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

2. 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?

3. 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”

4. 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

5. 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?

6. 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!

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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)

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

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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.

17. 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

18. 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?