects,” report on their very interesting data on the risk/return proposition for managers in decision making around innovations. How does a manager decide when to “swing for the fences” versus “playing it safe” when it comes to supporting innovations in an uncertain push for patents and marketability? Using the quantity and quality of patents as a measure of success, they discover some emergent rules and truths.
In the Teaching & Learning section, we have an article and a case with comprehensive commentary and teaching notes. In “The Communication Conundrum Exercise: Pedagogy for Project-Based Learning,” Linda S. Henderson and Keith O. Hunter present an exercise illustrating the importance of relationship management over task management in managing hybrid teams within a hierarchical organizational structure. In the case study in this section, entitled simply “Beverly Matthews,” Russell Clayton, Micheal T. Stratton, Mark Julien, and John H. Humphreys set their sights on an inherent difficulty that many organizations may not be paying enough attention to: when there is mixed support in the organization for workplace balance issues. In the case, Beverly comes back from an upper management-supported absence to care for young children, and is met with an environment among fellow employees that is not particularly supportive. Issues of gender stereotyping, performance evaluation, work–family values balance, and political power within the organization come into play. This is a robust case that can be used productively in human resource management (HRM) or organizational behavior courses; it contains excellent ancillary support materials.
In the Linking Theory & Practice section, Stacie F. Chappell and Lynn Bowes-Sperry pick up on the need for attention to values with “Improving Organizational Responses to Sexual Harassment Using the Giving Voice to Values Approach.” As co-editor Kees Boersma mentions in his introduction, this article depends in part on work done by Mary Gentile appearing in an earlier article in OMJ (Gentile, Citation2012). Chappell and Bowes-Sperry focus on issues around sexual harassment in their article, paying special attention to how corporations often seem to be setting their rules of conduct up in order to protect their managers and supervisors from legal pitfalls rather than to protect their employees from harassment. It is often very difficult to stand up for one’s values in the organizational environment, and this article continues the discussion about how to do so.
Finally, we have reviews of two noteworthy books. Sandhya Balasubramanian reviews The Concept of Entrepreneurial Orientation: Foundations and Trends® in Entrepreneurship (2015), Volume 11, No. 2, 55–137 by Vishal Gupta and Alka Gupta. Next, Diana Watts reviews Bill George’s book, True North: Becoming an Authentic Leader, which was previewed by Bill at the Eastern Academy of Management 2015 meeting and published just this late summer. These reviews along with our articles should make great reading for you in this issue!
Notes
1. Please see end of issue for a Call for Submissions.