Signaling intelligence, management history, marry-go-round, and research

Citation

Carraher, S.M. (2013), "Signaling intelligence, management history, marry-go-round, and research", Journal of Management History, Vol. 19 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/jmh.2013.15819baa.001

Signaling intelligence, management history, marry-go-round, and research

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Management History, Volume 19, Issue 2

Welcome to issue number 2 of volume 19 of the Journal of Management History. As I write this editorial according to Publish or Perish the number of citations for Journal of Management History papers has increased from 1,982 to 2,280 since the last issue. Our h index has climbed from 19 to 21 and our g index has increased from 31 to 34 thanks to the additional citations. We have one paper that has been cited 21 times – Ryan (1999) – and our most cited paper remains Roehling (1997). The most cited paper per year is Murphy et al. (2006) at 12.43 citations per year. We also have an age weighted citation rate of 256.21 so we are getting cited more and more over time. This is my sixth issue as editor. When I took over we had a solid flow of manuscripts that were able to keep us working two issues again in terms of what we were accepting. We currently are running about three issues ahead – but it would be nice to get more submissions. I had hoped that we would be able to once again start the review process for ISI inclusion but at this point we need more submissions and more citations. We also are about to hit another milestone – dropping below a 30 percent acceptance rate for manuscripts. As some of you may know I am also the editor of two other journals – the International Journal of Family Business and the Academy of Health Care Management Journal. The IJFB has an acceptance rate of less than 20 percent while the AHCMJ has an acceptance rate of around 25 percent. As I am writing this we have a 31 percent acceptance rate and when finishing with the papers currently under review we will be at a 28 percent acceptance rate. By the time this issue is published we should be at around a 25 percent acceptance rate. Our average reviewer turnaround time is also down to 16.7 days from 28 days a year ago. If you presented a paper on management history at the Academy of Management meeting, the British Academy of Management, the Southern Management Association, the South West Academy of Management, the Mid West Academy of Management, the Western Academy of Management, the Eastern Academy of Management, or any other leading conference please submit it to the Journal of Management History because it shall continue to be the leading journal for publishing research about management history.

As I mentioned in the previous issue management history does play an important part in modern management research and modern life. In terms of modern management research it would be difficult to overestimate the impact that management history – and historians – have had on management research. Back more than a decade ago when I was program chair of the Management History Division I had the opportunity to examine the evolution of management thought and research as part of a session. I was surprised to find that Daniel Wren through the influence of his dean at Florida State University helped to revolutionize the way that management research is currently done – but this topic shall be addressed more in a later issue so for this issue I am looking more at management history, modern life, and signals intelligence. For those not familiar with traditional signals intelligence it has existed at least since the time of Julius Caesar when the Roman Legions used coded messages in order to make it more difficult for any messages captured by their enemies to be interpreted. At its most basic signals intelligence is the capturing and interpretation of information. It may be from one’s friends, enemies, associates, or even strangers/unknown persons. Management history plays a part in modern signals intelligence because it provides the background information about WHY information between various parties might be important. It would be nice to see a few papers examining these issues submitted to the Journal of Management History.

I have also been asked if I will continue to talk about research and scaling issues in these editorials and have come across some interesting issues since the last editorial. One of these was working with a faculty member who had developed an 80-item measure of wisdom which was coming out to be unidimensional although it was supposed to have at least eight dimensions (I admit that I am a measurement geek who finds measurement issues to be fascinating). For the last two issues I have talked about social entrepreneurship. For this issue I am presenting a measure of Gibson’s (2012) marry-go-round model. For his assessment it is supposed to have four dimensions – friendship, romance, maintenance, and mission and he has individuals complete it with a scale from 0 to 10. For the following 17 items I would suggest a seven- or nine-point Likert-like agreement scale and I will report back on how this scale holds together in the next issue. This might sound like an unusual scale to talk about for the Journal of Management History but as I write this editorial motivational speaker and goal-setter Zig Ziglar has just passed away and interacting with his son (I am seeking to put together a memorial session for him at the University of Cambridge in July of 2013) reminded me about the importance to bring in multiple aspects of one’s life and so I am actually in the midst of a project examining how one perceptions of their relationships influences various aspects of their work performance and career anchors:

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  I am content with my level of friendship with my significant other/spouse.

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  I am content with my level of having fun together with my significant other/spouse.

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  I am content with the time spent together with my significant other/spouse.

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  I am content with our understanding each other with my significant other/spouse.

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  I am satisfied with my level of romance with my significant other/spouse.

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  I am satisfied with the attentiveness of my significant other/spouse.

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  I am satisfied with the attractiveness of my significant other/spouse.

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  I am satisfied with the creativity in expressing love of my significant other/spouse.

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  I am satisfied with the level of intimacy with my significant other/spouse.

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  I share a common mission with my significant other/spouse.

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  I share similar attitudes towards family and friends with my significant other/spouse.

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  I share common spiritual pursuits with my significant other/spouse.

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  I share common causes with my significant other/spouse.

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  I work together with my significant other/spouse on maintenance issues in life.

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  I work together with my significant other/spouse on household tasks.

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  I work together with my significant other/spouse on work/career.

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  I work together with my significant other/spouse on money matters.

I was also reminded by several of my students from more than a dozen years ago about the importance of bringing in Humboldt’s ideas about teaching through research – and teaching research to business students. I received comments from three students who had become multimillionaire entrepreneurs about the importance of their learning about multivariate statistics back in 1999 to their business success. They have used conjoint analysis, Q-sorts, factor analysis, cluster analysis, and discriminant analysis (with classification analysis) in the building of their businesses. I then had a current student who is in the process of building a business comment about how if it were not for my class that he never would have thought about using marketing research techniques to make decisions that have helped him in the development of his product – and he is holding off his graduation so that he can come back and learn how to use additional techniques to grow his business.

In the current issue we have six exciting papers. In “Sailing away: the influences on and motivations of George Caspar Homans” by Jeffrey Muldoon of Louisiana State University, Eric W. Liguori of California State University, Fresno and Joshua Bendickson of Louisiana State University they examine how social factors motivate and influence scholars when they theorize. They propose that theories are the products of the theorist are they are influenced by individual life experiences. Tony Proctor of the University of Chester in “Collaboration and networking in the process of innovation: the path to precision time keeping” examines the process of innovation management in the eighteenth century by an examination of the watch making industry. The paper pays particular attention to the importance of personal contact and collaboration in the development of innovations. Collaboration with organizations in adjacent industries was found to be valuable and the value of financial rewards was found to be the major motivational factor for moving innovations forward. In the article “The first systematized uses of the term ‘management’ in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries” researcher Thibault Le Texier of the Nice Sophia Antipolis University, GREDEG-CNRS, and Dauphine Paris University, the author seeks to explore the familial roots of modern management thought, largely overlooked by a vast majority of management historians. He used a hermeneutical approach and examined the early uses of the word “management.” He purports to shed light on two forgotten roots of management thought: the principles of care and of self-government, which management practitioners could bring up to date. In “Cost accounting and scientific management in libraries: a historical overview” Kate-Riin Kont, head librarian at Tallinn University examined the history of cost accounting, costing, and time and motion studies in libraries. She explores how the profession of a librarian changed into a profession requiring routine work that can be enriched by the use of cost accounting and motion studies. In “Evergreens of excellence” André A. de Waal of the Maastricht School of Management in The Netherlands identifying characteristics of excellence or best practices in certain aspects of performance and sought to create a framework for better understanding work excellence. Finally in “Conceptualising the nature of work – revisiting Luther Gulick’s theories of organization” Richard Breese of the Sheffield Business School at Sheffield Hallam University evaluates the coherence of Gulick’s ideas on the nature of work roles and the implications of his ideas for organizational theory. He argues that Gulick’s ideas on the nature of work roles in his systems of organization were an important, but flawed contribution to organizational theory. He seeks to identify shortcomings in Gulick’s theories on systems of organizations. Thus we have two papers from the UK, one from the US, one from France, one from The Netherlands, and one from Estonia. I trust that you will enjoy these articles and find them useful for garnering ideas for your own research.

Shawn M. Carraher