On reviewing (and being reviewed…) Davide Ravasi Cass Business School, London & Aalto University School of Business, Helsinki

Why do you want to be a reviewer? Service to the community? Keeping updated? Joining the club? Impressing editors? Climbing the editorial hierarchy? Affecting the evolution of the field? Promoting your own work?

The role of reviewers Gatekeeper/Critic (Schwab) search for fatal flaws Developer/Coach (Daft) “polish the gemstone” Attorney/Advocate (Pondy) assist authors in “presenting their case”

How do you become a reviewer? Invited by the editor, an associate editor or the editor of a special issue, because: You have previously published on the journal and in a related area You have been recognized as outstanding reviewer at the Academy of Management Conference They know your work and trust your judgment You have submitted to the journal and your name pops up in ScholarOne Volunteer on the journal website

Should I review this paper? Does the topic fit with my expertise? Is it truly a blind review? Am I potentially biased by my own work? Do I have time to do it properly?

Evaluating empirical work (Rynes) Is the topic/question important and interesting? Is the answer non-obvious? Is the method capable of answering the question? (If quantitative), are measures and constructs valid and reliable? Any of the above can be the source of “fatal flaws” and outright rejection!

Sources of “fatal flaws” Uninteresting or obvious question Very poor writing Often makes the question and contribution unidentifiable Symptomatic of weak, unorganized thinking Poor data single source, all perceptual, etc. not capable of addressing the question Poor measures Do good measures exist? If yes, did you use them? If not, why not? Can you demonstrate quality of yours? Do they measure what you say they measure? Lack of significant contribution

What can be fixed? Theory Framing Analysis Discussion and implications Are your hypotheses really about agency theory? Do your data really allow you to test institutional theory? Framing Is this really a study about leadership? Or is the real contribution to ethics? Analysis No study has ever been rejected because it used regression rather than SEM. Discussion and implications

What can save a paper? An interesting topic An unconventional setting Appealing data Multiple sources, multi-level, hard to collect Important outcomes Sound methods (as defined by your research paradigm)

Why do you have bad reviews? Difficulty of dealing with original work (Unacknowledged) paradigm clash Lack of time Lack of recognition Lack of training

Good reviews require adequate preparation (Schulze) Invest sufficient time to read the paper (several times!) Put down impressions, but don’t write the review immediately, or you’ll focus on the negative points Find what is positive: What are the important points? Help people advance Be rigorous about data sample, analysis, etc. Did they really answer the questions they set out to explore? Find out what the paper is about, then look at the data.

A Bill of Rights for Manuscript Authors (Harrison, AMJ, 2002) MA have a right to respectful and courteous interpersonal treatment. Always. MA have a right to full and careful readings of their submission. MA have a right to expect criticism of their work to follow the same standards of logic and evidence applied to themselves. MA authors have a right to expect criticism of their work to be prioritized. MA have a right to get feedback about their work in a reasonable span of time.

Writing helpful reviews Open with a statement about what you think the paper is about State appreciatively what is good about the manuscript Assume that they are the experts: they have insights they are trying to share Be supportive but also direct about critical strengths and weaknesses of the paper Do your best to help the authors to improve their work (they put time and effort in it!) Help them uncover contributions, re-organize the paper and make it flow from beginning to an end

Writing helpful reviews (2) Prioritize: try to figure out what are the top three problems that need to be addressed; mention minor problems at the end of the review Number comments (point-by-point), so that it is easier for authors to reply and address your concerns Include suggestions on how to overcome problems in the manuscript Don’t be too directive; give opinions and specify that these are just possibilities Offer more precise comments on the second round of reviews

The etiquette of reviewing Be honest about what you know and what you don’t know, and what you are capable of reviewing Be punctual (if you are late, let them know you are going to be late) Confidentiality is essential

Reviewing qualitative studies (Locke) Qualitative studies should be regarded as “work in progress”: reviewers should help authors increase the value of their work to the academic community Concerns are not different: Explicit theoretical context or purpose, design integrity, sound contribution, etc.

Challenges in reviewing qualitative studies Research design is often recursive, iterative and contingent Help reviewers focus, by specifying research question and theoretical domain Data may be based on unstructured language and multivocal Push for clarification in the treatment of data

Challenges in reviewing qualitative studies (2) Research domain is plural in paradigm What is the research tradition they subscribe to? How do they go from the mass of data to the final statements? Clarify theoretical location. Often authors start in a domain and end up somewhere else Congruence between claims and data What are the claims? Are they the same from the beginning to the end? Scrutinize data relative to those claims. Is the phenomenon they claim they are getting at what they have data for?