journeyman123

I believe that JPSP and Psych Science are the only two psych journals that count as A+ publications in OB departments. Also rsaylors, there is a HUGE distinction between macro and micro OB. Of course you know that, but many people reading these forums don't and take your ~500 posts as evidence of your expertise. However, to generalize about methods and target journals can be misleading. They are different fields with different methods and approaches to research. Some overlap exists, but it is less common than people think. To put it into perspective, a senior faculty member I work with in the OB department at a top 5 b-school has over 130 pubs, fewer than 10 of which are in typical "management/organizational" journals - AMJ, ASQ, Org Science, etc. However, he has dozens of Psych Science and JPSP pubs. This is quite common. Indeed, half of the OB faculty at most top B-schools have PhDs in Social Psychology. Of course the debate raised earlier will always exist and it's a healthy debate to have, but at the end of the day, we need as many perspectives as possible - from field studies to experimental designs - to triangulate the research questions we are all interested in. Both are valuable and both have their place in business school research. Experimental designs are overwhelmingly favored by micro OB researchers. That's just the reality. Finally, I wouldn't put much stock in UTD, US News, or FT rankings - the high impact research in the field and people who conduct it are quite visible. I think there is an intuitive understanding of which schools/researchers are conducting the highest quality research at any given time. The rankings sometimes obscure the value of certain schools/programs by overemphasizing pure "management" publications (UTD rankings), MBA quality (US News rankings), and Eurocentrism (FT rankings). And, perhaps most important, all of these rankings are at the business school unit of analysis. To even have a discussion about OB rankings, we would need departmental comparisons, which don't comprehensively exist. I'm a micro OB person so my perspective is limited. Everyone should take information posted on forums like this with a grain of salt though. In reality there are very few PhD candidates and virtually zero professors who post on these types of websites. This arrangement lends itself to a lot of speculation (*cough* rsaylors ;))Most people are prospective, first, or second year PhD students. I'll be starting a PhD program in the fall so I defer to those already in programs. With that being said, I think my past experiences and current job give me a unique and relevant perspective from which to comment.

I would add that tenure is also about having the freedom to pursue more risky streams of research. By risky, I mean ideas that might not pan out, but that could potentially advance the field in very meaningful ways. In my experience, I have noticed tenured faculty more freely throw large sums of research money at a hunch than their non-tenured colleagues would ever dare. Non-tenured faculty often "stick to the beaten path" in terms of their research because of funding restrictions and fear of throwing time and money after a research idea that has not already been vetted by their field (perhaps because the idea is theoretically impoverished or empirically daunting). Of course, there are awards such as the SAGE Young Scholars award for influential early career research, but awards like this go to top performers, not the average non-tenured professor. In addition to all the things mentioned by previous posters, tenure is about abandoning (to some extent) the formulaic way research in conducted by junior faculty members and embracing a bolder research perspective at the idea level and not necessarily at the publication level. Just one way to look at it...but the added committee work, executive education opportunities, etc. show that tenured faculty are pulled in many different directions, often preventing them from fully realizing their "big idea" potential. BTW, I should mention that I am coming from a micro-OB perspective.

Congratulations to all the newly admitted students! I am applying to the MSc in Management Research at Oxford's Said Business School and received an interview invitation today. Does anyone have any insight into the interview process? Additionally, do they generally invite a large number of applicants to interview or is this a positive indicator of "near-acceptance"? Thanks!