Change

Citation

Reed, S.F.S.-B.a.R. (2014), "Change", American Journal of Business, Vol. 29 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/AJB-06-2014-0032

Change

Article Type: Editorial From: American Journal of Business, Volume 29, Issue 2

It was Toffler's (1970) seminal work (Future Shock)[1] that introduced us to the idea that change is increasing at an increasing rate. His work, along with that of other futurists of the period, helped bring change to the forefront of thinking in business. It cemented change into established fields of study such as economics as a construct worthy of consideration, and the newer fields of study, such as marketing and strategic management, embraced the concept through the realization that change was not necessarily a bad thing. Change is not just about threats, it also provides us with opportunities. At both the American Journal of Business and within the AJB's business-school and academic roots change is occurring.

At the AJB, the current changes that we are dealing with are organizational and largely evolutionary. The shift in budgetary control has now been completed with the transfer from Ball State University, which generously supported the journal with not only funds and staff time for many years, to Cleveland State University[2]. Emerald, the journal's publisher, continues to improve the submission web site, and Kieran Boolock will be standing in for Juliet Harrison, the AJB's Publishing Editor at Emerald, who will be on leave for a year. We are also going through some personnel changes on the AJB Board. Some Associate Editors, who agreed to stay on during the transition between Editors, are stepping down from the Board to return to their normal academic duties, or they are retiring. Raj Javalgi (Cleveland State University), whose area of specialization as an Associate Editor has been Marketing, is being replaced by Ken Dunegan from CSU; Ken's area of specialization is Management. Kathleen McFadden (Northern Illinois University), whose area of specialization has been Operations Management, is being replaced by Mark Rosenbaum from NIU; Mark's area of specialization is Marketing. Roberta Schultz (Western Michigan University), whose area of specialization has been Marketing, is being replaced by David Burnie from WMU; David's area of specialization is Finance. We are still seeking a replacement for Luis Perez (Central Michigan University), whose area of specialization has been Strategy. We wish to publicly thank all those stepping down or retiring for their extended commitment to the success of the journal, and we wish to welcome the new Associate Editors to the Board.

Beyond the journal, and as the Dean's Forum and Executive Comment in this issue of the AJB show, business schools are facing pressures that will likely result in revolutionary change. As those contributing authors noted, things like the growth in on-line education and the impending shortage of leaders will demand new business models for business schools. While it remains unclear what the full implications of that will be for scholarship and publishing, we can already see changes occurring. For example, the accrediting bodies for business schools, such as the AACSB, continue to modify their criteria for accreditation as business schools deal with budget cuts and rely more on adjuncts and instructors for instruction. In terms of scholarship, the online process for manuscript submission, reviewing, revising, and for either the accepting or rejecting of those manuscripts, is now well established, but attendant to that is the continuing change that is occurring in the way academics do their research. The days of shelves laden with hard-copy journals is starting to disappear as more people work with electronic versions of journals and books, particularly the younger scholars. With that, we are starting to witness things like the traditional measures such as citations for articles and impact factors for journals used in the faculty promotion and tenure procedures be accompanied by measures like number of article downloads.

Summary statistics show that the number of downloads of articles at the AJB continues to increase – likely driven by the trend just discussed, but also, we hope, by the continued increase in the quality of the articles published. For example, over 2013, the five most downloaded articles were:

1. Zhang, J. and Daugherty, T. (2009), “Third-person effect and social networking: implications for online marketing and word-of-mouth communication”, American Journal of Business, Vol. 24 No. 2, pp. 53-64 (downloaded 1,683 times in 2013).

2. Bashar, S.G., Voss, K.E. and Skiver, R. (2011), “Consumer evaluation of continuous and discontinuous evaluation: the effects of brand equity and product category knowledge”, American Journal of Business, Vol. 26 No. 1, pp. 65-79 (downloaded 726 times in 2013).

3. Chong, W.K., Harlan, M.S. II, Sikula, A. Sr. and Anderson, L.P. (2011), “The key characteristics of different types of employees: a summary of six studies”, American Journal of Business, Vol. 26 No. 1, pp. 26-39 (downloaded 714 times in 2013).

4. Pena, A.A. (2012), “Undocumented immigration and the business of farm labor contracting in the USA”, American Journal of Business, Vol. 27 No. 1, pp. 10-26 (downloaded 714 times in 2013).

5. Schultz, R.J., Schwepker, C.H. and Good, D.J. Jr (2012), “Social media usage: an investigation of B2B salespeople”, American Journal of Business, Vol. 27 No. 2, pp. 174-194 (downloaded 688 times in 2013).

While number of downloads supplements traditional measures of article impact, it remains to be seen whether or not it will supplant those traditional measures as scholarship continues to adjust to the more ever-present on-line world. It likely will depend not only on who is downloading the articles (academics, managers, students, etc.), and whether or not the downloads are visibly impacting future scholarship, business practice, or student education, but it will also depend upon whether or not that effect fits with the goals of the business schools measuring the performance of their professors and, of course, the changing accreditation criteria. Regardless, the AJB will continue to improve as we adjust to these changes.

Thank you for your continued readership.

Susan F. Storrud-Barnes and Richard Reed

Notes

1. Also see his subsequent works, such as The Third Wave (Toffler, 1980).

2. Following the move in responsibility for publishing from Ball State to Emerald, the AJB Board also approved moving control of funds from Ball State to the location of the Editor(s)-in-Chief.

References

Toffler, A. (1970), Future Shock, Random House, New York, NY

Toffler, A. (1980), The Third Wave, Collins, London