Journal of General Management
Journal of General Management is quarterly peer reviewed journal, with a mission. The mission of the Journal of General Management is to provide thought leadership by publishing articles on managerial practices with organisation-wide or cross-functional implications. We seek original theoretical and practical insights into general management in all types of organisations.
We are global in orientation and welcome submissions rooted in empirical research or novel business solutions in all fields related to general management including (but not restricted to): strategy, leadership, corporate governance, international business, decision-making, change management and corporate social responsibility. We also seek articles written from a functional perspective such as finance, marketing or supply chain management, provided these demonstrate links to cross-functional and general management topics. We aim to increase the relevance of developments in individual disciplines for general managers. The journal seeks to advance knowledge as to the multi-disciplinary nature of management and fulfil three objectives:
1. To help top managers understand the salient economic, social, political and technological issues that affect the success of their organisation, and their abilities to act;
2. To keep senior executives up-to-date with new developments in the theory and practice of general management;
3. To foster new thinking, research, and the exchange of experience between academics and policy-makers across the world.
We consider papers that build or expand general management theory as well as research that tests theories. In particular, we invite papers dealing with current management debates and cutting-edge business solutions. The journal is open to research based in conventional as well as emerging quantitative and qualitative methodologies.
A Brief History of JGM
Professors Keith MacMillan and Bernard Taylor founded the Journal of Business Policy - forebear to the Journal of General Management - in 1970. Their aim was to provide a focus for the study and research of the function and responsibilities of top management. The occasion for the journal's founding was an International Seminar on Teaching and Research in Business Policy held at the University of Bradford. Taylor and MacMillan also edited a book with the title Business Policy: Teaching and Research (New York: Wiley, 1973).
In 1972 both men moved from Bradford University to Henley Management College (now the Henley Business School, University of Reading). Henley was known for its focus on General Management and, in order to broaden the Journal's appeal to practicing managers, the journal's name was changed from Business Policy to the Journal of General Management.
The focus, which had begun with an exclusive emphasis on 'the function and responsibilities of top management', was broadened to include a wide range of topics pertinent to the pursuit of managerial excellence - the journal has catered to the modern manager's need to be knowledgeable in a wide range of fields, flexible and virtuosic so as to have the agility to switch easily between handling matters as diverse as strategy, reputation, finance, and HRM. The excellent general manager must, to borrow a metaphor from a JGM article (Remenyi, Grant, Pather, 2005), be able to change colours with the same ease as a chameleon alters its skin.
JGM is therefore aimed at the practitioner or researcher who appreciates the importance of research with practical implications, global reach, and a broad vision of the general manager's complex role.
The Journal's Contribution
The JGM has helped to focus the attention of executives, consultants, teachers and researches on Leadership, decision making and organisational change at the top of businesses and other organisations. Over the years, articles have focussed on themes such as:
· Identifying and building on business strengths and core competences.
· Generating new businesses through entrepreneurship and innovation
· Developing co-operative strategies through alliances and Joint Ventures
· Corporate Governance and Board Leadership at the top of the organisation, e.g. how non-executive directors create value.
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
Henley Manager Update
Henley Manager Update was founded by Professor Keith MacMillan in 1988, and was a quarterly guide for practitioner managers, business school teachers or researchers interested in keeping abreast of the research developments across key areas of management science. The journal ceased publication in 2008, though backfile remains available here http://journals.sagepub.com/home/hmx.
To enquire about receiving books for review, please contact reviews@sagepub.co.uk.
Journal of General Management is quarterly peer reviewed journal, with a mission to provide thought leadership by publishing articles on managerial practices with organisation-wide or cross-functional implications. We seek original theoretical and practical insights into general management in all types of organisations.
| Teck Yong Eng | University of Reading Malaysia, Malaysia |
| Keith MacMillan | University of Reading, UK |
| Bernard Taylor | University of Reading, UK |
| John Balmer | Brunel Business School, UK |
| Cordula Barzantny | Toulouse Business School, France |
| Ariane Berthoin Antal | Technical University Berlin, Germany |
| Daniel Borgia | University of Idaho, USA |
| Joseph L. Bower | Harvard University, USA |
| Jacob Brix | Aalborg University, Denmark |
| Stephen Chen | University of Newcastle, Australia |
| Steve Downing | University of Reading, UK |
| Stephen Drew | American University of Sharjah, UAE |
| Thomas A. Hemphill | University of Michigan-Flint, School of Management, USA |
| Dr Yingying Huang | Harbin Institute of Technology, China |
| Vivien Jancenelle | Texas A&M University, Central Texas, USA |
| Rhona Johnsen | Audencia Business School,France |
| Destan Kandemir | Bilkent University, Turkey |
| Gang Kou | Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, China |
| Caleb Kwong | University of Essex, UK |
| Zhiqiang Liu | Huazhong University of Science and Technology of China, China |
| Dr. Humera Manzoor | Kohat University of Science and Technology, Pakistan |
| David C. McConville | National Sun Yat-sen University |
| Grant Michelson | Macquarie University, Australia |
| Georgios Panos | University of Glasgow, UK |
| Seejeen Park | Kwangwoon University, South Korea |
| Yuliya Ponomareva | Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain |
| Philip Sadler | Ashridge Management College, UK |
| Avo Schönbohm | Berlin School of Economics and Law (BSEL), Germany |
| Hua Song | Renmin Business School, Renmin University of China, China |
| Chelsea Wu | University of Reading, Malaysia |
| Qingsheng Wu | Shanghai-Jiao Tong University, China |
| Sunny Yang | National Taiwan University, ROC |
| Laurence Yuen | Windermoore Consultancy Limited, Hong Kong PRC |
| Fang Zhou | Edith Cowan University, Australia |
Manuscript Submission Guidelines: Journal of General Management
This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics
Please read the guidelines below then visit the Journal’s submission site http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/gem to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Journal of General Management will be reviewed.
There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this Journal. Open Access options are available - see section 3.3 below.
As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere. Please see our guidelines on prior publication and note that Journal of General Management may accept submissions of papers that have been posted on pre-print servers; please alert the Editorial Office when submitting (contact details are at the end of these guidelines) and include the DOI for the preprint in the designated field in the manuscript submission system. Authors should not post an updated version of their paper on the preprint server while it is being peer reviewed for possible publication in the journal. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the journal's author archiving policy.
If your paper is accepted, you must include a link on your preprint to the final version of your paper.
- What do we publish?
1.1 Aims & Scope
1.2 Article types
1.3 Writing your paper - Editorial policies
2.1 Peer review policy
2.2 Authorship
2.3 Acknowledgements
2.4 Declaration of conflicting interests
2.5 Research Data - Publishing policies
3.1 Publication ethics
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
3.3 Open access and author archiving - Preparing your manuscript
4.1 Formatting
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
4.3 Supplemental material
4.4 Reference style
4.5 English language editing services - Submitting your manuscript
5.1 ORCID
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
5.3 Permissions - On acceptance and publication
6.1 SAGE Production
6.2 Online First publication
6.3 Access to your published article
6.4 Promoting your article - Further information
Before submitting your manuscript to Journal of General Management, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.
Journal of General Management is a journal of cross-functional research. It publishes thoroughly-researched articles on all areas of management science. Quantitative, qualitative and conceptual papers are all accepted. The normal length of an article is 4,000 to 6,000 words, but both longer and shorter articles can be accepted. A synopsis of not more than 100 words must also be enclosed.
The SAGE Author Gateway has some general advice and on how to get published, plus links to further resources. SAGE Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance their article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.
1.3.1 Make your article discoverable
When writing up your paper, think about how you can make it discoverable. The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article through search engines such as Google. For information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords, have a look at this page on the Gateway: How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online
Authors are expected to abide by ethical standards of academia: work must be original, not published elsewhere in the same format, and manuscripts must be fully referenced. Only manuscripts written in English will be accepted. If relevant, authors must state clearly in what way their research has already been made public. Authors are responsible for ensuring that their work meets scholarly standards of referencing, and that full acknowledgement is given to sources.
The Journal of General Management adheres to a double-anonymize peer review policy. For the administration of the double-anonymize peer review, articles need to provide details of all contributing authors in such a way as to allow these details to be removed and placed in a separate file. Authors submitting PDFs of their research should therefore include their biographical details in a separate PDF file to the manuscript file.
All parties who have made a substantive contribution to the article should be listed as authors. Principal authorship, authorship order, and other publication credits should be based on the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their status. A student is usually listed as principal author on any multiple-authored publication that substantially derives from the student’s dissertation or thesis.
Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.
Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.
2.3.1 Third party submissions
Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:
- Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input
- Identify any entities that paid for this assistance
- Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc.
Where appropriate, SAGE reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.
2.4 Declaration of conflicting interests
Journal of General Management encourages authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests and recommends you review the good practice guidelines on the SAGE Journal Author Gateway
The journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the SAGE Research Data policy pages.
Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:
- share your research data in a relevant public data repository
- include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
- cite this data in your research
SAGE is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the SAGE Author Gateway
3.1.1 Plagiarism
Journal of General Management and SAGE take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.
3.1.2 Prior publication
If material has been previously published it is not generally acceptable for publication in a SAGE journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the SAGE Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
Before publication, SAGE requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. SAGE’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants SAGE the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than SAGE. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit the SAGE Author Gateway
3.3 Open access and author archiving
Journal of General Management offers optional open access publishing via the Sage Choice programme and Open Access agreements, where authors can publish open access either discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement with Sage. Find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. For more information on Open Access publishing options at Sage please visit Sage Open Access. For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines and Publishing Policies.
4. Preparing your manuscript for submission
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. Word and (La)Tex templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit SAGE’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines
Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For specifically requested colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from SAGE after receipt of your accepted article.
This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files
Journal of General Management adheres to the SAGE Harvard reference style. View the SAGE Harvard guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.
If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the SAGE Harvard EndNote output file.
4.5 English language editing services
Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using SAGE Language Services. Visit SAGE Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.
Journal of General Management is hosted on SAGE Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/gem to login and submit your article online.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.
As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process SAGE is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.
The collection of ORCID IDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this journal. If you already have an ORCID ID you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID ID will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID ID is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.
If you do not already have an ORCID ID please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.
5.2 Information required for completing yoru submission
You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. The affiliation listed in the manuscript should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a manuscript note at the end of the paper. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the SAGE Author Gateway
6. On acceptance and publication
Your SAGE Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be sent by PDF to the corresponding author via our editing portal SAGE Edit or by email, and corrections should be made directly or notified to us promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.
Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the SAGE Journals help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.
6.3 Access to your published article
SAGE provides authors with online access to their final article.
Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The SAGE Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the editorial office as follows:
Teck Yong Eng: journalofgeneralmanagement@gmail.com
To enquire about receiving books for review, please contact reviews@sagepub.co.uk.