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Introduction
There is a growing, frequently critical, literature examining peer-reviewed journal publishing in management studies, focusing on the roles of editors and reviewers and advising authors how to get their papers published (Baruch et al., 2008; MacDonald and Kam, 2007; Thomson and Kamler, 2013; Zahra and Neubaum, 2006). Discussion on these issues is ongoing with many current and past editors entering the debate, and rightly so: the publishing process is at the core of sharing and advancing knowledge (Bedeian, 2004; Miller and Van de Ven, 2015).
A central debate focuses on the editorial policy of developmental vs “as-is” (or “light- touch”) evaluation and review, with the former being dominant, especially at leading management journals. In the developmental review mode, submitted manuscripts, seen as “diamonds in the rough,” get polished by the joint efforts of authors, editors, and reviewers, and finally published – or rejected – after several rounds of revision (Bergh., 2008). The as-is review has been promoted as an alternative where manuscripts are owned solely by their authors and are accepted or rejected after the first round of reviews. The light-touch approach operates similarly to as-is review, with authors making changes to the editor’s satisfaction, following a favorable set of reviews.
To better understand the origins of the debate and to contribute to it, we drew on arguments from the philosophy of science. We traced the roots of the developmental review in the hypothetico-deductive research approach (Nola and Sankey, 2007), which currently dominates in management studies (Johnson, 2015) and in social sciences in general. We argue that problems arise especially when developmental reviews are applied to inductive research; they in fact hamper the publication of inductive research findings. Yet, inductive research is needed in order to advance knowledge (Harriman, 2010, p. 6) and to develop new theories (Eisenhardt et al., 2016; Locke, 2007). As one journal editor put it: “Research questions derived solely through deduction from even a thorough knowledge of the extant literature are likely to generate only incremental contributions to the field” (Konrad, 2008, p. 13).
In different areas of management studies, such as organizational behavior, organization theory, and strategy, inductive research often requires qualitative research methods[1], such as case studies and ethnography, that allow answering “how” and “why” questions...