Metamorphosis
A Journal of Management ResearchCALL FOR PAPERS
Metamorphosis- A Journal of Management Research, is a bi-annual, peer-reviewed international journal published by Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow and is dedicated to promoting the understanding of management among academics and practitioners through empirical investigation, theoretical analysis, and exchange of thoughts by rigor and relevance.
Metamorphosis- A Journal of Management Research adheres to a rigorous double-blind reviewing policy in which the identity of both the reviewer and author are concealed from both parties.
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Metamorphosis- A Journal of Management Research, is a bi-annual, peer-reviewed international journal published by Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow and is dedicated to promoting the understanding of management among academics and practitioners through empirical investigation, theoretical analysis, and exchange of thoughts by rigor and relevance.
Metamorphosis- A Journal of Management Research adheres to a rigorous double-blind reviewing policy in which the identity of both the reviewer and author are concealed from both parties.
| Shailendra Singh | Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow, India |
| Vikas Kumar | Head of International Business discipline and Director EMIRG, University of Sydney, Australia |
| Krishnan Dandapani | Florida International University, USA |
| Sankarshan Basu | IIM Bangalore, India |
| S S Yadav | IIT Delhi, India |
| Moutusy Maity | IIM Lucknow, India |
| Sonia Singh | IIM Lucknow, India |
| Chandan Sharma | IIM Lucknow, India |
| Ashutosh Kumar Sinha | IIM Lucknow, India |
| Indranil Biswas | NEOMA Business School, France |
| S G Deshmukh | Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India |
| Vishwanath V Baba | DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, Canada |
| Basudeb Biswas | College Dean & Professor at Far East University, Korea |
| Sankalp Chaturvedi | Imperial College Business School,UK |
| Shamsud D Chowdhury | Rowe School of Business, Dalhousie University, Canada |
| Ajai Gaur | Rutgers Business School, Rutgers University, USA |
| Vijay R Kannan | Jon M. Huntsman School of Business, Utah State University, USA |
| Aneel Karnani | Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, USA |
| Kulwant S Pawar | University of Nottingham, UK |
| Pankaj Setia | Founding Chair, Centre for Digital Transformation and Professor at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, India |
| Archana Shukla | Director, Indian Institute of Management Lucknow, India |
| Shirish C Srivastava | HEC, Paris, Jouy en Josas Cedex, France |
| Manoj Kumar Tiwari | Director at National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai, India |
| Kaoru Tone | National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Japan |
| Prem Vrat | The NorthCap University, Gurgaon, India |
| Saumya Pandey | IIM Lucknow, India |
| M K Singh | IIM Lucknow, India |
Metamorphosis
This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics
Metamorphosis is hosted on Sage Peer Review, a web-based online submission and peer review system. Please read the Manuscript Submission Guidelines below, and then visit https://peerreview.sagepub.com/met to login and submit your article online. Remember you can log in to the submission site at any time to check on the progress of your paper through the peer review process.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Metamorphosis 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 note that Metamorphosis does not accept submissions of papers that have been posted on preprint servers.
If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journal Solutions Portal.
1.1 Aims & Scope
1.2 Article types
1.3 Writing your paper
2.1 Peer review policy
2.2 Authorship
2.3 Acknowledgements
2.4 Funding
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
2.6 Research data
3.1 Publication ethics
3.2 Contributor’s publishing agreement
3.3 Open access and author archiving
4.1 Formatting
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
4.3 Supplementary material
4.4 Reference style
5.1 ORCID
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
5.3 Permissions
6. 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
Before submitting your manuscript to Metamorphosis, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.
Metamorphosis is published biannually by the Indian Institute of Management Lucknow. All the papers in this journal can be submitted online via https://peerreview.sagepub.com/met. We encourage authors to consider case studies, participant observations, and other research approaches that help to shed light on strategies, structures, systems and processes that are currently evolving, or might prove useful in the days to come. Metamorphosis don’t have any scope for “commentary manuscript”.
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
Sage does not permit the use of author-suggested (recommended) reviewers at any stage of the submission process, be that through the web-based submission system or other communication. Reviewers should be experts in their fields and should be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. Our policy is that reviewers should not be assigned to a paper if:
• The reviewer is based at the same institution as any of the co-authors
• The reviewer is based at the funding body of the paper
• The author has recommended the reviewer
• The reviewer has provided a personal (e.g. Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail) email account and an institutional email account cannot be found after performing a basic Google search (name, department and institution).
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.
If the named authors for a manuscript change at any point between submission and acceptance, an Authorship Change Form must be completed and digitally signed by all authors (including any added or removed) . An addition of an author is only permitted following feedback raised during peer review. Completed forms can be uploaded at Revision Submission stage or emailed to the Journal Editorial Office contact (listed on the journal’s manuscript submission guidelines). All requests will be moderated by the Editor and/or Sage staff.
Important: Changes to the author by-line by adding or deleting authors are NOT permitted following acceptance of a paper.
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 Writing assistance
Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance. It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.
Metamorphosis requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
Metaphorsis 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
Metamorphosis 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 plagiarized 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
Metamorphosis 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.
All papers for the submission to Metamorphosis should fulfil the following basic requirements:
- Must be in English.
- Must be written in a clear, concise and straightforward manner.
- The language should be so simple, precise and cohesive that the readers can absorb even the complex ideas very clearly.
- Vigorous, direct, clear and concise communication should be the main focus of all articles.
- Too many jargons and technical terms must be avoided.
- There should not be any compromise with rigorous analysis.
- An ideal article would be the one that is both rigorous and practical, which can achieve greatest possible impact on managerial practice.
- The authors must avoid terms or usages, which may be considered denigrating to ethnic or other groups.
- The contents of the manuscripts should not be pre-published and are not even under consideration elsewhere. However, the presentation of a paper at a professional meeting will not disqualify it from consideration.
- We encourage our authors to get their papers reviewed by their peers and professional colleagues before they submit those for a formal review.
- Once submitted to Metamorphosis, until our review process is complete, the authors will not send their papers for consideration to any other journal or magazine.
- Submission automatically implies the transfer of copyright of the paper/case study to the journal.
Submit the manuscript making sure the following:
- All the pages must be numbered.
- The manuscript must be printed in 12-point font size and must be of single column/single sided.
- The manuscript should be written in English and the author must retain a copy.
- British spelling with ‘-ize’ end should be used unless the root of the word itself has "s" in it, for example, "analyse."
- Serial commas to be used. For example, "Companies such as HCL, Wipro, and Infosys…" Use comma before and after "i.e." and "e.g." In the main text, "that is" and "for example" have to be used, preceded and followed by commas.
- Use double quotes throughout. Single quotes should be used within double quotes.
- Quotations of 45 words or more should be set as an extracted matter or block quotes. Block quotes must have sources from where they have been extracted.
- To set off a particular phrase or to introduce a parenthetical phrase, em-dashes without space should be used. For range, use en-dash, for example, 0–15. Do not truncate the page numbers in range: 167–169.
- Spell out numbers from one to nine; 10 and above to remain in figures.
The manuscript must follow the following order of presentation:
- Front matter: It contains article title, author(s) name(s), affiliation(s), e-mail ID of the corresponding author, an abstract and keywords.
- Body matter: Main text/content where the idea/concept/subject will be discussed in detail. This may also contain the floating matters, such as tables, figures, line diagrams, flowcharts, illustrations, photographs, etc.
- Back matter: Appendix and references (Vancouver system)
- The first page of the article should include the title of the article, the author(s) name(s), affiliation(s), address(es), and email IDs.
The second page should include the following:
- An abstract of 150–200 words that must be self-contained, understandable and should be free from jargons, formulae, etc. In case of a research abstract, it should describe the purpose of the research, theoretical basis of the hypothesis, analyses and the implications of the findings.
- Four to six keywords beneath the abstract, specific to the article.
The main content of the article should begin from page number 3.
The references and appendices (if any) should be clearly numbered and specified, in separate pages at the end of the article.
- Level heads in an article must be limited to 3. They should only designate the major sections of the article.
- Tables and figures should be used sparingly to supplement and clarify text and not duplicate it. Each table, text, figure or illustration should be on a separate sheet and the number and the title must be indicated below. Their position in the manuscript must be indicated as follows:
- All other figures, pictures/illustrations should also be numbered and attached at the end of the manuscripts and not in the middle of the articles. However, the place where they have to be inserted must be numbered and listed as shown. Only clear illustrations and good half-tone copies of photographs will be entertained for publishing purposes.
- Sources of all the figures/tables/illustrations must be provided. Even if the source is the author, phrase such as ‘Author’s work’ must be used.
- All references should be presented as one list at the end of the article.
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, including maps, graphs and drawings, should not be larger than page size. They should be numbered and arranged as per their references in the text. All photographs and scanned images should have a resolution of minimum 300 dpi and 1,500 pixels and their format should be TIFF or JPEG.
- Due permissions should be taken for copyright protected photographs/images. Even for photographs/images available in the public domain, it should be clearly ascertained whether or not their reproduction requires permission for purposes of publishing (which is a profit-making endeavour).
- All photographs/scanned images should be provided separately in a folder along with the main article.
Please Note: All figures and tables should be cited in the text and should have the source (a specific URL, a reference or, if it is author’s own work, ‘The Author’) mentioned irrespective of whether or not they require permissions
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 supplementary files
4.4 Reference style
Metamorphosis adheres to the APA reference style. View the APA guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.
Metamorphosis: A Journal of Management Research is hosted on Sage Track Sage System, a web-based online submission and peer review system. Please read the Manuscript Submission guidelines below, and then visit https://peerreview.sagepub.com/met to log in 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.
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 your 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 permissionfrom 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 made available to the corresponding author via 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 MET editorial office as follows:
Saumya Pandey
Research Assistant - Metamorphosis
Indian Institute of Management
Lucknow – 226013, U.P.
Ph: +91-522-2736761
Email: journal@iiml.ac.in