Essays are currently flourishing as a genre in the field of management and organization studies.
Decidedly distinct from empirical, theoretical, or agenda-setting work, essays take a variety of forms throughout the field, including expository essays offering explanation, polemical essays providing critique, theoretical essays introducing new theoretical lenses, and narrative essays grounded in storytelling of personal experiences and emotions (Vince and Hibbert, 2018).
Essays are an important platform where academics can recognize that our role is not only to predict or explain (Lindebaum and Wright, 2021) but also to motivate change through our writing. In this way, essays can be a generative genre for inviting purposeful (and sometimes radical) action towards changing our field.
The Journal of Management Studies is a strong proponent of this view of essays as a generative genre.
In 2016, the journal launched its new essay section, entitled ‘JMS Says’. In its eight years of existence, JMS Says has matured, and the essays we edit have taken on a more defined objective and format as we lean into the possibilities of essays as a generative genre.
Our focus has sharpened on narrative essays, which provide the opportunity for scholars to set out a unique and personal view on our environment (for us, as management academics) and what it could ideally become. We note that several other outlets have also created their own essay sections in accord with their views of the essay genre and particular focus.
As JMS Says advances, and based on our collective years as editors at JMS Says, here we set out our views on the role, format, and potential of essays as a generative genre for management and organization scholars.
