Thesis

Academy of Management Journal STYLE GUIDE FOR AUTHORS

For information about desired content, length of submissions, and how to submit manuscripts, please see “Information for Contributors” (front of each issue and on the AMJ Web site, http://journals. aomonline.org/amj/).

For “Style Guide for Authors” on the Web, see http://journals.aomonline.org/amj/information- for-contributors/submitting-a-manuscript.

Manuscript Submission and Format

Submit manuscripts to AMJ’s online submission and review Web Site, ScholarOne Manuscripts, at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/amj.

Please use Times Roman 12-point type and the 8 1⁄2 � 11 page setting. The document should be double spaced throughout; place page numbers in the upper-right corner; and leave top and side mar- gins of at least one inch.

Publication of Accepted Articles

Accepted papers are copy-edited. Authors re- view edits in page proofs. AMJ’s copy editor– production manager will contact you about two months after the managing editor assigns your work to an issue.

If your work is accepted, please keep the man- aging editor ([email protected]) and the copy editor ([email protected]) informed of changes of address and long absences.

Front Pages

Address. For final versions of Accepted manu- scripts only, a title page should be added (this is not included with submissions under review). Un- der the title of your work, list authors’ names, af- filiations, and complete addresses. Example:

AN EXCELLENT STUDY

A. A. MANAGEMENT SCHOLAR Current University

School and/or Department Building and/or Street City, State, Zip Code Tel: (000) 000-0000 Fax: (000) 000-0000

e-mail: [email protected]

Acknowledgment. If you wish to acknowledge financial support or other assistance, add a note at

the bottom of your title page. This applies ONLY to Accepted papers. A title page with author-identify- ing information should NOT be included with a paper submitted for review.

Abstract. An abstract of no more than 200 words and the title of the work go on page 2.

Back Pages

Group references and any appendixes, tables, and figures at the end of your manuscript. Continue your page numbering.

Headings and Sections

AMJ uses only three levels of headings. Use bold- face for all three. Main headings (all capital letters; centered) are first. Second-level headings (title-style letters; flush left) are next. Third-level headings (first letter of first word capitalized; indented; italicized; and run into paragraph) are next.

Don’t skip steps: no second-level headings before you use a first-level heading, for instance. Use sec- ond- and third-level headings in sets of two or more. Examples:

METHODS [1st level]

Data and Sample [2nd level]

Measures [2nd level]

Independent variable. [3rd level] Dependent variables. [3rd level]

Footnotes

Use footnotes placed on their respective pages (not endnotes).

Hypotheses

Fully and separately state each hypothesis you tested separately. Phrase it in the present tense. Give it a distinct number (Hypothesis 1) or number- letter (Hypothesis 1a) label. Set hypotheses off in indented blocks, in italic type. Examples:

Hypothesis 1a. Concise writing has a positive relation- ship to publication.

Hypothesis 1b. Following AMJ’s “Style Guide for Au- thors” has a positive relationship to publication.

� Academy of Management Journal 2011, Vol. 54, No. 5, 1081–1084.

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Copyright of the Academy of Management, all rights reserved. Contents may not be copied, emailed, posted to a listserv, or otherwise transmitted without the copyright holder’s express written permission. Users may print, download or email articles for individual use only.

Language

Technical terms. Help your work to be accessible to AMJ’s wide-ranging readership. Define key techni- cal terms. A technical term is a word or phrase that is not in a general-use dictionary with the meaning you (or even you and other published scholars) ascribe to it. Put quotation marks around the first appearance in your paper of each technical term, or define it.

Abbreviations. Avoid using abbreviations for the names of concepts. Use ordinary words for variable names—not code names or other abbreviations. Use the same name for a variable throughout your text, tables, figures, and appendixes.

Names of organizations and research instruments may be abbreviated, but give the full name the first time you mention one of these. Names of software and some databases may be abbreviated.

Reporting math. Do not “talk in math” in regular text. Use words. For instance, “We surveyed 100 em- ployees,” not “We surveyed n � 100 employees.”

Do use symbols and numbers to report results and give formulas. Italicize letters that are custom- arily italicized (e.g., p, r, b, F, Z). Use boldface italic for vectors. Put spaces on either side of equals signs, minus signs, etc.

Illustrative results within text go in parentheses. Introduce them with complete sentences. Example:

One coefficient for the interaction was significant (model 3: � � 0.06, p � .05; model 5: � � 1.06).

Present equations either in your running text or displayed. Examples:

Run-in equation—We used Craig’s (1992: 20) distance formula (d � xyz).

Displayed equation—

Pr(Yt � yt xt) � [e��( xt)�(Xt)

yt] Yt!

, (1)

where Yt is. . . .

Define each new term in all equations.

Sexist or biased language. Avoid language that might be interpreted as denigrating. Do not use “he” or “she” exclusively. Using the plural— changing “the manager . . . he” to “managers . . . they”—is one solution; using “he or she” (“him or her”) is another.

Active voice and first person. Write in the active voice (“They did it”) instead of the passive voice (“It was done”) to make it easy for readers to see who did what. Use the first person (“I” or “we”) to describe what you, or you and your coauthors, did. Examples:

Passive (less desirable)—Two items were found to lack factor validity by Earley (1989).

Active (more desirable)—Earley (1989) found that two items lacked factor validity.

Third person (less desirable)—The author developed three new items.

First person (more desirable)—I developed three new items.

Anthropomorphism. Do not describe inanimate entities (models, theories, firms, and so forth) as acting in ways only humans can act.

Appendixes

Present long but essential methodological de- tails, such as the calculation of measures, in an appendix or appendixes. Be concise.

Avoid exact reproductions of surveys. Label appendixes “APPENDIX A,” “APPENDIX

B,” and so forth. A substantive title, such as “Items in Scales,” should follow. Label tables within ap- pendixes “Table A1,” “B1,” and so forth.

Tables and Figures

Look at tables and figures in published issues of AMJ to see preferred formats. Write to the copy editor if you have questions. Use as many pages as you need to create tables and figures that match our formats.

The preferred format for regular tables is Mi- crosoft Word; however, WordPerfect and Acrobat PDF are also acceptable. Note that a straight Excel file is not currently an acceptable format. Excel files should be converted to a Word or PDF docu- ment before being uploaded. Tables that contain artwork or graphics must be submitted as illustra- tions in an acceptable format.

Tables should be formatted as follows. Arrange the data so that columns of like material read down, not across. The headings should be suffi- ciently clear so that the meaning of the data is understandable without reference to the text. Ta- bles should have titles and sufficient experimental detail in a legend immediately following the title to be understandable without reference to the text. Each column in a table must have a heading, and abbreviations, when necessary, should be defined in the legend or footnote.

Number tables and figures consecutively (one se- ries for tables, one for figures). Place them at the end of your manuscript, but indicate the position of each in the text as follows:

------------------------------------ Insert Table 2 about here ------------------------------------

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Each table or figure needs an introductory sentence in your text.

More on tables. Use the same name for each variable that you use in your text. Don’t use code names and abbreviations. Example:

Desirable variable name—Profitability Undesirable variable name—PRFT

Each table should report one type of analysis (which is identified in the title), and each vertical column and horizontal row should contain only one type of data.

Report only two decimal places for all statistics. Place correlation coefficients in the lower-left cor- ners of their tables.

Use superscript small letters for table footnotes.

Significance levels go in a stack under your reg- ular table footnotes. Example:

† p � .10 * p � .05

** p � .01

Or you may use a single lettered footnote: a All values greater than . . . are significant at. . . .

More on figures. Figures, unlike tables, contain drawings (e.g., an arrow, boxes). Make sure your figures print out clearly so that they can be scanned.

Do not use color.

Citations

These are your in-text, in parentheses, identifi- cations of other research. Every work that has a citation needs to have a corresponding reference (see “References,” below). Examples:

Name and year—Several studies (Adams, 1994; Bern- stein, 1988, 1992; Celias, 2000a, 2000b) support this conclusion.

Year only—But Van Dorn and Xavier (2001) presented conflicting evidence.

Order. Order citations alphabetically. Designate two or more works by one author (or by an identical group of authors) published in the same year by adding “a,” “b,” and so forth, after the year. See the “name and year” example above.

Multiple authors. If a work has two authors, give both names every time you cite it. For three through six authors, give all names the first time, then use “et al.” in citations. Examples:

First citation—(Foster, Whittington, Tucker, Horner, Hubbard, & Grimm, 2000).

Subsequent citation—(Foster et al., 2000).

For seven or more authors, use “et al.” even for the first citation. (But the corresponding reference should give all the names.)

Page numbers in citations. Use this format:

Writing a book is “a long and arduous task” (Lee, 1998: 3).

Citation with no author. For an article with no author, cite the periodical as author. Example:

Periodical as author—Analysts predicted an increase in service jobs (Wall Street Journal, 1999).

For reports, handbooks, and the like, cite the “cor- porate author” that produced them. Example:

Organization as author—Analysts predict an increase in service jobs in the U.S. Industrial Outlook (U.S. Depart- ment of Commerce, 1992).

Such sources can also be identified informally. No corresponding reference will then be needed. Example:

Informal citation—According to the 1999 U.S. Industrial Outlook, published by the U.S. Department of Com- merce, service jobs will increase.

Electronic sources. Use a regular citation (author, year) if you can identify an author of one of the types discussed above (human, periodical, or cor- porate). If not, give the web address that was your source in parentheses. No corresponding reference need be used in the latter case.

References

References are your entries in the alphabetical list at the end of your article or research note. This list should include only work you have cited.

Order. Alphabetize references by the last name of a sole author, a first author, or an editor, or by the name of a corporate author (for instance, U.S. Cen- sus Bureau) or periodical (such as the Wall Street Journal) if there is no human author or editor. Or- der works by an identical author by year of publi- cation, listing the earliest first. If the years of pub- lication are also the same, differentiate entries by adding small letters (“a,” “b,” etc.) after the years. Repeat the author’s name for each entry.

Books. Follow this form: Last names, initials (separated by a space). Year. Title (Boldface italic, capitalize only the first letter of the first word and of the first word after a long dash or colon.) City where published: Name of publisher. (For small U.S. and Canadian cities, follow the name of the city with the postal abbreviation for the state or province; for small cities in other countries, give the full name of the country.) Examples:

2011 1083Style Guide for Authors

Granovetter, M. S. 1965. Getting a job: A study of contracts and careers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Kahn, R. L., & Boulding, E. (Eds.). 1964. Power and conflict in organizations. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

Katz, D., & Kahn, R. L. 1978. The social psychology of orga- nizations (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley.

National Center for Education Statistics. 1992. Digest of ed- ucation statistics. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.

Periodicals. Follow this form: Authors’ last names, initials. Year. Title (regular type; same sin- gle-capital rule as for books). Name of Periodical (boldface italic, title-style capitalization), volume number (issue number, if needed—see below): page numbers. Examples:

Shrivastava, P. 1995. The role of corporations in achieving ecological sustainability. Academy of Management Re- view, 20: 936 –960.

Nonaka, I. 1991. The knowledge-creating company. Harvard Business Review, 69(6): 96 –104.

Include an issue number only if every issue of the referenced periodical begins with a page numbered 1. (Look at more than one issue to check.)

If an article has no author, the periodical is ref- erenced. Examples:

BusinessWeek. 1998. The best B-schools. October 19: 86 –94.

Harvard Business Review. 2003. How are we doing? 81(4): 3.

Chapters in books, including annuals. Follow this form: Authors’ last names, initials. Year. Title of chapter (regular type, single-capital rule. In Ed- itors’ initials and last names (Eds.), Title of book: Page numbers. City (same rules as above): Pub- lisher. Examples:

Levitt, B., & March, J. G. 1988. Organizational learning. In W. R. Scott & J. F. Short (Eds.), Annual review of soci- ology, vol. 14: 319 –340. Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews.

Dutton, J., Bartunek, J., & Gersick, C. 1996. Growing a personal, professional collaboration. In P. Frost & S. Taylor (Eds.), Rhythms of academic life: 239–248. London: Sage.

Unpublished works. These include working pa- pers, dissertations, and papers presented at meetings. Examples:

Duncan, R. G. 1971. Multiple decision-making structures in adapting to environmental uncertainty. Working paper no. 54 –71, Northwestern University Graduate School of Management, Evanston, IL.

Smith, M. H. 1980. A multidimensional approach to individ- ual differences in empathy. Unpublished doctoral dis- sertation, University of Texas, Austin.

Wall, J. P. 1983. Work and nonwork correlates of the career plateau. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management, Dallas.

Electronic documents. Include the author’s name, if known; the full title of the document; the full title of the work it is part of; the ftp, http, or other address; and the date the document was posted or accessed.

Biographical Sketches

Each author of an accepted article is asked to submit a biographical sketch of about 50 words. Your sketch should identify where you earned your highest degree, your present affiliation and posi- tion, and your current research interests. The first author should include an e-mail address, which is optional for the other authors.

Thank You

Your attention to the conventions described in this guide will be much appreciated, will in- crease the likelihood your submission will be favorably reviewed, and will make the work of everyone involved—you, the reviewers, the edi- tors, and the readers— easier. Please contact copy editor–production manager Persephone Doliner at [email protected] with your queries on AMJ’s style.

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