Firstly, for most academics teaching is half the job. Well, in my case its 40% ¹. By publishing in management education, you're getting double the benefit from it. Teaching comes with many students (participants) and assessments (measurements). Any innovation in teaching could be interesting. And, being a big part of your job, you should be passionate about it.

Secondly, doing research into management education helps your chances of promotion and recruitment. It demonstrates that you are passionate about teaching; you are at the leading edge of teaching; and that you are creative/innovative in your teaching.

However, you shouldn't make educational research your only research; very few people are successful in doing that (unless they are in a education faculty). There are very few highly ranked journals in the field of management education, so they are poorly rated. Just doing this type of research will see you typecase as a education specialist and not as a management, business, or organizational person. Generally, some education publications are good for your CV, but its a problem if they dominate your CV.

As I read through the following list, there isn't one of these problems that I'm not guilty of in my papers; although I am working to be better.

1. The kitchen sink approach to theorizing These papers include to many idea (probably in the fear that something will be overlooked). This tends to mean that there is a alack of focus and/or the research questions is not well formed. As a result the papers tend to meander and be too long.
2. Unclear contribution These papers are not clear what (existing) conversation they are joining, or it is not clear how the paper contributes to the conversation. Such papers tend to have unclear research questions, or 'merely' apply theory to a new empirical context.
3. Lack of construct clarity The constructs in paper are either not defined at all, or they are poorly defined. As a consequence, the boundary conditions of the paper are unclear. Typically, these papers have overlapping ideas and theories
4. Poor literature review These papers do not outline the key gap in the literature or they fail to problematize some empirical observation. The citations are often (a) stale/ dated, (b) do not include key citations—this is different to point a, or (c) have a limited number of citations. As a consequence the literature review is often unfocused.
5. Unpolished work These papers are poorly written, and don't look and feel like an academic paper. Typically, they have poor grammar, spelling mistakes, and poor formatting. The first two of those—grammar and spelling—can be fixed by using Grammarly or similar tools.

• Quick-and-dirty versus going for a top-journal It takes just as long to write a good paper as it does to write a poor paper. So it is always worth shooting high.
• The reviewers will fix it The reviews role is it provide constructive feedback. You can't expect them to know how to fix a paper—although sometimes they might make suggestions.
• The reviews don't understand your brilliance Actually, it's the authors' job to make them understand. So always be very clear in what is being said.

1. Look for exemplars in both the journal you are targeting and in the top journals.
2. Ask for a friendly review—ideally from someone who knows the topic—and not necessarily from someone friendly. What you want is an honest appraisal of your work. Presenting your work a numerous venues/conferences will help sharpen up your paper (and your presentation) and the feedback will always give your food for thought (even when they audience doesn't 'get it).
3. Keep it simple (KISS, as they say). Can your grandma read it and understand where you are going (but not necessarily knowing the detail).
4. The abstract; this is often an important and overlooked aspect of academic writing. Keep the abstract short and to the. You don't want to recreate your introduction.
5. Keywords In this age of full-text search you might think keywords don't matter but they do, if for no other reason than editors and associate editors use them to select reviewers.
6. Letters to the editor These matter because although some editors don't read them, many do. In the covering letter, make it clear if you have a conflict of interest with any potential reviews, or if there are reasons why you want a particular editor or reviewer. And remember, everyone gets their paper rejected.

The four best known (and most highly ranked) journals in management education are: Academy of Management Learning & Education (AMLE), the Journal of Management Education (JME), Management Learning (ML), and the Journal of Innovative Education (JIE).

AMLE.jpg

JIE.jpg

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Following Beatty and Leigh (2010), the journals look like this:

Beatty, J. E., & Leigh, J. S. A. (2010). Taking stock of management education: a comparison of three management education journals, /Journal of Management Education, 34/(3), 367-392

Currie, R., & Pandher, G. (2013). Management education journals' rank and tier by active scholars. /Academy of Management Learning & Education, 12/(2), 194-218.