Knowledge that Transforms

While I have great sympathy for the views put forward in the paper by Macdonald and Kam (2007), I feel that their picture of current publication practices in management studies is just a little too bleak. It relies rather too much on extreme examples, old references and publication in other disciplines. However there are two key related themes in the paper that certainly deserve further attention. Firstly, the virtuous/vicious circles in journal publication that, on the one hand, guarantee quality and on the other can lead to stagnation in a discipline, and secondly, the role that reviewing plays in these processes. While I agree that their deeply unserious Tinkerbell solution maintains the nursery metaphor, it makes no serious effort to offer any alternative solutions to the problems they have identified. I want to argue that academic journal publication can usefully be analysed as a market system based upon exchanges, through which value is created and distributed through processes of evaluation. Further complexity is created since this primary market is also embedded in the commercial journal publication market and strongly linked to the academic labour market. However as a result of changes in technology and, increasingly, in the attitudes of academic communities, alternative market forms involving open publishing and open peer review become possible. In what follows the nature of this market will be described, new options suggested and their viability assessed. Reviewing a paper essentially involves a process of evaluation. But since all markets involve evaluation it is worthwhile describing its role in exchange processes before discussing the role of evaluation in journal publication markets. Markets exist because they offer mechanisms for exchange of value between buyers and sellers. In principle such exchanges result in increased satisfaction for both parties. However each party needs to place a value on the outcomes of an exchange in order to decide whether to proceed. For even quite mundane exchanges the processes of evaluation will be complex and boundedly rational. Individual buyers make their own decision though they can be heavily influenced by others, especially where the buyer is not the consumer (e.g. parents and children). In many kinds of consumer markets external evaluations become very important. As individuals we rely on our social networks; family, friends and acquaintances. But, increasingly, professional evaluators are becoming influential. These include, for example, commercial advisors, consumer associations and critics as well as governments, the media and other institutions (Kwon and Easton, 2006). Most recently, through the medium of the internet, consumers are beginning to turn to fellow consumers for their reviews of, for example, hotels and travel (Trip Advisor), books (Amazon), movies (Movie Review Query Engine) and restaurants (restaurants.com). One of the most powerful groups of external influences on buyers is the prospective seller. Sellers seek to persuade potential buyers to buy using media such as advertising, sales promotion and personal selling as well as targeting their product offering to appropriate customers and building a brand or corporate image. However sellers also need to evaluate the exchange. Where there is the possibility of negotiating, as in many business to business situations, the seller may decide that the terms of trade are not attractive enough to proceed with a sale. In reseller to customer markets, resellers have to judge how their customers will evaluate the products and services they are in turn buying from sellers, especially in relation to aspects of the offering that are difficult for customers to evaluate (e.g. organic food, long term reliability etc). In summary, acts of evaluation suffuse market systems in complex and dynamic ways. They also play a central role in journal publication markets. Academic publication markets comprise consumers, buyers, journals, suppliers and publishers interacting in rather complex and diverse ways. Individual academics, less often students or practitioners, are consumers of journals and they are, in theory, buying new knowledge. Of course the knowledge may not be particularly new but the fact that it has been re-presented is also knowledge in itself. Crucially its value will depend on its relationship to what is already known which will, in turn, vary from individual to individual. Especially valuable are new ideas or combinations of ideas which did not exist before or knowledge that presents original empirical, or confirms existing, knowledge. The nature of knowledge is also crucially dependent upon how it is stored and processed by the individual and shared with others. Knowledge represents capital and is almost never destroyed, i.e. consumed, but is rather replaced, adapted, complemented or ignored. It will, in general, depreciate over time, though like some objects (e.g. antique furniture) it will sometimes become fashionable again when resurrected, especially when combined with new knowledge. Higher education institutions or, more specifically, their libraries, are buyers of journals, not, generally, individual academics. However academics are more or less influential in the library buying process since they are the final consumers. Given fixed or even diminishing library budgets the battle to continue subscriptions or start new ones has become fierce. More recently, the situation has become more complex as publishers offer bulk deals for access to groups of their journals and content aggregators provide access to vast numbers of journals online, bought as a package. As a result access to greater numbers of journals has become, in general, easier for consumers and they are becoming accustomed to the increased availability and therefore more resistance to having their new found freedom curtailed in any way. A journal is essentially a reseller of knowledge in a publication market. At the heart of any journal is the editorial process which makes choices among sellers (potential authors), adds value by virtue of an evaluation and moderation process, and resells. However in market terms there are two crucial, and often related, issues concerning the link between the reseller and consumers. The first involves judgements of quality in terms of the absolute worth of a paper as judged by those with editorial and review power. The second is concerned with topics that their consumers think are relevant to them. The success of a journal depends to some extent on how well the tension between these two issues is resolved. What is clear is that the editors' word is final and the review and judgement processes are not usually transparent to the consumer. A journal publication market in a particular field is made even more multifarious because the boundaries of such fields tend to be unclear. A journal in a particular area competes with other journals for both authors and buyers, and hence customers. In the former case authors can submit a paper, albeit tailored differently, to other journals in the same field. Journals also vary in their scope, some being more specialized than others. It could be argued that more general journals are better placed strategically since they can draw on a wider group of authors and consumers. Competition among journals for both authors and customers is therefore somewhat complex. In practice, for journals of any standing there will be far fewer suppliers, and even potential suppliers (competent authors), than there will be consumers (academics who read the papers). The market positioning of resellers depends upon their reputation based heavily upon their historic output. This is, in turn, influenced by their general policies, editors, reviewers, publishers and the availability of suitable papers in their field. And as Clark and Wright (2007) point out, reputations can change relatively quickly. In academic journal markets suppliers are authors who wish to have their papers published. What they are offering is new knowledge of, hopefully, high quality which, they anticipate, will be valued by a journal's customers and, of course the reseller without which the exchange cannot take place. What value do suppliers extract from this exchange? They won't in general be paid directly for their product. Instead the intrinsic rewards will be a mixture of esteem, status, a belief in the importance of knowledge creation but crucially scholarly reputation which has other more tangible, employment enhancing, rewards. They wish to sell through resellers which have the greatest power to provide them with these benefits. There are more sellers, and certainly more potential sellers, in these markets than can be accommodated by the system. Publishers also play a crucial role in journal markets but their ownership characteristics differ which, in turn, leads to differences in their market behaviours. For-profit publishers are commercial organizations, may publish in a variety of different forms and media and even be part of a corporation that has other business interests. They generally own the journals they publish, appoint editors and decide on overall policy. While publishers' powers are constrained by the academic community they still have the ability to shape the journals they own. Since the success of a journal is largely down to its content and publishers are not well attuned to the nuances of the academic fields their journals cover, their scope for day to day involvement is generally limited. However by refusing to launch journals that they believe will not be profitable, or will cannibalize the sales of their existing titles, publishers can create barriers to entry to the current publishing system and help ossify the state of the market. Ownership of journals is heavily skewed and is becoming even more so. ‘Elsevier, the largest journal publisher, now claims to have the third largest Internet revenues, behind only AOL–Time Warner and Amazon’ (Edlin and Rubinfeld, 2004). It also had an estimated 22.9 per cent of the Science, Technology and Medicine (STM) journal market in 2001 (Edlin and Rubinfeld, 2004). 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The double-blind review process – where authors do not know the identity of their reviewers and reviewers do not know the identity of authors – has been viewed as critical to the peer review process in top-tier management journals. This two-way anonymity helps to facilitate objectivity by both reviewers and authors and to reduce the effects of bias – either positive or negative – that may accompany known identities or affiliations. For example, several studies have documented bias in the review process in favour of authors from prestigious universities (Peters and Ceci, 1982), particularly when reviewers come from similarly prestigious universities (Gordon, 1980). In addition, Broder (1993) found evidence of bias by female reviewers against female authors independent of paper quality and reviewer affiliation and experience. Preserving the anonymity of authors and reviewers can also reduce tendencies for reviewers to attempt to ingratiate themselves with prestigious authors or to be more critical of the work of unknown scholars. Without anonymity, junior reviewers may become hesitant to offer critical evaluations for fear of career reprisals (McCook, 2006). Given these findings, it is hardly surprising that journals with double-blind review processes tend to have lower acceptance rates, even for articles from authors affiliated with high-prestige universities (Blank, 1991). Proponents of double-blind review suggest that ‘. . . any factors that increase the probability of particularistic decisions or increase their consequences are not likely to benefit the majority of scientists. A relatively small proportion of such decisions spread over time may serve to give some groups and individuals substantial cumulative advantage, because publication itself is convertible into the “scarce” evidence of competence that makes future selection for further advantage then based on competence, and therefore universalistic. Thus, a particularistic advantage can soon be transformed into a universalistic one’ (Beyer, 1978, p. 75). The rapidly escalating cumulative advantages to ‘those that have’ have also been described by Merton (1968, p. 58), who calls it the Matthew effect: ‘The Matthew effect consists in the accruing of greater increments of recognition for particular scientific contributions to scientists of considerable repute and the withholding of such recognition from scientists who have not yet made their mark.’ In the present case, of course, ‘recognition’ consists of acceptance or rejection of one's work by scientific journals. Double-blind review is not without its critics, however. Some contend that when reviewers have to sign their reviews, they are more likely to provide conscientious, developmental comments. For example, McCook (2006, p. 3) quotes the editor of Journal of the American Medical Association as saying, ‘I've always signed every review I've ever done, because I know if I sign something, I'm more accountable. Juries are not anonymous, neither are people who write letters to the editor, so why are peer reviewers?’ If reviewers are identified, they may be more likely to provide a fair set of comments given that they may have to defend their views publicly (Armstrong, 1982). Studies comparing double- and single-blind reviews are scarce, but yield interesting findings. For example, Laband and Piette (1994) compare economics journals with single- and double-blind processes and find those with double-blind review outperform those with single-blind review. Specifically, they find that articles published in double-blind review journals receive more citations than would be expected controlling for author characteristics, length, and journal prestige. However, they also find that economics journals with single-blind review (i.e. anonymous reviewers but not anonymous authors) have authors with higher mean citations than double-blind review journals. Baland and Piette speculate that, for example, a Nobel prize winner's bad paper may have a greater total impact than good papers by less well-known economists, and suggest that for this reason, high-prestige authors may prefer to submit to single-blind journals because their reputation may bias the reviews positively. (An alternative view might be that not just ‘bad’ papers, but more speculative or avant-garde papers, might be accepted by these journals from ‘proven’ authors.) A similar phenomenon may operate in the case of ‘special research forums’ (SRFs), a growing phenomenon in management journals. For example, Conlon et al. (2006) recently found that lower-prestige management journals tend to use ‘invited’ SRFs more often than do higher-prestige journals, and also that the authors so invited tend to have more previous publications than authors of double-blind SRF manuscripts. As such, it appears that lower-prestige journals may use ‘invited’ papers, or non-anonymous review and decision processes, as strategies for attracting high-prestige authors who are given certain advantages in return for the prestige they lend to the journal. Although double-blind review has been regarded as the ‘gold standard’ in management journals, recent developments are putting its future in jeopardy. We briefly examine a few of these and speculate on their impact. Double-blind review processes are not always successful in preventing identification of authors. For example, Academy of Management meetings and other conference presentations often coincide with journal review. In addition, reviewers are commonly assigned on the basis of expertise in manuscript content, which further increases the probability that reviewers attend conference sessions in the same topical area and thus become aware of authors' identities in advance of journal submission. These discoveries of identity tend to be more happenstance, however, than more recent challenges to double-blind review presented by new technological developments and practices regarding working paper publication on the web. Reviewers who wish to circumvent the double-blind review process have always had means to do so by attempting to discover an author's identity. For example, every university or college maintains websites, with most including access to current faculty vitas and some including links to current working papers or publications. If reviewers guess who an author might be, perusing his or her vita on a university's website might confirm the suspicion. In an environment where many of us are at our computers for most of the working day, it only takes a few minutes to pursue such an effort. Moreover, beyond university websites, search engines such as Google Scholar enable searches of working paper titles and authors, often from fairly obscure sources (e.g. departmental working paper series or presentations inside the home university). Using search engines requires even less time than visiting a university's webpage, and often results in more comprehensive results (e.g. because reviewers can search by title and because search engines locate working papers and presentations that have not yet found their way onto an author's vita). Clearly, these new technologies reduce the time needed for reviewers to discover the identity of authors, if they are so inclined. And, as previous research clearly shows, the potential for biased reviews increases once anonymity is compromised. Another relatively new practice with implications for the future of double-blind review is the increased popularity of working paper series developed by many universities or disciplines as a way to disseminate research ideas and manuscripts prior to journal review or publication. Many disciplines encourage posting of working papers to on-line working paper series such as the Social Science Research Network in order to receive comments and have work read prior to publication. Some universities are even using ‘hits’ and/or citations to working papers published on the web as part of their tenure, promotion, and annual merit pay evaluations, rather than solely relying upon citations to published journal articles. Tenure and promotion packets that include information regarding the number of citations per article on Google Scholar or top author/manuscript status within the management research network portion of SSRN are not uncommon. Undoubtedly, such working paper series have several important advantages. For example, by posting working papers and commentaries early, arguments can be solidified or altered, methodological design improved, and so on. In addition, given that journals generally have lag times for publication, working paper series allow authors to stake claims to their ideas faster and to disseminate them earlier than would otherwise be the case. Third, working paper series make it easier for scholars to identify others working in their area and to benefit from the very latest ideas that might be relevant to their own work. Fourth, the development of working paper series in Europe and the UK in part relates to the need to develop productivity measures for external assessment and as outlets for doctoral training programmes. These series can give a doctoral student tangible evidence of an impact and opportunities for feedback.[1] These arguments suggest that posting manuscripts to web working paper series can potentially benefit science as a whole, as well as individual scholars. However, on the less positive side, such working paper series almost certainly reduce the probability of double-blind review. As such, they are also likely to increase the probability of the types of biases discussed earlier when these papers subsequently enter the journal review process. Opponents to posting working papers on the web argue that not only will double-blind review be compromised, but that establishing ownership of ideas will be more, rather than less, difficult given the interactive processes of web-facilitated dialogue. In addition, most casual readers are not likely to spend as much time with a manuscript as a reviewer will, so the arguments that early comments will improve a manuscript's chance of journal acceptance are only as good as the peer review comments received. Thus, while there are advantages and disadvantages to working paper series, the question remains regarding what to do about double-bind review. The Academy of Management has been a strong proponent of double-blind review processes. As a result, Academy of Management journals currently require authors to remove a manuscript from any public postings prior to review. However, if universities continue to encourage faculty to post their working papers and to reward working paper ‘hits’ and citations, this can present a dilemma for authors, particularly if journal review turnaround times are long or if personnel decisions within business schools are heavily influenced by norms towards electronic posting of working papers. If management scholars are increasingly pressured to post working papers to raise the profile of their university or college, and if their rewards are based on doing so, authors may be reticent to remove papers from such working series for journal review. As a result, the Academy of Management is currently pondering how to respond to the changed environment of electronic working paper series and highly efficient electronic search engines. At this point, it looks highly unlikely that either trend (working paper series or electronic searching) will reverse itself. Indeed, it appears likely that such trends will continue to escalate. So, what should management journals do? Should we continue to make authors remove their manuscripts from working paper series prior to journal review? Even if papers are not posted, most scholars have recent vitas on their university websites that list papers that are currently under review. Should we also make authors remove working papers titles from their vitas? This would seem difficult to enforce at best. What other options do we have? Perhaps instead of enforcement policies we should turn towards socialization (Abbott, 1988; Becker and Carper, 1956; Ouchi, 1980). Trying to remove subjectivity from our research and grading has always been a part of our profession. Strong norms conveyed to our doctoral students and good examples set by faculty regarding the preservation of the blind review process may go a long way to facilitating objectivity on the part of reviewers. In addition, journals can emphasize in their instructions to reviewers the importance of considering the merit of the work, and not trying to guess the identity of the authors. (As editors, we have sometimes had reviewers say, ‘I suspect this work is by Professor X, and they have been wrong!’) Using performance evaluation of past reviews to select board members may also serve as a strong incentive to preserve anonymity or, at the very least, reward individuals whose reviews are always developmental and exhibit a strong sense of objectivity. While technology has clearly made it faster and easier to trace an author's identity, if we increase our efforts to socialize new scholars to the view that ours is a system based on merit and that the integrity of our journals depends on this, fewer reviewers may deliberately pursue author identification. A more controversial option is to move towards more interactive publishing such as the new Interactive Exchange Journal from the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) wherein articles are posted along with peer commentaries and responses from the original authors. But, even for this journal, the focal articles will be peer reviewed prior to being placed on the website, and while others are invited to submit commentaries, the editors will decide which to post. Thus, there still appears to be a role in these interactive formats for double-blind review. An even more controversial option would be to reconsider double-blind review and its role in our journals. If reviewers have easier access to information that compromises the double-blind nature of our process, should we simply accept this as a result of the information age and make all authors equally identifiable via single-blind review? Currently, we are not willing to take this step, but recognize that there may come a point where such a move makes sense. In the meantime, we suggest that journal editors and scholars conduct additional research on the effects of non-blind, single-blind, and double-blind review processes. In particular, studies within the management discipline of the potential biases involved with each, and the broader costs and benefits (e.g. citations, impact, etc) would be useful. In addition, we urge those who study the economic, social, and psychological effects of information technology and search behaviours to conduct studies of the effects of working paper series and electronic searches over time. Do these practices produce efficient markets, in the sense that good ideas win out regardless of who proposes them? Or does the access to authors' names and institutions produce a sort of ‘winner-take-all’ effect (Frank and Cook, 1995), whereby if two papers are posted on the same subject, only the one by the renowned author gets read and cited? The flood of accessible information combined with increased pressure on people's time suggests that the latter may be the dominant effect. However, that is an empirical question worthy of serious study.

This paper explains, through a field study and from an agency perspective, how monitoring and incentive alignment mechanisms change to support the interests of a privatized firm's new ownership. In this case, privatization led to important changes in the board of directors and to more formal performance evaluation and compensation systems for top managers, as profitability and financial control gained relevancy with the firm ownership change. Our results show that differences in incentives management before and after privatization are due to different agency relations in the two periods. We also argue that in a privatization framework the relation between monitoring and incentive alignment mechanisms is complex, not simply substitutive as agency theory would predict, and this finding allows us to refine and extend agency theory for this specific context.

In answering the questions ‘why does the firm exist?’ and ‘what determines its boundaries?’, established theories of the firm have focused on boundary choice in a context of relatively easily identified and evaluated alternatives. This paper starts by asking the kindred question ‘why does the firm come into existence?’, shifting attention to the circumstances and choices surrounding new firm formation and the exploitation of new and untried business ideas. It proceeds to delineate an entrepreneurship perspective on the nature and boundaries of the firm, where boundary decisions are driven by the difficulty of implementing new, subjective means–ends frameworks in sometimes very unreceptive markets. A set of propositions developing the concepts of cognitive incongruence and cognitive incompleteness suggests that activities are internalized when other market participants are unable to accept or understand the entrepreneur's subjectively perceived means–ends framework. In conclusion, the paper supports the development of theory that explains choice of modes of action based on subjective world views and the emerging notion of a distinctive entrepreneurship‐based theory of the firm.

In this article we respond to the key points made by Macdonald and Kam (2007) in relation to journal quality and the peer review process. Whilst we appreciate that their tone is intentionally provocative, the picture they present is one of unremitting gloom and reluctant acquiescence to a system out of control. It is as if the publication process has a series of self-supporting logics that separate it from any notion of publishing in order to benefit the discipline through the advance of knowledge and understanding. From this perspective the publishing process and the consequent content of management journals are presented as the outcome of a series of ‘games’ that put more emphasis on where someone publishes than on what they publish and its subsequent impact. Such criticisms are not new in that they have been vigorously discussed for decades across a range of disciplines. Furthermore, many of these issues are raised whenever academics get together and discuss their experiences of journal publishing. Given the frustrations and vagaries of the review and publication process, such complaints are understandable. But they deserve further scrutiny. We write this article as two of the General Editors of Journal of Management Studies. This is considered by the broad management studies community to be a ‘quality journal’ and during our time as General Editors, so far, we have overseen the reviewing of 1463 articles. We are therefore insiders. Our broad purpose is to show how journal editors need to intervene in order build and maintain a journal's reputation since it is not as impervious to change as Macdonald and Kam (2007) imply, and to mitigate some of the problems associated with peer review (see also Bedeian, 2004; Campanario, 1998; Miller, 2006; Starbuck, 2003, 2005). In doing so, we demonstrate that journal editors have actively to engage with these issues if they are to ensure that their journal continues to create value for the community at large. Macdonald and Kam's critique therefore reminds us why we have instituted certain practices at JMS. We begin with some general comments about journal quality before turning to the peer review process. Macdonald and Kam (2007) are right in pointing out that the importance of a journal's ranking on lists of journal quality, of which there are now a great number within countries and between countries (see, for example, the list available at Harzing's website, http://www.harzing.com), has assumed greater pre-eminence. Furthermore, whereas the ranking of journals in which people publish has always had implications for personal reputation, peer recognition and career advancement, increasingly it is impacting much more directly on institutional reputations and rankings and in turn on potential recruitment of staff and students. Individual publication choices and success are therefore assuming greater institutional significance. In part this is a result of the increasing importance and proliferation of a number of rankings of different types of Masters programmes (e.g. the Financial Times list of 40 journals used as part of their assessment of MBAs). These often contain an assessment of an institution's research output on the basis of articles that faculty publish in a limited and specified list of journals. These issues are also particularly marked in those countries where departmental funding is partly linked to an aggregate research quality score based on peer assessment of the published work submitted for each member of staff. We agree that a range of forces are making discussions of the relative quality of journals more numerous and heated than in the past. Furthermore, it is clear that the isomorphic pressures alluded to earlier are encouraging institutions around the world to give stronger guidance to faculty in terms of which journals they should submit their manuscripts to; publication in such journals has taken up a more prominent position in tenure and promotion decisions. Although incentive practices vary and can be considerable across institutions, the general outcome of this process is that more material is being submitted to a narrow group of journals that the community identifies as being of high quality. Macdonald and Kam are correct in arguing that this trend is reinforcing the status of these journals. However, they perhaps overestimate the solidity of a journal's prestige and standing within the community since the relative status of a journal can change over time, sometimes quite dramatically. Indeed, on the basis of Kuhn's (1962) approach to understanding how new scientific fields emerge, we would expect new journals to be created to publish work in these areas which may in turn become more prestigious as the quality and contribution of the work is recognized. For example, in the finance area, the Journal of Financial Economics (JFE) was established as a result of frustrations by some academics (Michael Jensen and others) that the Journal of Finance was not interested in publishing research in their areas (Jensen, 2006). Some time later, the Review of Financial Studies was established by those academics frustrated at the editorial policy of JFE under Jensen's tenure. Comparing the top ten journals in the ISI citation ranking in Management in 1995 and 2005, we can see that there have been some significant changes. Some new journals have appeared in the list and assumed a top position very rapidly, and there has been upwards and downwards movement of a number of established journals. Only the Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal and Administrative Science Quarterly have remained in the top 10 during this ten year period. The point is that what are considered quality journals changes over time. It is also interesting to note that journals with a broader remit tend to be more stable than those with a narrower focus. Furthermore, over this period the number of broad-based management journals in the upper reaches of journal quality lists has increased. The polarization that Kam and Macdonald bemoan would be more worrying if the ‘quality’ journals were increasingly associated with particular domains, theoretical positions or methodological approaches. However, the reverse appears to have happened, with the consequence that there are a greater number of opportunities for a broad body of work. We as editors are very aware that we cannot take for granted the regard within which a journal is held. This is something that we have to constantly manage. For example, it does not take much of a slip in review decision times or time to publication for word to spread within the community and submissions to suffer. Whilst broad measures of journal quality, such as citation counts, may not change for some time, academic behaviour towards journals does in that word-of-mouth reports, particularly on certain aspects of the reviewing process, can greatly influence submission patterns. With this in mind we turn to discuss peer review. A quick immersion into the extensive literature on the peer review process indicates that the situation is possibly more serious than that identified by Macdonald and Kam. There are a number of failings that either individually or in combination may prevent or forestall innovative material from being published in highly regarded journals. In a much cited study, Peters and Ceci (1982) resubmitted 12 articles to the psychology journals in which they had already been published in the last 18–32 months. Prior to resubmitting the articles, the names and institutional affiliations of the authors were changed to fictitious ones (e.g. Tri-Valley Centre for Human Potential). To disguise the papers further a number of ‘cosmetic’ changes were made to the titles, abstracts and opening paragraphs in the introduction. Nine of the manuscripts were sent out for review (three were detected) and only one article was accepted, so that one journal made the same evaluation over the two periods. All that had changed was the authors' names and institutional affiliations. This article generated a voluminous response (over 70 commentaries in the same issue) and heated discussion over the nature of the peer review process. A review of this and other literature on the review process (e.g. Bedeian, 2004; Campanario, 1995, 1998; Miller, 2006; Starbuck, 2003) highlights three key flaws. First, reviewers are often accused of being overly harsh in their judgements. They approach manuscripts vigorously, looking to expose deficiencies, and fail to balance these with an equivalent appreciation of the merits. Reviewing thus becomes a fault finding procedure rather than one that seeks to engage constructively with the ideas, arguments and evidence in the paper. As Starbuck (2003) suggests, this approach may in part arise from reviewers seeing themselves as superior to the authors (in their role as reviewers). As he comments, ‘Occasionally reviewers seem arrogant, disrespectful, even nasty’ (p. 344). More generally, any system where people are evaluating each other, particularly anonymously, results in a hierarchical ordering that has to be carefully managed. Where editors privilege the reviewers' pronouncements, these change from being treated as suggestions to judgements that have to be attended to, no matter how carefully phrased. Failure to do otherwise may result in the rejection of the manuscript. This can lead to a situation where authors feel their ideas are unappreciated, undervalued and misunderstood. Taken to extremes, authors may feel that they are being forced to write the paper the reviewers want them to write, or respond to points that are superficial, misguided or just wrong. In these circumstances reviewers may become uninvited ghost-writers. Second, as Peters and Ceci (1982) suggest, a number of factors have been found to bias reviewer judgements (see Campanario (1998) for a full review). Where authors' identities are known, their institutional affiliations and social networks may influence judgements. However, these factors are reduced when a blind review process is used, although not eradicated because with the internet and electronic dissemination of manuscripts, an author's identity is very difficult to hide (see Hillman and Rynes, 2007). Here issues such as the apparent complexity of language, use of citations, appropriate jargon, sophisticated statistical procedures, and presentation of positive and significant results that do not merely replicate previous findings have all been found to influence or bias decisions. Third, and perhaps the area which has received greatest empirical attention, studies in a range of disciplines have consistently reported low overall inter-referee agreement (see Cicchetti, 1980, 1991; Gottfredson, 1978; Hendrick, 1977; Scar and Weber, 1978; Scott, 1974). Evidence within management studies is more scant. Starbuck (2003) reports a study he undertook whilst editor of Administrative Science Quarterly. An examination of 500 pairs of reviews revealed a correlation of 0.12. He concluded that ‘It was so low that knowing what one reviewer had said about a manuscript would tell me almost nothing about what a second reviewer had said or would say’ (p. 346). This review indicates that the points raised by Macdonald and Kam in relation to peer review have been identified in a number of disciplines. Peer review is not just a management problem; it is a problem for all academic disciplines. If we reject the arguments and findings of this body of literature then we close down any discussion as to how it might be improved. These criticisms of the review process therefore help remind us that as journal editors we have a responsibility to ensure that certain practices are instituted, that these are clearly communicated to all relevant parties and that we revisit them on a regular basis to ensure that they are working as intended. In the reflective spirit encouraged by this section of the Journal, we identify a number of areas where we have sought to mitigate the impact of some of these factors. Admittedly, our approach is designed to enhance the workings of the existing system, by addressing some key areas where actions can be taken, rather than seeking to replace it. This is only one possible approach. Easton (2007) examines more radical ones. Some commentators have argued that authors ought to be able to select, or at least nominate, potential referees (Bedeian, 2004; Campanario, 1998). This argument builds on the notion that, in writing their article, authors have become immersed in the field. 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In this paper, we explore the standardization of contemporary management knowledge, focusing in particular upon the role of ‘standards’ in creating and reifying ‘organizational objects’, with powerful consequences and with often unrecognized ethical implications. It is our argument that modernist beliefs in ‘general, abstract and timeless ideas’ ( Brunsson et al., 2000 , p. 173), enshrined in a universal and abstract rationality, results in the marginalization of more reflexive forms of rationality and the suppression of autonomy, creativity and discretion in organizations. To investigate the consequences of standardization, we take as the focus of our analysis a specific management model which has a significant and growing impact on many sectors of contemporary industry; that of project management. Drawing on the work of Timmermans and Berg (1997) , Bowker and Star (1999) and Brunsson et al. (2000) , we draw attention to the reification of the object of management; in this case, the project itself, as a transhistorical, ‘real world’ object. By tracing efforts to establish and institutionalize ‘standards’ in this and other fields of management, in particular through the creation and dissemination of a universal ‘body of knowledge’ for this field, we draw attention to the political and moral significance of the ‘blackboxing’ of knowledge. It is our broader intention here to help to denaturalize this organizational object, to legitimize other modes of knowledge and practice in the field, and thereby to reopen debate in this and other arenas of standardization.

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Existing theories on the influence of social networks on creativity focus on idea generation. Conversely, the new product development literature concentrates more on the selection of ideas and projects. In this paper we bridge this gap by developing a dynamic framework for the role of social networks from idea generation to selection. We apply findings from creativity and behavioural decision‐making literature and present an in‐depth understanding of the sociological processes in the front‐end of the new product development process. Our framework builds on the importance of mutual understanding, sensemaking and consensus formation. The propositions focus on both network structure and content and highlight the need to have strong ties and prior related knowledge, to incorporate decision makers, and to move over time from a large, non‐redundant and heterogeneous to a smaller and more cohesive network structure. We conclude with a discussion on empirical validation of the framework and possible extensions.