Reengineering Management Science for a Sharper Focus and Broader Appeal

Management Science is a scholarly journal that publishes scientific research on the practice of management. Therefore, papers published in Management Science should deal with issues and problems important to managers and executives; they must be interesting to a wide range of people in the management science community; and they should have the potential to impact management practice.

From my perspective as the editor, these publication guidelines, together with the responsibility associated with being a flagship journal of INFORMS, call for reengineering of the journal. This includes both revamping departments, topics, and methodologies considered by the journal as well as introducing a new submission format that enables the most innovative and impactful papers to be disseminated in a timely manner.

Specifically, revamping departments, topics, and methodologies includes the introduction of three new departments (Big Data Analytics, Revenue Management and Market Analytics, and Healthcare Management); the repositioning of some existing departments (Finance, and Entrepreneurship and Innovation); the integration of three departments (Decision Analysis, Behavioral Economics, and Judgment and Decision Making); and the embracement of diverse methodologies (from social science to computer science, operations research, and statistics) and cross-functional,multidisciplinary research that reflect the management science profession.

Finally, in addition to publishing papers that follow the traditional journal process, Management Science will also consider shorter papers with high-quality, original and high-impact research that is of broader interest, analogous to what may appear in Science, Nature, or PNAS, and to what appeared more frequently in Management Science in its first decades. Such papers will undergo faster review, with initial decisions being returned to the authors within no more than four weeks.

Taken together, the reengineering of Management Science is designed to provide a sharper focus that is relevant to the management science community and emphasizes the science and practice of management.

This issue provides department statements for almost all of the journal’s departments and reflects the new direction the journal is taking. The remaining statements will be published in the next issue.