As part of the Journal of Management and Organization’s 30th birthday celebration it is important to reflect and consider what is valuable advice. This perspective article is coauthored by a number of academics and brings together their thoughts about value in management practice. An international array of management teachers and researchers provide their advice in the hope of inspiring future generations of management researchers.

This perspective article is to celebrate the 30th birthday of the Journal of Management & Organization. To remember its achievements and to reflect on its successes a number of management academics were quizzed about their thoughts. This helps to identify future growth areas of management interest and to project new developments. By doing so it enables a holistic view about the role of management in practice, policy and society.

This article explores literatures from various sources to highlight and understand differences among key players surrounding the perceived nature and role of civil society in research from different literature streams. Including Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in research activities is an integral part of a broad drive towards integration of science and society. Interest in CSO inclusion in research is widespread, but lacks a coherent focus and clarity on what CSOs are. Without this clarity, CSO-inclusive research, or policy, may be ineffective. This article addresses this gap in knowledge by presenting findings from an exploration of academic, policy and research project literature in order to come to a view on CSOs in research. This culminates in a typology of CSOs and provides a means of identifying types of CSOs. The typology shows four main types of CSO (common cause, shared voice, research-oriented, commercially oriented) and provides a definition for each type, along with a basis for the definition; an example of each; some typical terminology; typical area of activity; properties; typical mission; key areas of interest and their ‘action logic’ in research.

In this introductory article to the thematic issue, our aim is to discuss the state of the art in research on co-production of public services. We define co-production, for the purpose of this article rather narrowly, as the involvement of individual citizens and groups in public service delivery. We discuss the concept along three main research lines that emerge from the literature: what are the motives for co-production? How can co-production be organized effectively? What are the effects of co-production? Secondly, we also critically assess the state of the art and discuss some conceptual and methodological issues that are still open to debate. Thirdly, we propose some directions for future research: greater methodological diversity and the need for empirical and comparative research with a specific attention for theoretical advancement in co-production research.

This article raises important questions about the standing of citation indices as true reflections of the flow of influence in political science. Are citations being used strategically to enlarge personal standing in the profession? A recent experience suggests that sanctions against unacknowledged appropriation of others' research may be decreasingly severe or non-existent. This has serious implications for collective research and the ‘free marketplace of ideas’ within the discipline.

This review surveys the state of research on nonprofit communication and collects and summarizes the resulting advice for nonprofit communication practice. The citations of research papers since 2000 were collected from standard bibliographic databases and selected bibliographies. The resulting collection of papers was summarized and synthesized into relevant themes and organized into five broad categories: (1) strategic planning, (2) management, (3) development, (4) outreach, and (5) accountability. From these broad themes, comparisons and contrasts arise between the research and current practice of nonprofit communications.

Gender and politics research faces a crossroad in the age of populism. On the one hand, gender and sexuality research is on the way to institutionalisation across a growing number of academic systems in Europe. On the other, gender and sexuality research has become increasingly contested and attacked, and has become the bête noire of the populist and radical right. This contribution contends that gender research is under threat not only because of the gender component, but also because of the scholarly research. There are thus lessons to be drawn for the wider discipline of political science. This article first sketches out the dualization in the institutionalization of gender-related research. It then situates the hostility towards gender and sexuality research in the broader (and growing) opposition to gender + and sexual + equality. It concludes with some preliminary observations about the how this hostility may be part of a wider contestation of academic expertise and scholarly knowledge that is being led, at least in part, by populist forces of all stripes.

This article discusses the integration of scholars from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) into the broader field of European political science. Evaluating data from 2000 to 2020, we ask whether CEE scholars managed to “close the gap” stemming from the initially underdeveloped state of post-communist political science. We contend that the results are rather mixed: CEE scholars have been increasingly present, yet achieved only very limited access to the top levels and mostly remain in a position of dependency. Using the case of Czechia, we discuss the factors that have likely contributed to the perpetuation of this state of integration with limited convergence.

The 60th anniversary of the Department of Government at the University of Essex provides an opportunity to reflect on its many achievements and why these have been possible. This article argues that research excellence is a collective outcome that cannot be reduced to individuals. Research institutions tend to be successful because they manage to create productive environments, which can make individual scholars better and create synergies. The thesis is backed up by examples from the history of the department and more general research on the role of environments for research. The article considers possible insights with regard to present challenges to academic institutions, why productive environments can be difficult to maintain, and how we can try to nurture them.

The paper deals with a couple of speculations by John E. Trent with respect to the state and impact of contemporary political science. It particularly takes issue with the Trent claim that political science must become more relevant and instead emphasizes the need for an independent science system. Furthermore, it accepts the notion that there is a problem with respect to overspecialization but regards this as a necessity if science and research want to move ahead. The Trent argument about schisms in political science theorizing and research methodology must be taken seriously, but can and should be counteracted by the good will of scholars to seek regular intellectual exchanges also in fields where controversy rages. Finally, it is argued in the paper that the Trent worldview is very much a North American one that should be balanced by looking also at other political science communities around the world.

The Politics Active Research Learning Environment (PARLE) was a £250,000 project to develop multimedia learning materials aimed at politics postgraduate students. Although the project fulfilled all its ambitions, a number of lessons have been learned that might inform others wanting to use the multimedia route for their teaching. This paper considers some of the mistakes made, how they could have been avoided and lessons for the future production of collaborative projects such as PARLE.

This article uses the method devised by Simon Hix to rank the research performance of political science departments on the basis of publications in high-quality journals. We replicate Hix's methodology to assess the performance of politics departments in Ireland from 2003 to 2007. We are very aware that the Hix method provides only a partial measure of research performance and an even more incomplete measure of academic performance generally. However, by examining publications in Hix's list of journals for the period 2003–2007 and by comparing the findings with his 1998–2002 report, we are able to draw some tentative conclusions about the research trajectory of Irish politics departments.

The Research Assessment Exercise and its successor – the Research Excellence Framework – are examined as contemporary examples of a perversion of academic discourse in British universities that threatens to spread to the rest of Europe. It is claimed that conventional political science is of limited use for understanding the true inanity of such bureaucratic initiatives and instead fiction and psychoanalytical theory are proposed as highly useful intellectual resources with which to understand the truely perverted essence of research bureaucracy. The work of literature-inspired writers such as Žižek, Kafka, Sloterdijk, and Hašek is used to illustrate this claim.

Advocacy networks are coalitions of movements and organizations that in recent years have gained unprecedented levels of influence through their soft power strategies. They have become key political actors in local, national and international arenas. Research on their performance and role within today’s information society has been developed by academics from different disciplines. Some of these analyses, however, seem to portray them as a new actor within an already-existing structure. This article argues that the network structure of these associations requires for a multifaceted and multidisciplinary approach in order to better understand how they are changing the political and social landscape. In order to achieve this purpose, this article is divided in two parts: the first one offers an overview of existing literature on the subject from different disciplines and at different scales, while the second part puts forward a framework to consider all relevant spheres of these networks for better analyses. As will be noted in the literature review, most of the case studies have been carried out from a clear disciplinary focus with its own set of categories and focus on preferred dynamics. This approach reduces the density of the networks by portraying them as other already-known institutions. One example of this is that of scales of action, usually defined as local, national, international or transnational. By focusing solely on the arena of direct influence, other interactions that may be central to the network are thus ignored or minimized. In order to disentangle such misrepresentations, it is suggested here to consider five dimensions of analysis in the study of advocacy networks: (1) scales of action and interaction, (2) cultural contexts and legacies, (3) network logic, (4) discourse production and contestation and (5) institutional ecosystem. By considering the implications of all five of them, it is proposed here, accounts may yield more comprehensive analyses of how these webs of civil society groups are transforming the political landscape.

Whereas political science has a long history in the higher-education provision of many countries, it was only in the early 1970s that it became a feature of the provision in Austria. Not only is Austria a latecomer to the political science profession, but it is also home to a rather small political science community with there only being three universities which have established political science departments: Innsbruck, Salzburg and Vienna. Today two university political science departments have mainstreamed gender into their curriculum, with this being the result of the success of feminist entrepreneurs in these departments. The provision at the University of Vienna is typified by one where professors, associates and external lecturers contribute to the curriculum in gender political science. This state of affairs is, however, far from secure as the Bologna process, the transformation toward an entrepreneurial university as well as budget cuts challenge these institutionalizations. This article seeks to explain this mixed picture through an analysis of the recent state of the art of teaching and gender research in Austrian political science before proceeding to point out the favorable factors which fostered the establishment of gender studies in Political Science. Finally, the article builds on the recent challenging conditions which jeopardizes gender studies within the discipline.