Establishing a Contribution: Calibration, Contextualization, Construction and Creation

Abstract

Riikka Sarala, Shuang Ren and Paul Hibbert

When we commissioned this editorial symposium we had two principal aims. The first was to provide guidance for authors who are new to the journal and those with more experience who are seeking to develop impactful contributions to our field. The second aim was to showcase the experience and insights of the team of associate editors at the British Journal of Management (BJM): all of the team are pivotal in the journal's mission and work hard to help authors make the most of their research.

With our twin aims in mind, we gave the team a broad remit. They were free to approach the task of offering guidance from their own standpoint and with their own choice of focus within BJM’s field. We also encouraged our colleagues to work in the way that they found most productive: independently, with other BJM associate editors or with colleagues from within their own networks. While other commitments and the heavy burdens of academic life meant that some of our colleagues could not participate in this symposium (but will hopefully be able to take part in further editorials), eight of the team took part, along with some collaborators. They covered a wide range of themes from BJM’s broad and inclusive take on the field of business, management and organization studies: a perspective on upper echelon decision-making and digital transformation (Arndt, Chang and Aharonson); a balanced view of artificial intelligence (Chowdhury and Budhwar); a standard-setting survey of trends in organizational behaviour (Costa and Daniels); a generative ‘take’ on religion in the workplace (Cullen); emerging directions in research on fintech and digital finance (Momtaz and Vismara); opportunities for new research in the management, knowledge and education space (Rigg); and a wayfinding view of equality, diversity and inclusivity research and practice (Śliwa). If you are developing your research in any of those areas, you will find the advice invaluable.

Taken as a whole, our colleagues' work proved to be diverse, instructive and generative. Reflecting on their contributions and themes allowed us to construct the framework for guidance shown in Figure 1.

As you can see in the figure, the contributions from our editorial team members helped to show that there are two key aspects of the journal's terrain: the foundations, a set of principles and standards that show how to construct rigorous research in the field; and the frontiers, the emerging debates that allow the field to be extended – or for unmapped territory to be charted. The contributions also showed that there are two ways of engaging with these aspects of the terrain: through exemplifying, which roots guidance in key principles and particular exemplars in the journal's recent articles to show standards; and through exploring, which finds new opportunities through uncovering and characterizing a latent theme in the journal or making helpfully speculative projections from established debates. While we have mapped out the contributions from our colleagues in this way, it is important to note that you will find that each contribution covers much more than one of these areas – our aim is simply to highlight how authors might usefully focus their attention on each.

Submissions that meet all of these criteria are likely to make the strongest kinds of contribution. That is, they are likely to leave readers surprised – but convinced. To reflect on and understand all of these criteria in depth, along with focal advice for your area of disciplinary specialization, we encourage you to read our colleagues’ helpful contributions below. We hope that you find them as insightful, useful and instructive as we did: the individual contributions follow below, in the order presented in Figure 1.

Ana Cristina Costa and Kevin Daniels

The purpose of this editorial is to outline the recent trends in micro-organizational behaviour (micro-OB) in BJM for 2023–2024. As a core discipline in management studies, micro-OB focuses particularly on how individual and group behaviour in organizations evolves and adapts, while shaped by work norms and multilevel relationships and dynamics, governance and technological structures. Within this broad remit, micro-OB draws heavily upon work and organizational psychology, although not exclusively so. With the globalization of the economy and the aftermath of the recent pandemic, the very nature of working relationships has been transformed. The articles in this editorial provide insights into how research reflects some of these broader challenges and areas where future articles in BJM could make contributions. We focus on two broad areas that reflect the majority of micro-OB studies published in BJM recently. In total, we analyse 10 articles clustered around two major areas: individual behaviour and leadership.

Soumyadeb Chowdhury and Pawan Budhwar

Clare Rigg

A focus on management learning, knowledge and education (MKE) is new for BJM. It is not that there have not been occasional papers over the years, but with the launch in 2024 of a regular MKE section in the journal. BJM is joining other well-established journals such as Academy of Management Learning and Education, Management Learning, Journal of Management Education and International Journal of Management Education in recognizing the importance of management education and management learning to the cultivation of management knowledge and practice. BJM’s inaugural MKE section included the paper ‘A Shout-out for the Value of Management Education Research: ‘Pedagogy is not a Dirty Word’ (Mason et al., 2024). In this, the authors argued that management learning and education (MLE) has a responsibility for educating future leaders of organizations in all sectors with the knowledge and capabilities ‘to deliver sustainable futures for the planet and people’ and that ‘research into and innovations in both curriculum content and pedagogy are urgently needed to lead our world out of crisis’ (Mason et al., 2024, p. 539). This paper echoed a companion piece in the same BJM issue by McPhail et al. (2024): ‘Reimagining Business and Management as a Force for Good’. In this, the authors ‘question whether our existing theoretical lenses, along with fundamental underlying assumptions about what constitutes labour, value and its creation and the nature of assets, liabilities and materiality, act as a barrier to advancing business and management practice as a force for good and explore whether we need to go beyond applying existing theory to new research questions’ (McPhail et al., 2024, p. 1099).

This call for management educators and business/management schools to recognize that we have an important role in shaping the assumptions, world views and practices of our graduates and their organizations is not a recent phenomenon, but it is becoming louder and more pressing. Since at least the 1980s there have been increasingly loud critiques of the perceived neglect in mainstream management education of broader ethical, social and environmental concerns and its dominant emphasis on a logic of perpetual economic growth, increasing consumption and corporate success, all of which create tension with the growing awareness of environmental and social issues, such as climate change and resource depletion. In response, a move for a critical management education called for a reimagining of what it means to manage, focusing not simply on efficiency and profitability but also on values such as social justice, sustainability and responsibility to employees, consumers and society at large. (See Rigg and Trehan, 2025 for a collection of both historical and contemporary writing on ideas and practices of critical management educators.)

In the face of the increasing climate crisis, resource depletion, social division and economic polarization, the challenge for innovative MKE research and practice has become ever-more imperative. A scan of recent articles across the MLE journals referred to above identifies five main themes that help define questions for future MKE/MLE research. The first is the fundamental question: What is the purpose of management learning and education? (e.g. Lindebaum, 2024; Reed, Śliwa and Prasad, 2024; Vongswasdi et al., 2024). In the past, research might have concentrated on trying to evaluate the financial return on investment from MLE or the effects on other performance outcomes. Now, as Mason et al. (2024) emphasize, the ‘value’ or impact of MLE can and needs to be so much more.

The second theme relates to epistemological questions and how particular forms of MLE can challenge our assumptions and change the ways we think about business and management practice. For example, Ong, Cunningham and Parmar (2024) in their paper ‘How and Why Does Economics Education Make Us See Honesty as Effortful?’ explore ways in which MLE can be culpable in cultivating narrow economic and utilitarian assumptions about the role of business in society and of management practice within this. This focus on how business schools can play a role in driving epistemic change and transforming managerial thought by embodying a duty of care towards the natural environment is also picked up within BJM (for example, see Mughal et al. (2024), call for special issue).

A third important theme for future MKE research relates to questions of how MKE either perpetuates social inequality or can play a role in disrupting such inequity. For example, Naya, Contu and Poole (2024) explore the dangers of MLE reproducing racialized socioeconomic inequality. Similarly, Eisenman et al. (2024:142) identify how ‘economic inequality is reproduced because business students uncritically accept the neoliberal myth of meritocracy’.

A fourth theme is the business of business schools. Recent years have seen an upsurge in the number of articles examining how the institutional norms, practices and increasingly neoliberal ideologies of business schools constrain attempts by educators to respond to calls for greater responsibility in their curricula and pedagogies. For example, see Hartz (2024) on the degradation of professional autonomy and Gavin et al. (2024) on experiences of attempts to forge collegiality in the neoliberal academy. There are certainly many questions that deserve further research, such as the institutional barriers or the role of different stakeholders, such as accreditation bodies.

A fifth theme, which perhaps has received most coverage to date, but where we still need to know much more, concerns the pedagogical innovations that enable educators and business schools to effectively respond to the challenges identified above. We see increasing numbers of articles published in the MLE journals mentioned above, as well as in others, that describe accounts of pedagogical innovations that try, for example, to develop sustainability awareness in management students (e.g. Edwards and Küpers, 2024; Kiss, Köves and Király, 2024) or to address socioeconomic inequality (Cavalcanti and Silva, 2024; Kumar et al., 2024). At this point in time, it is arguably opportune to add depth to the evaluation and theorization of these. Also to explore and evaluate questions such as whether particular MLE pedagogies make a difference to the ways people do leadership and management in practice, and if so, in what ways? And to consider further ways in which management education colludes in the silencing of topics or instances where pedagogies that set out to be critical get co-opted.

These five themes are indicative of the kinds of valuable MKE/MLE questions we would like to see explored in BJM. All could benefit from further empirical research and would therefore suit a Management Theory or Education Theory paper. However, informed provocations to debate on any of these themes could also be addressed in an essay (termed a Management Educator paper). One example of a recent BJM essay is Lindebaum and Fleming's (2024) argument that ChatGPT undermines human reflexivity, scientific responsibility and responsible management research. A second example is a paper by Edwards et al. (2024), who, defining themselves as ‘mothering academics’, reflect on working adaptations during the COVID-19 pandemic to argue for a more balanced engagement with academia and an acceptance of the ‘good enough’. We are excited to see essays (Management Educator articles) submitted for the new MKE section of BJM, and we very much hope to see interesting data and original theorizing for MKE Management Theory and Education Theory articles. (See British Journal of Management for further details on contribution types.)

Martyna Śliwa

John G. Cullen

BJM’s submission guidelines ask prospective authors to demonstrate how their manuscript engages with, and advances, ongoing research conversations or debates in the journal. This short note distinguishes the nature of BJM’s conversations about religion, work and management so potential authors can consider how, and if, their work on faith connects with the concerns of this important part of our scholarly community.

Since Max Weber explored how theological innovation resulted in the behaviours that drove the emergence of late capitalism, religious ideas have continued to inspire new thinking in management and organizational studies. For example, the turn away from traditional forms of organized religion towards an expressive form of ‘self-spirituality’ (Heelas, 1996) has manifested in the workplace through expressivist forms of management training (Ackers and Preston, 1997; Bell and Taylor, 2004), self-help programmes (Cullen, 2009; Oswick, 2009) and mindfulness-at-work initiatives (Holm and Islam, 2024).

Research that attempts to explore religion and work often risks treating faith or spirituality as variables that can be easily measured or quantitatively correlated with another aspect of organizational life. Some reviews attempt to encapsulate the totality of published research on religion, faith and spirituality in the workplace, but the extent to which these actively progress research on religion and work is questionable and can create a lack of clarity about where religion ends and spirituality begins. Sometimes they present a distorted and stereotypical view of religious workers' experience of their faith or a reductive account of how faith influences professional identity or corporate performance.

Rather than assuming a unified field of study, Tracey's (2012) overview of religion and organization identified the various research conversations in the diverse ‘sociologies’ of religion and organizational research. BJM has published papers in the literatures in many of these fields. These include: religion and individual behaviours in organizations (Ancarani, Ayach and Di Mauro, 2016; De Clercq, Haq and Azeem, 2023); comparative studies (Ozkan, Temiz and Yildiz, 2023); contextual studies (Li and Wang, 2023) and business ethics (Jatmiko, Iqbal and Ebrahim, 2024; West et al., 2016). However, it is clear that the most pronounced area in the journal is in the field that Tracey identifies as ‘Religion and Social Identity’. Tracey notes that, although this is a highly populated literature in the sociology of religion, ‘management scholars arguably have greater potential to make a distinctive contribution [on] the role of religious identity in secular organizations. For example, exploring the relationship between individuals’ religious identity and their professional identity, the tensions and contradictions that may exist between them and the processes through which they are reconciled has the potential to make an important contribution’ (2012, p. 115). While earlier BJM papers examined religion as an important aspect of social identity (Herriot and Scott–Jackson, 2002; Kamenou, 2008), recent contributions have focused on how people of faith negotiate their identities in corporate or secular contexts (Purchase et al., 2018; Arifeen and Gatrell, 2020; Priola and Chaudhry, 2021). Adopting a more emic perspective on the lived experiences of the professionals they study, these articles respectfully represent the identities of employees and businesspeople in a way that generates insights for managers and professionals alike.

In short, these works represent faith in the context of organizational life as something that is dynamic and resistant to quantification. BJM’s research conversation on religion and work will be enhanced by contributions that connect with the evolving way in which faith traditions change and with how managers and employees experience these shifts. For the purposes of brevity, these evolving conditions are referred to as ‘faithscapes’. Rather than assuming, for example, that all Christians feel the same way about a health issue or that all Jews feel the same way about a political situation, a ‘faithscape’ perspective is conscious of the plurality that exists within existing religious traditions and the dynamic nature of an individual's experience of their belief. For example, Bullivant, Farias and Lanman (2019) suggest that while there are more atheists than believers in the UK, it would be inaccurate to assume that there are no spiritual practices or values within this faithscape. ‘Unbelief in God does not necessarily entail unbelief in other supernatural phenomena’ (p. 2), and there is rich diversity in how atheism and agnosticism are experienced. Seeing religion as a faithscape means viewing it in its broadest terms, while recognizing that it is experienced at cultural and local levels in very diverse ways. The concept certainly makes the study of religion in workplaces more challenging, but it also opens up more management research possibilities. Rather than assuming that religion or belief are merely boxes to be ticked on censuses or surveys, a faithscape perspective opens up new possibilities for deepening our understanding of how work and organizational life are experienced in the contemporary workplace.

Faithscapes can also be understood at the macro social or cultural level, where profound changes occur over short periods of time and dominant religious groups rapidly go into abeyance (Booth and Goodier, 2023; McGreevy, 2023; Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2012; Smith et al., 2015), the influence of other faith-groups grows (Hardy, 2021) or new approaches emerge (Heelas and Woodhead, 2005). Faithscapes can be studied at the meso-level, such as when managers grapple with the challenge of deciding the boundaries of religious faith expression and accommodation or of addressing discrimination. Adopting a faithscape research perspective allows for research on how managers and co-workers, whether religious or not, engage with the social, legal, organizational and cultural aspects of religion (or non-religion) in contemporary workplaces.

BJM research has focused on the study of faithscapes at the micro-level, where individual employees navigate their own religious beliefs through organizational structures that accommodate faith traditions differently or not at all. William James’ monumental The Varieties of Religious Experience (1906, [1902]) demonstrated that an individual's experience with faith and belief changes not only throughout their lives, but sometimes on a daily basis (Bell, Taylor and Driscoll, 2012)! With such fluidity, mechanistic understandings of a person's inner life using measures such as ‘religiosity’ can appear sterile and reductive. This does not mean that quantitative articles on faithscapes are unwelcome: indeed BJM’s author guidelines are clear that empirical papers can employ any methodology as long as it is of a high standard that is appropriate to the questions or problems the paper seeks to address.

BJM’s tradition of studying religious experience in organizations often involves nuanced, qualitative accounts that are sensitive to the diversity of expressions and perspectives that can exist. Social scientists have employed psychoanalytical (Domínguez, Montero Fernańdez and Torok, 2018) and critical (Bell, 2008) approaches to developing theories of religious experience, as they have particular utility in identifying the social, psychological and cultural forces that influence the dynamics of an individual's inner world. These and similar approaches, which attempt to ‘get under the hood’ of faithscapes in workplaces, will be welcome additions to BJM’s research conversations on religion, management and organizational life.

These conversations on religion and identity in workplaces have explored the experiences of women, and there are opportunities to understand how other significant aspects of identity (sexual orientation, political orientation, class, etc.) impact the interface between faithscapes and experiences of work. Finally, although the major world religions are well represented in management research in general, the experiences of members of smaller faith groups and new religious movements have received much less attention, which provides opportunities to create new understandings and insights for management and organizational research in BJM.

Felix F. Arndt, Yu-Yu Chang and Barak S. Aharonson

Digital transformation, including recent advances in AI and automation, fundamentally reshapes the business landscape. Yet, management research has been slow to document these changes, identify best practices, and offer comprehensive insights that can guide firms, managers and policymakers. Despite the impact of digital advancements, management theory has yet to develop a framework of digitalization that would enable the systematic accumulation of knowledge on managing businesses in the digital era. In the following, we identify some areas of interest that, we believe, offer ample opportunity for future research particularly related to the upper-echelon and corporate entrepreneurship settings.

Paul P. Momtaz and Silvio Vismara

Fintech, a portmanteau of financial technology, refers to the use of digital technology to innovate existing and create new business models in finance. The rapid evolution of fintech is reshaping the global financial landscape. This section synthesizes current debates and points to new research directions in four key fintech domains that have gained significant attention in the business and management literature: (1) sustainable finance and environmental, social and governance (ESG), (2) artificial intelligence and machine learning, (3) blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies and (4) digital transformation of finance. These areas represent central themes that are shaping the future of the financial services industry and warrant further academic investigation and managerial consideration.