Impact Factor Report
The 2015 Thomson-Reuters Journal Citation Impact Factor Scores were released in June. I am very pleased to share that the MOR 2-year Impact Factor increased to 2.738 from 2.442 in 2014 and that the MOR 5-year Impact Factor also increased from 3.078 to 3.657. I was especially pleased to note that the increase in Impact Factor from 2014 to 2015 was entirely due to a significant increase in citations. Although MOR's position in the Management category dropped by one place – it should be noted that the overall number of journals listed in the Management category increased from 185 to 192. I feel that a position of 33rd is still excellent for a young, specialized field journal in its twelfth year of publication.
Cambridge University Press, in its second year as the publisher of MOR, actually identified a few more citations than in the Thompson report, and have referred the matter to Thompson for reconsideration. If an adjustment were to be made by Thompson, the Impact Factor for 2015 would increase to 2.810 and move MOR position to 30th on the Management list.
MOR is competing in an increasingly crowded field as more journals seek to publish papers on China. In my 12.2 Letter from the Editor I stressed that China remains the core constituency of MOR. However, MOR further differentiates itself by its expanded focus on indigenous management theories in all transforming economies.
Below I list the journals on the Thompson Management list and their IF scores that I consider to compete directly with MOR or have aspirations to directly compete with MOR.
IACMR Conference Recap
The Seventh Biennial IACMR Conference in Hangzhou, China exceeded all expectations in terms of number of paper presentations, and the rich variety of topics covered. The Program Chair, Professor Ray Friedman and the Program Committee – Zhen Zhang, Lynda Song, Haibin Yang, Runtian Jing, Xu Huang, and Tony Fang – deserve our collective thanks and immense appreciation for putting on this outstanding and intellectually stimulating conference. MOR had over 20 Senior Editors attending the conference and we are excited by the interesting and relevant ideas being shared. We look forward to receiving many interesting submissions that result from the exchanges and developmental feedback shared over the course of the conference.
I also wish to recognize the host organization, Zhejiang University School of Management, and Dean Xiaobo Wu, for an incomparable and exceptional organization and execution of this conference. I think that the IACMR is extremely fortunate to have had such strong support from the top business schools in China, which I fully expect to continue into the future.
MOR Best Paper Awards
The MOR-Peking University Press Award was presented to Professors Runtian Jing and Andrew Van de Ven for their 2014 paper A Ying-Yang Model of Organizational Change: The Case of Chengdu Bus Group. The MOR/PUP award is intended to especially encourage research on indigenous Chinese theory of management and practice.
The Inaugural Herman and Marianne Straniak Stiftung – MOR Best Paper Award was presented to Xing Yijun and Liu Yipeng for their 2015 paper Poetry and Leadership in Light of Ambiguity and logic of Appropriateness. The Straniak Foundation – MOR Award is intended to recognize and encourage indigenous social and philosophical management scholarship that can impact western management practices in the broad context of ‘East informs West’. It is intended that this award will be made annually.
Both awards include a $5,000 monetary prize, a two-year free membership in the IACMR, and one-year free subscription to MOR.
Congratulations to this year's winners!
Letter to the Editor
Lastly I wish to note the publication in this issue of the Inaugural Letter to the Editor in Chief. I was especially struck by this Letter, which suggests that the cultural roots underlying the idea of ’A composition-based view of firm growth’ (Luo, Y., & Child, J. 2015. A composition-based view of firm growth. Management and Organization Review , 11(3): 379411) may have a cultural indigenous origin in the legend of the Dragon and the Phoenix. The Phoenix, it seems, represents ‘a composite of many birds, including the head of a golden pheasant, the body of a mandarin duck, the tail of a peacock, the legs of a crane, the mouth of a parrot, and the wings of a swallow’ and its realization is consistent with the idea of borrowing and recombining prior practices or resources to innovate a new practice. Perhaps the Compositional Based View advanced by Luo and Child has its origin in a deep rooted Chinese cultural norm of innovation by combining and recombining extant knowledge and experience. My sincere thanks and appreciation to Jingzi Zhou and Shijin Zhou for sharing their discovery with us.
