FROM THE EDITORS - Academy of Management · FROM THE EDITORS International Management Research in AMJ: Our Past, Present, and Future In the December 2003 issue of the Academy of Management

FROM THE EDITORS

International Management Research in AMJ:Our Past, Present, and Future

In the December 2003 issue of the Academy ofManagement Journal, then Associate Editors DovEden and Sara Rynes published a “From the Edi-tors” entitled “Publishing across Borders: Further-ing the Internationalization of AMJ” (Eden & Rynes,2003). The column was very helpful in clearlyspecifying how to increase authors’ chances of pub-lishing international research in AMJ, especially fornon–North American researchers. One of the keypoints of this editorial was the advice that authorswalk a fine line between “being different” and “notviolating readers’ expectations by too much.”

While Eden and Rynes (2003) effectively dis-cussed how to publish international managementresearch in AMJ, they did not discuss what inter-national research has been published in this jour-nal, and what international research needs to bepublished here. Because we both conduct interna-tional management research ourselves, Eden andRynes’s (2003) column piqued our interest in thefollowing questions about the content of interna-tional management research in AMJ:

• Just how international is AMJ with respect tocoverage of international management topics,and how has this changed over time? Finding theanswer to this question should help determinewhether AMJ has kept pace with the rapid glob-alization of business (from a cursory examina-tion, we have the sense that the Journal has keptpace, but it never hurts to have a bit of empiricalvalidation!).

• What general areas of international managementresearch (e.g., organizational behavior, strategy,organizational theory) are typically published inAMJ? Answering this question might guide fu-ture researchers toward usefully filling gaps. AreNorth Americans publishing the bulk of interna-tional research, or do non–North American au-thors predominate? Is there gender diversitywith regard to publishing international manage-

ment research in AMJ? Certainly, authors fromevery country in the world are encouraged tosubmit and publish in AMJ; however, reviews ofshort time periods suggest certain regions areunderrepresented (Eden & Rynes, 2003).

• What are the characteristics of internationalmanagement articles published in AMJ? For in-stance, what countries are typically sampled,and at what level of analysis? Answering thesequestions might again point to underresearchedareas of the world and underused levels of anal-ysis and research methods. Such answers couldguide future researchers wanting to add uniquevalue to the existing body of internationalresearch.

Review Methodology

In their December 2003 “From the Editors,” Edenand Rynes examined articles published in AMJ be-tween January 2001 and August 2003. During thatperiod, 25 percent of the articles had at least onenon–North American author; 17 percent had anon–North American as first author; and 19 percentof the articles contained data collected from non–North American countries. To get a more compre-hensive picture, we expanded the domain of inter-est to all international work published in thisjournal between 1970 and 2004, inclusive of allissues in each year and with apologies to thosepublishing international management research inAMJ in the late 1950s and 1960s.

We define an international publication as anyarticle that satisfies any one of the following threecriteria: (1) at least one author is a non–NorthAmerican scholar, (2) the sample is collected out-side North America, or (3) the topic is related tointernational or cross-cultural management issues(regardless of authorship or data collection loca-tion). Since it is sometimes tricky to discern au-thors’ nationality or cultural background, we de-fined an international author as any author whoseaffiliation was outside North America. For authorswith multiple affiliations, we only considered thefirst affiliation. Since there are many publicationswith multiple authors (one in our sample had 30different authors with different cultural back-

We thank Amy Hillman, Duane Ireland, Chet Miller,Nandini Rajagopalan, Sara Rynes, and Debra Shapiro forhelpful comments on a previous version of this editorial.We also thank our Ph.D. students, Marieke Schilpzand atGeorgia Tech and Emily Huang at Hong Kong Universityof Science and Technology, for help with data collection.

� Academy of Management Journal2005, Vol. 48, No. 3, 377–386.

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grounds), we only counted the first 2 authors in ouranalysis of author characteristics.

Just How International Is AMJ, and How HasThis Changed over Time?

From 1970 to 2004, under our criteria there werea total of 269 international management articlesand research notes in AMJ; these form the data setfor our analysis below. During the same time pe-riod, there were a total of 1,191 AMJ articles andresearch notes, regardless of topic. Thus, over thelast 35 years, international management articleshave made up only 14 percent of the total publica-tions in AMJ. However, more important to answer-ing our question are the trends over time. Figure 1shows the number of international publications inAMJ for each year between 1970 and 2004.

We were somewhat surprised at the relativelyhigh level of international management research inthe 1970s (at least relative to the 1980s and the firsthalf of the 1990s), considering the lack of cross-cultural theoretical frameworks in existence priorto 1980. In organizational behavior, for example,Geert Hofstede’s seminal work on cross-culturalvalues at IBM, which probed the dimensions ofindividualism/collectivism, power distance, uncer-tainty avoidance, and masculinity/femininity, wasnot published until 1980, and it was virtually ig-nored empirically in AMJ until the 1990s (e.g., Cox,Lobel, & McLeod, 1991; see Kirkman, Lowe, & Gib-son [in press] for a review of more than two decadesof empirical research incorporating Hofstede’sframework). Similarly, in strategy, John Dunning’s

(1980, 1981, 1988) eclectic paradigm, used by manyinternational strategy researchers to help explaininternational joint venture performance and foreigndirect investment decisions, wasn’t published until1980. Further, Dunning’s paradigm was generallynot incorporated into international research untilhis 1988 publication. We do note that in organiza-tional behavior, Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck’s(1961) work on cultural value dimensions such asindividualism/collectivism appeared much earlier,but since the insights gained from this researchprogram were all generated from several differentcultures within the United States, its application tointernational management research came muchlater (for example, see Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner [1998]).

In spite of the lack of theoretical guidance, the1970s was a fairly active decade of internationalmanagement research in AMJ, with strong spikes ofactivity in 1971, 1973, and 1975. Characteristic ofthe type of research in the 1970s, at least at themicro level, was an article by England and Lee(1971) that posed several research questions (ratherthan specific hypotheses) concerning (1) the simi-larity of the work goals of managers in Japan, Korea,and the United States, and (2) the behavioral ex-pectations that emerged from the differences in per-ceived organizational goals across the countries.Managers in all three countries were administereda personal values questionnaire, which was trans-lated and back-translated for Japan and Korea. Aswas typical of international management researchin the 1970s, individual responses were aggregatedto the country level and then mean differences

FIGURE 1Number of International Publications in AMJ by Year: 1970–2004

378 JuneAcademy of Management Journal

were assessed. However, as was also typical in the1970s, England and Lee did not try to assess theconstruct validity of the questionnaires across cul-tures (Ryan, Chan, Ployhart, & Slade, 1999), did notinclude cultural values to explain mean differencesat the country level (Kirkman, Lowe, & Gibson, inpress), and made little attempt to tie the findings toany theories related to international management.Differences between Japan and the United Stateswere attributed to economic forces driving the Jap-anese economy, and those between Korea and theU.S. were linked to a report from the Korean Busi-nessmen’s Association. Please note that our inter-pretation of this study is not meant as a criticism, aswe are highly aware that theoretical guidance forinternational management research was lacking atthe time of its publication; rather, our intent is toimpart the overall flavor of the type of research thatwas being conducted in the 1970s.

Contrary to our expectations, the 1980s did notsee a strong increase in international managementpublications in AMJ over the 1970s. We find thiscurious, given the rapid rise of foreign competition(mostly from Japan and other Asian countries) inthe late 1970s and 1980s, first in automobiles andthen in electronics. This competition led to theincorporation of a whole host of new managementpractices in North America, including total qualitymanagement, just-in-time inventory practices, andquality circles (Langlois & Steinmueller, 2000).Thus, we expected a fairly constant increase ininternational management research during thesetwo decades as the importance of internationalmanagement increased in the actual businessworld. However, just as practicing managers inNorth America were caught off-guard by interna-tional competition (culminating in the first large-scale wave of downsizing in the late 1980s), per-haps management researchers publishing in AMJwere ill-prepared to tackle issues related to therising importance of international management.The research shortfall we observed may be an ex-ample of academia rushing to catch up with trendsin the business world (Ghoshal, 2005), a type ofeffort many of us know all too well.

Going beyond simply examining mean country-level differences, as researchers in the 1970s did,researchers publishing international managementresearch in the 1980s attempted to compare andvalidate Western nation–based management theo-ries and principles across cultures. For example,Shenkar and Ronen (1987) assessed the generaliz-ability in the People’s Republic of China of threeclassical taxonomies of work goals (Alderfer, 1969;Herzberg, 1966; Maslow, 1954). Using surveys ofChinese managers participating in a management

training program, Shenkar and Ronen used “small-est-space analysis” to compare the cognitive struc-tures of Chinese managers’ work goals to previousassessments of these structures in other countriesof Chinese origin (e.g., Taiwan, Singapore, andHong Kong) and Western nations (e.g., Germany,Canada, the U.K., and the U.S.). As in the 1970s,translation and back-translation were used, but noattempt was made to assess the cross-cultural va-lidity of the work goals survey. Although someoverall similarities between the Chinese managersand those in the Chinese-origin countries werenoted, some key differences in goal structuresacross these countries found in this study calledinto question the generalizability of Western-basedmotivation theories in China. Shenkar and Ronenmade more effort to explain observed differencestheoretically than had 1970s researchers, reasoningthat the differences between the Asian countriescould be attributed to the stronger influence ofMaoist doctrine and collectivist values in mainlandChina, and to the more modern ideologies andeconomies of Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

A sharp increase in the number of internationalpublications in AMJ began in 1995. If the 1980s canbe labeled as an era of cross-cultural comparisonsand validations of management theories and prin-ciples, the 1990s might be characterized as an era ofcross-cultural development of management theo-ries. An increasing number of international publi-cations in AMJ investigated management phenom-ena in specific countries and pushed the frontiersof management theories using observations in dif-ferent countries and cultures. In the 1990s, we alsonotice that while studies testing cross-cultural phe-nomena as systems (e.g., Peterson et al., 1995) orexamining management phenomena in individualcultures (see, e.g, Meznar, Nigh & Kwok, 1994)continued to appear, international studies that fo-cused on testing universal theories but addressedthe effects of individual cultural characteristicssharply increased (e.g., Delios & Henisz, 2000; Xie,1996).

Our review suggests that the first five years of the21st century can be regarded as a sort of golden ageof international management research in AMJ. Inthe latest year of our analysis (2004), there were 25international publications out of a total of 54 (in-cluding research notes). In other words, in 2004, 46percent of the publications in AMJ were interna-tional management publications. This figure differsdramatically from the overall percentage of inter-national management research between 1970 and2004 (14%). Coupled with a dramatic increase ininternational management publications in AMJ inthe first four years of the 21st century (2000–03),

2005 379Kirkman and Law

our findings indicate a real “internationalization ofAMJ” (using Eden & Rynes’s 2003 terminology).Hopefully, avid readers of AMJ and members of theAcademy’s International Management Divisionwill not find this result surprising. Our next ques-tion concerns the general areas of internationalmanagement research published in AMJ between1970 and 2004.

International Content Areas

We were interested in the percentage of interna-tional management research falling into micro (e.g.,organizational behavior) and macro (e.g., strategyand organizational theory) categories. As Rynes(2005) reported, a survey of Editorial Board mem-bers in 2004 revealed that about half were satisfiedwith AMJ’s balance of macro and micro publica-tions. However, among those who were less satis-fied, half believed there should be more attention tomacro research, and the other half believed thereshould be more attention to micro. In a more gen-eral review of AMJ’s history in another “From theEditors,” Schminke and Mitchell (2003) reportedthat over the 20 years prior to their writing, thepercentage of micro topics had generally hoveredbetween 40 and 60 percent, with micro topicssometimes in the majority and sometimes not (seeRynes [2005] for more discussion). Given the

roughly equivalent split between macro and microand the fact that many scholars believe that oneshould receive more attention than the other, wewere interested in how balanced the split was withregard to international management research. Thus,Table 1 shows the percentage of international man-agement articles published in AMJ that were clas-sified as macro (i.e., strategy and organizationaltheory) and micro (i.e., organizational behavior) be-tween 1970 and 2004. As can be seen in Table 1, thesplit between micro (51%) and macro (48%) re-search closely mirrors Schminke and Mitchell’s(2003) overall findings. Thus, our analysis does notsupport claims that AMJ is primarily an outlet formicro (or, conversely, for macro) internationalmanagement research. Scholars should continue tosubmit both types of research without fear that AMJfavors one type over the other. In the coming years,we do not expect either macro or micro interna-tional management research to dominate in AMJ,since international research at both levels can stillbe considered to be in the growth phase (Kirkmanet al., in press). With confidence that both types ofinternational management research have been andwill continue to be published in AMJ, we turnedour examination to the characteristics of the au-thors publishing international AMJ research.

Authorship of International Research

To get a picture of the nationality and gender ofauthors publishing international research in AMJ,we analyzed international article and author char-acteristics from 1970 to 2004. First, Table 2 showsthat over three-fourths of the international manage-ment research articles had two or more authors.This finding is not surprising, given the complexityof international management research and thecross-country collaboration that is characteristic ofresearch of this type.

Next, Tables 3 and 4 respectively show the num-ber of North American and non–North Americanauthors on AMJ international research publica-

TABLE 1AMJ International Management Articles Classified as Macro or Micro

Research Topic Before 1989 1990–99 After 2000 Total

Micro/organization behavior 41 (61%) 46 (53%) 50 (43%) 137 (51%)Organization theory 14 (21%) 3 (3%) 8 (7%) 25 (9%)Strategy 12 (18%) 35 (41%) 58 (50%) 105 (39%)Methodology 0 (0%) 2 (2%) 0 (0%) 2 (1%)

Total 67 86 116 269

TABLE 2Number of Authors for AMJ International

Management Articles

Authors Before 1989 1990–99 After 2000 Total

1 27 (40%) 17 (20%) 20 (17%) 64 (24%)2 24 (36%) 36 (42%) 45 (39%) 105 (39%)3 11 (16%) 24 (28%) 36 (31%) 71 (26%)4 5 (7%) 7 (8%) 11 (9%) 23 (9%)5 or more 0 (0%) 2 (2%) 4 (4%) 6 (2%)

Total 67 86 116 269


tions. Table 3 shows that a little under one-third ofthe 269 studies were published without any NorthAmerican authors, clearly demonstrating a strongpresence of non–North American authorship. Table4 shows that roughly the same percentage of these269 articles did not have any non–North Americanauthors. These latter studies are best characterizedas articles by North Americans either addressingcross-cultural issues or using samples from outsideNorth America. Taken together, the tables showthat the remaining third of the articles had bothNorth American and non–North American authors.In almost half of these mixed authorship works, thefirst author was not North American, demonstrat-ing a nice balance between North American andnon–North American research leadership. Of the188 studies with both North American and non-North American authors (188 � 269 � 81, where 81is the number of articles without any non–NorthAmerican authors), almost two-thirds have onenon–North American author, 22 percent have two,and about 9 percent have three non–North Ameri-can authors. These tables demonstrate that AMJ isnot simply an outlet for North American research-

ers conducting management research in NorthAmerica. Instead, AMJ publishes a wide variety ofarticles submitted by non–North American authors,employing samples collected outside North Amer-ica, or studying cross-cultural issues.

Our next question concerned the countries oforigin of the non–North Americans publishing inAMJ (see Table 5). Table 5 shows that the UnitedKingdom, the Netherlands, and Israel are the threecountries with the largest numbers of non–NorthAmerican scholars publishing in AMJ over the last35 years (again, we counted only the first two au-

TABLE 3North Americans Publishing International

Management Articles in AMJ

NorthAmericanAuthors

Before1989 1990–99

After2000 Total

0 20 (30%) 29 (34%) 31 (27%) 80 (30%)1 26 (39%) 22 (26%) 39 (34%) 87 (32%)2 14 (21%) 22 (26%) 24 (21%) 60 (22%)3 6 (9%) 11 (13%) 16 (14%) 33 (12%)4 or more 1 (1%) 2 (2%) 6 (5%) 9 (4%)

Total 67 86 116 269

TABLE 4Non–North Americans Publishing International

Management Articles in AMJ

Non–NorthAmericanAuthors

Before1989 1990–99

After2000 Total

0 31 (46%) 21 (24%) 29 (25%) 81 (30%)1 24 (36%) 40 (47%) 58 (50%) 122 (45%)2 9 (13%) 12 (14%) 21 (18%) 42 (16%)3 2 (3%) 8 (9%) 6 (5%) 16 (6%)4 or more 1 (1%) 6 (6%) 2 (2%) 8 (3%)

Total 67 86 116 269

TABLE 5Nationalities of Non–North Americans Publishing

in AMJ

AuthorNationality Before 1989 1990–99 After 2000 Total

EuropeU.K. 14 19 13 46Netherlands 0 13 22 35France 1 1 8 10Italy 0 5 6 11Belgium 0 2 1 3Norway 1 0 2 3Spain 0 0 3 3Sweden 0 1 2 3Switzerland 0 0 3 3Germany 1 1 0 2Finland 0 0 1 1Romania 0 0 1 1Slovenia 0 0 1 1Subtotal 17 42 63 122

Asia PacificHong Kong 0 7 14 21Australia 5 9 8 22Korea 2 4 9 15Singapore 0 4 11 15Japan 2 3 2 7New Zealand 2 0 1 3Taiwan 0 0 2 2China 0 0 1 1India 1 0 0 1Thailand 0 1 0 1Subtotal 12 28 48 88

Other CountriesIsrael 16 14 3 33Saudi Arabia 1 0 0 1South Africa 1 1 0 2Brazil 0 0 1 1Costa Rica 0 1 0 1Nigeria 1 0 0 1Subtotal 19 16 4 39

Total 48 86 115 249


thors of any study). With regard to Western Europe,the Netherlands, Italy, and France have the stron-gest representation. Within the Asia-Pacific region,Hong Kong, Australia, Korea, Singapore, and Japanare the best represented. In spite of the rapid eco-nomic industrialization of the People’s Republic ofChina and India, only one author each representsthem. From the Middle East, Israel is dispropor-tionately represented, with almost no other countryfrom this region having a contributing author(Saudi Arabia is an exception, with one). Otherregions that are conspicuously underrepresentedare Latin/South America (Costa Rica and Brazilhave one author each), Africa (South Africa has twoauthors, Nigeria has one), and Eastern Europe (Ro-mania and Slovenia have one author each).

Our last question with regard to non–NorthAmerican scholars concerns the gender breakdownof authorship (see Table 6). Overall, slightly morethan 80 percent of the non–North American au-thors published between 1970 and 2004 were men.However, there are some differences with regard togender over time. Whereas before 1989 only 8 per-cent of the non–North American authors werewomen, in the 1990s, the percentage of femalenon–North American authors increased to 20 per-cent. However, since 2000, this number has in-creased further by only 3 percent. Clearly, moreneeds to be done to encourage women in non–North American countries to submit their researchto AMJ.

Article Characteristics

The last objective of our review was to determinespecific characteristics of the international articles

published in AMJ between 1970 and 2004. We an-alyzed the 269 international publications to deter-mine the countries sampled, levels of analysis, andresearch methodologies.

Table 7 shows that almost two-thirds of the 269studies involved collecting data from countries out-side North America. Table 8 shows the countrybreakdown.

For administrative convenience in preparing thedatabase, we only counted the first three countriessampled in each study because over 90 percent ofthe studies had three or fewer samples. Out of thetotal of 221 non–North American countries sam-pled, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the Nether-lands were the three most common places for datacollection. Slightly over two-thirds of the interna-tional management articles involved only a single-country sample, and around a quarter of the articlesinvolved multiple samples. The most extensivestudy consisted of data from 52 countries (VanVianen, De Pater, Kristof-Brown, & Johnson, 2004).The top 15 non–North American countries sampledare primarily in Asia (Japan, Korea, China, andHong Kong), Western Europe (the U.K., the Nether-lands, France, Germany, Belgium, and Finland),the Middle East (Israel), Latin America (Mexico),and Eastern Europe (Russia); Australia is also in thetop 15. As in the authorship analysis, conspicu-ously absent are South America and Africa.

Going beyond the more general macro/microbreakdown, Table 9 shows the breakdown of thearticles by level of analysis. Note that the totalfrequency is greater than 269 articles because somestudies involved multilevel research. Table 9 re-flects the almost even split between micro (i.e.,individual and group levels) and macro (i.e., organ-ization, industry, and country) work that we dis-cussed earlier. However, within micro studies, theindividual level of analysis dominated almost four-to-one over the group level. Use of the organization-al level of analysis increased slightly (from 26 to 40percent from before 1989 to after 2000), and a cor-responding decrease in the individual level of anal-ysis was seen. Regarding the macro side, the organ-

TABLE 6Genders of Non–North Americans Publishing in

AMJ

Authors Before 1989 1990–99 After 2000 Total

Men 43 (92%) 70 (80%) 89 (77%) 202 (81%)Women 4 (8%) 18 (20%) 26 (23%) 48 (19%)

Total 47 88 115 250

TABLE 7Sample Sources for AMJ International Management Articles

Sample From Before 1989 1990–99 After 2000 Total

Inside North America 22 (33%) 35 (41%) 27 (23%) 84 (31%)Outside North America 45 (67%) 46 (53%) 84 (72%) 175 (65%)Information not available 0 (0%) 5 (6%) 5 (4%) 10 (4%)

Total 67 86 116 269


izational level dominated over the industry andcountry levels in AMJ.

Our final point of interest concerns the researchmethodologies used in international managementarticles published in AMJ. Table 10 shows thebreakdown of these articles by research method(i.e., survey, archival, interview, experiment, andsimulation). Note that again the total frequency isgreater than 269 articles because some studies in-volved multiple methods. As can be seen in Table10, the dominant methodologies used were surveyand archival research, with interview research alsoplaying a modest role. Experiments and simula-tions were rare. The strong use of archival data canmost likely be attributed to the inclusion of culturaldistance measures using Kogut and Singh’s (1988)index, which compares countries’ scores on cul-tural values as measured with Hofstede’s (1980)country scores (see Kirkman et al. [in press] for areview). Earlier we noted that international re-searchers often translated and back-translated thesurveys used in the 1970s and 1980s to increaseaccuracy but rarely cross-validated them in differ-ent countries with such techniques as cross-cul-tural confirmatory analyses (see Lytle, Brett, Bars-ness, Tinsley, & Janssens, 1995). This situation didnot change much in the 1990s and early 2000s. Infact, researchers conducted cross-cultural valida-tion of measures in only 8 of the 269 internationalmanagement articles published in AMJ.

Implications

Taken as a whole, our analysis of the last 35 yearsof international management research at AMJ leadsus to draw several positive conclusions. First, in-ternational management is alive and well at AMJ. Inour view, this journal has made a successful tran-sition from being primarily North American in fo-cus to being a truly international journal—one with(1) many authors who are international scholars, (2)many samples collected outside North America,and/or (3) many topics related to international orcross-cultural management. This transition is evi-denced by the dramatic increase in internationalmanagement research in the 1990s (particularlysince 1995) and the continuing growth in this typeof research in the first half-decade of the 21st cen-tury. Our review also demonstrates a good balanceof different kinds of international management re-search in AMJ that includes authors from universi-ties in 29 different countries, data collected from 44different countries, a remarkably even split be-tween macro and micro international research, agood mix of different levels of analysis across

TABLE 8Countries Sampled in AMJ International

Management Articles

SampleNationality Before 1989 1990–99 After 2000 Total

EuropeU.K. 9 9 6 24Netherlands 0 5 12 17France 5 1 2 8Belgium 2 1 4 7Germany 3 1 3 7Finland 0 3 2 5Norway 1 1 1 3Italy 1 0 2 3Austria 1 0 1 2Europe 0 0 2 2Switzerland 1 0 1 2Scandinavia 1 0 0 1Romania 0 0 1 1Poland 0 0 1 1Bulgaria 0 0 1 1Denmark 0 0 1 1Greece 1 0 0 1Hungary 0 1 0 1Slovenia 0 0 1 1Spain 0 0 1 1Sweden 0 0 1 1Turkey 0 0 1 1Belarus 0 0 1 1Czech Republic 0 0 1 1Yugoslavia 1 0 0 1Ukraine 0 0 1 1Europe 0 1 0 1Central Europe 1 0 0 1 97

Asia-PacificJapan 9 9 16 33Australia 3 5 5 13China 1 5 8 14Korea 5 1 6 12Hong Kong 0 1 4 5India 4 0 0 4New Zealand 1 0 2 3Indonesia 0 1 1 2Singapore 0 1 1 2Japan 0 0 1 1Pakistan 0 0 1 1Thailand 0 0 1 1 91

OtherIsrael 4 6 2 12Mexico 5 0 5 10Russia 0 1 3 4Brazil 0 2 2 4Argentina 1 2 0 3Chile 1 0 2 3Croatia 0 0 1 1 37

Total 62 57 106 225 225


macro and micro, and a wide variety of differentresearch methodologies.

Despite these encouraging findings, the interna-tional management research published in AMJ overthe last 35 years also has some significant limita-tions. First, as is the case with management re-search in general, scholars publishing in interna-tional management are primarily from NorthAmerica, Western Europe, Israel, Asia, and Austra-lia. Relatively few articles were by authors in East-ern Europe, Africa, Latin/South America, or theMiddle East, even when their subject matter dealtwith these regions. In their review of internationalmanagement research from January 2001 to August2003, Eden and Rynes (2003) also noted that therewere fewer submissions from these countries aswell. However, that does not excuse those of uswho work for (and care about) AMJ from the chal-lenge of increasing international management re-search from underrepresented countries.

If AMJ’s team wants our publication to remainone of the leading international management jour-nals (and we do), we must make a concerted effortat national, regional, and international meetings tocreate an inclusive dialogue with authors fromthese regions in order to encourage and influencethe submission of new papers. As international re-searchers ourselves, the current authors certainlyencourage authors from these underrepresentedcountries to call on us for assistance, guidance, andsupport in the submission and publication process.And, as Sara Rynes stated, “Editorial team mem-bers are willing to represent AMJ at internationalvenues to the greatest extent possible, so pleasedon’t hesitate to ask us to come” (2005: 14). We alsoencourage authors pursuing international manage-ment research from those countries that are wellrepresented in AMJ to build partnerships with re-searchers from less-represented countries, as thereis a great deal to be gained from these cross-countrycollaborations (Pearce, 1999).

Related to the underrepresentation of authorsfrom certain regions of the world is the lack of

research conducted using data from these regions.While the situation is not as dire as that of authornationality (AMJ articles reported on samples fromAsia, Western Europe, Israel, Latin America, andEastern Europe), the lack of rigorous empirical re-search from South America and Africa in AMJ isdisheartening. AMJ’s Special Research Forum onEmerging Economies (June 2000) was one step inthe right direction for ensuring that research getsconducted in underrepresented regions of the world.

Another concern our review raised is the skewedgender composition of non–North American schol-ars publishing in AMJ. Although gender balanceamong international researchers increased in eachdecade, the lack of gender diversity is still an areaof concern. There is no simple solution to thisissue, but we do hope the trend over time can betaken as an encouraging sign. Again, research part-nerships may also play a role in increasing thenumber of women carrying out international man-agement research.

There are also limitations with regard to level ofanalysis and research methodology. Macro and mi-cro investigations were relatively balanced, yetwithin the micro research individual-level analysisdominated over the group level. Although perhapsnot surprising overall, the favoring of the individ-ual level comes as a bit of a surprise, given thedramatic rise in the interest in teams worldwideover the last 20 years. This imbalance seems curi-ous, not just because of the increased interest inteamwork, but also because researchers often exam-ine the cultures of other “collectives” such as or-ganizations and countries. Since groups are by theirvery nature collectives, the absence of more inter-national management research at the group levelshould concern researchers interested in this area(see Kirkman et al. [in press] for a more compre-hensive review of group-level international man-agement research).

Within the macro area, research at the organiza-tion level has dominated that at both the industryand country levels. Certainly, sufficient sample

TABLE 9Levels of Analysis in AMJ International Management Articles

Level ofAnalysis Before 1989 1990–99 After 2000 Total

Individual 36 (53%) 29 (33%) 47 (34%) 112 (38%)Group 2 (3%) 11 (13%) 14 (10%) 27 (9%)Organization 18 (26%) 39 (44%) 55 (40%) 112 (38%)Industry 1 (1%) 3 (3%) 8 (6%) 12 (4%)Country 11 (16%) 6 (7%) 13 (9%) 30 (11%)

Total 68 88 137 293


sizes for industry- and country-level studies aredifficult to obtain; however, the dearth of interna-tional management research at these levels shouldagain concern researchers hoping to advance inter-national understanding.

Regarding research methodology, survey, archi-val, and interview methods dominated over exper-iments and simulations. The finding of greatestconcern, however, is that so few researchers whoused survey-based methods rigorously validatedtheir measures across the cultures in their studies.Translation and back-translation are simply notenough. Solid international survey-based researchmust ensure that constructs have the same meaningacross cultures by, for example, demonstrating ahighly similar underlying factor structure in eachculture (Lytle et al., 1995). Both authors and re-viewers should address this severe weakness ofthe international management research pub-lished in AMJ.

Conclusion

We hope that our review of the internationalmanagement literature published in AMJ over thelast 35 years has been both comforting and thoughtprovoking. We take pride in the fact that our reviewdemonstrates a real internationalization of AMJover this time period. International managementresearch has been incorporated into AMJ, and theoverall strength of the journal (as judged by journalrankings) has increased significantly over time aswell. We thank all of the past editors, associateeditors, reviewers, authors, and staff members whohave been such great stewards of this transition,and we hope to continue the strong traditions theyhave started.

However, our review also shows that there ismore to be done. The internationalization of AMJhas been selective, including mostly male authorsand data from only certain parts of the world. In-clusiveness and the unfettered advancement of

knowledge are the hallmarks of the Academy ofManagement and its journals. Everyone involvedwith AMJ must make a concerted effort to makeinclusiveness a reality for our colleagues in everyregion of the world. Thus, it is a key mission tocontinue in the direction of being a multidisci-plinary, multicultural, highly respected journalthat publishes articles using a variety of methodol-ogies and levels of analysis to further understand-ing of international management in a changingglobal environment.

Brad Kirkman and Kenny LawCollege Station, Texas, and Hong Kong

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Dunning, J. H. 1981. International production and themultinational enterprise. London: Allen & Unwin.

Dunning, J. H. 1988. The eclectic paradigm of interna-tional production: A restatement and some possibleextensions. Journal of International Business Stud-ies, 19: 1–31.

Eden, D., & Rynes, S. 2003. Publishing across borders:Furthering the internationalization of AMJ. Acad-emy of Management Journal, 46: 679–683.

England, G. W., & Lee, R. 1971. Organizational goals andexpected behavior among American, Japanese and

TABLE 10Research Methodologies for AMJ International Management Articles

ResearchMethodology Before 1989 1990–99 After 2000 Total

Survey 48 (48%) 32 (36%) 55 (40%) 135 (42%)Archival 18 (18%) 34 (38%) 51 (38%) 103 (32%)Interview 27 (27%) 13 (15%) 23 (17%) 63 (19%)Experiment 6 (6%) 7 (8%) 6 (4%) 19 (6%)Simulation 0 (0%) 3 (3%) 1 (1%) 4 (1%)

Total 99 89 136 324


Korean managers—A comparative study. Academyof Management Journal, 14: 425–438.

Ghoshal, S. 2005. Bad management theories are destroy-ing good management practices. Academy of Man-agement Learning & Education, 4: 75–91.

Herzberg, F. 1966. Work and the nature of man. Cleve-land: World Publishing.

Hofstede, G. 1980. Culture’s consequences: Interna-tional differences in work-related values. BeverlyHills, CA: Sage.

Kirkman, B. L., Lowe, K. B., & Gibson, C. B. In press. Aquarter century of Culture’s Consequences: A reviewof empirical research incorporating Hofstede’s cul-tural values framework. Journal of InternationalBusiness Studies.

Kluckhohn, F., & Strodtbeck, F. L. 1961. Variations invalue orientations. Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson.

Kogut, B., & Singh, H. 1988. The effect of national cultureon the choice of entry mode. Journal of Interna-tional Business Studies, 19: 411–432.

Langlois, R. N., & Steinmueller, W. E. 2000. Strategy andcircumstance: The response of American firms to Jap-anese competition in semiconductors, 1980–1995.Strategic Management Journal, 21: 1163–1173.

Lytle, A. L., Brett, J. M., Barsness, Z. I., Tinsley, C. H., &Janssens, M. 1995. A paradigm for confirmatorycross-cultural research in organizational behavior. InB. Staw & L. Cummings (Eds.), Research in organ-izational behavior, vol. 17: 167–214. Greenwich,CT: JAI Press.

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Meznar, M. B., Nigh, D., & Kwok, C. C. Y. 1994. Effect ofannouncements of withdrawal from South Africa on

stockholder wealth. Academy of Management Jour-nal, 37: 1633–1648.

Pearce, J. 1999. A conversation on writing in English bynon-native speakers. In A. S. Huff (Ed.), Writing forscholarly publication: 143–154. Thousand Oaks,CA: Sage.

Peterson, M. F., Smith, P. B., Akande, A., Ayestaran, S.,et al. 1995. Role conflict, ambiguity, and overload: A21-nation study. Academy of Management Journal,38: 429–452.

Ryan, A. M., Chan, D., Ployhart, R. E., & Slade, L. A. 1999.Employee attitude surveys in a multinational organ-ization: Considering language and culture in assess-ing measurement equivalence. Personnel Psychol-ogy, 52: 37–58.

Rynes, S. 2005. Taking stock and looking ahead. Acad-emy of Management Journal, 48: 9–15.

Schminke, M., & Mitchell, M. 2003. In the beginning.Academy of Management Journal, 46: 279–282.

Shenkar, O., & Ronen, S. 1987. Structure and importanceof work goals among managers in the People’s Re-public of China. Academy of Management Journal,30: 564–576.

Trompenaars, F., & Hampden-Turner, C. 1998. Ridingthe waves of culture: Understanding cultural di-versity in global business (2nd ed.). New York:McGraw-Hill.

Van Vianen, A. E. M., De Pater, I. E., Kristof-Brown, A. L., &Johnson, E. C. 2004. Fitting in: Surface- and deep-levelcultural differences and expatriates’ adjustment. Acad-emy of Management Journal, 47: 697–709.

Xie, J. L. 1996. Karasek’s model in the People’s Republicof China: Effects of job demands, control, and indi-vidual differences. Academy of Management Jour-nal, 39: 1594–1618.


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FROM THE EDITORS - Academy of Management · FROM THE EDITORS International Management Research in AMJ: Our Past, Present, and Future In the December 2003 issue of the Academy of Management