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Editorial It’s all about the people: Best papersand thanks

NEAL M. ASHKANASY*

UQ Business School, The University of Queensland, Australia

At the beginning of the second decade of the 21st Century and JOB’s 32nd Volume, it is appropriate to

reflect on what has been achieved in the century’s first decade. While we do not live in the world

envisaged by Stanley Kubric in his 1968 science fiction epic 2001: A Space Odyssey, it is certainly a

different world to the one we lived in 10 years ago. The decade will be remembered for the events of

September 11, 2001 and the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, but many other things have changed

fundamentally as well. In particular, it is most characterized by the relentless advance of technology

and globalization.

There is, however, one aspect of life that remains constant. This is that the world we live in is defined

by the activities of one species, homo sapiens, the people. As a consequence, no understanding of any

phenomenon can be complete without an understanding of the human emotions, cognitions, and

behavior that underlie it. This dictum applies just as much in ‘‘hard’’ disciplines like engineering and

technology as it does in the social sciences, as National Aeronautics Space Agency (NASA) learned

from the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster of February 1, 2003 (Starbuck & Farjoun, 2005). Indeed, my

own motivation from switching from a career in engineering to the study of behavior in organizations

was motivated by this realization (see Ashkanasy, 2007).

Consequently, scholarly interest in the study of organizational behavior continues to burgeon. As I

noted in my editorial at the end of JOB’s third decade (Ashkanasy, 2009: 18), ‘‘there is much going on

in the field of OB at present. The field is already hot, and is liable to get hotter.’’ In support of this

contention, submissions to JOB in 2010 so far (i.e., as I write this) are already approaching the 2009

record of 614, despite my warning at the beginning of the year (Ashkanasy, 2010: 1) that, ‘‘Publishing

today is more difficult than ever.’’

With so many submissions coming in, I am often asked, ‘‘Well, isn’t this just because more

academics are encouraged to submit to high visibility journals like JOB?’’ and, ‘‘Doesn’t this mean that

quality must be dropping?’’ But, as I noted in Ashkanasy (2010), this is not the case at all. Although it is

true that scholars worldwide are being encouraged to submit their work to AÃ journals, the quality of

submissions to JOB is in fact rising, rather than dropping off. For instance, the number of submissionsthat rely on single-sitting, self-report questionnaire data is decreasing as the message to the effect that

such studies will no longer be published in this journal gets out. Moreover, submissions that elicit a

desk-reject note from me advising authors to learn the basics of planning, conducting, and reporting

research are now close to extinction.

Journal of Organizational Behavior

J. Organiz. Behav. 32, 1–3 (2011)

Published online in Wiley Online Library

(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.744

* Correspondence to: Neal M. Ashkanasy, UQ Business School, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia.E-mail: [email protected]

Copyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.



Best Paper Award

At the other end of the scale, and reflecting our focus on quality, JOB reintroduced a Best Paper Award

for Volume 30 (2009). The selection committee was chaired by Associate Editor Boris B. Baltes and

five board members: Stephen M. Jex, Debra A. Major, Christian J. Resick, Robert R. Sinclair, andAmanuel G. Tekleab. After considering the 54 research articles published in JOB in 2009, the

committee selected nine nominees: Binnewies, Sonnentag, and Mojza (2009); Chau, Dahling, Levy,

and Diefendorff (2009); Gonzalez and DeNisi (2009); Jones (2009); Joshi, Pandey, and Han (2009);

Lavelle et al. (2009); Ng and Feldman (2009); Schaufeli, Bakker, and Van Rhenen (2009); and van

Steenbergen and Ellemers (2009). The award for the best paper published in JOB in Volume 30 (2009)

went to van Steenbergen and Ellemers (2009). The committee’s citation for this impressive paper read:

This article provides a two-study empirical examination of work-family conflict and work-family

facilitation, and their implications for employee health and job performance. In Study 1, the authors

found that support for the idea that work-family and family-work facilitation is differentially related

to a series of objective employee health indictors (e.g., cholesterol level, physical stamina, and body-

mass index). Study 2 replicated and extended the Study 1’s findings using longitudinal data. Inaddition, the authors found in Study 2 that work-family and family-work facilitation are differen-

tially related to objectively measured facets of employee job performance.

This article was chosen for three reasons. First, its findings make an important contribution to work-

family theory and research by indicating that support is related to enhanced employee performance.

Second, the authors used novel research methods in a longitudinal design based on objective health

indices and performance measures. Third, the article addressed the interface of employees and their

employing organization.

On behalf of the whole JOB community, I congratulate all the authors of the nominated articles for

their fine work and to thank them for their support of JOB. Many thanks must also go to the selection

committee for completing a very difficult task.

Thank You for Your Continuing Support

In summary, the past year was another good one for JOB. We launched the much heralded Reviewer’s

Notebook series (see Wright & Bonett, 2010); published two Special Issues, ‘‘The emerging positive

agenda’’ (Issue Wright & Quick, 2010) and ‘‘New directions for boundaryless careers’’ (Issue 5: Tams

& Arthur, 2010); continued the popular Incubator series; acknowledged our best paper authors and

reviewers; and continued to be regarded as a top-tier journal internationally. I thank the whole JOB

team for their contributions: Publisher Wiley-Blackwell; senior editor Jacqueline Coyle-Shapiro;

managing editor Kaylene Ascough; associate editors Boris B. Baltes, Terry A. Beehr, Mark Fichman,Mark J. Martinko, Suzanne S. Masterson, Raymond A. Noe, Mark F. Peterson, Paul E. Spector, Dean

W. Tjosvold, Kerrie Unsworth, Daan van Knippenberg, and Thomas A. Wright; special issue guest

editors Michael B. Arthur, Douglas B. Bonett, Svenja Tams, and Thomas A. Wright; board members,

ad hoc reviewers (see Vol. 31, Issue 8 for a complete list), and especially authors. I also thank all the

hopeful authors who submitted their work to the journal in the past year and, last but not least, the

readers of JOB. As per the title to this editorial, ‘‘It is all about the people.’’ I look forward to your

continuing support in 2011.

Copyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 32, 1–3 (2011)

DOI: 10.1002/job

2 EDITORIAL



Author biography

Neal M. Ashkanasy received his Ph.D. in Social/Organizational Psychology from the University of

Queensland. He is a Fellow of the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the Association

for Psychological Science, the Australia and New Zealand Academy of Management, and the Academyof the Social Sciences in Australia. His research areas include leadership, organizational culture, ethics,

and emotions in organizations. He has published in the Academy of Management Review, the Journal of

Organizational Behavior , The Leadership Quarterly, and the Journal of Management . He is Editor-in-

Chief of the Journal of Organizational Behavior , Associate Editor of Emotion Review, and Series Co-

Editor of Research on Emotion in Organizations.

References

Ashkanasy, N. M. (2007). The JOB saga continues: Chapter Three. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 28, 137–139.

Ashkanasy, N. M. (2009). After thirty years: What does the future hold? Journal of Organizational Behavior , 30,15–20.

Ashkanasy, N. M. (2010). Publishing today is more difficult than ever. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 31, 1–3.

Binnewies, C., Sonnentag, S., & Mojza, E. J. (2009). Daily performance at work: Feeling recovered in the morningas a predictor of day-level job performance. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 30, 67–93.

Chau, S. L., Dahling, J. J., Levy, P. E., & Diefendorff, J. M. (2009). A predictive study of emotional labor andturnover. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 30, 1151–1163.

Gonzalez, J. A., & DeNisi, A. S. (2009). Cross-level effects of demography and diversity climate on organizationalattachment and firm effectiveness. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 30, 21–40.

Jones, D. A. (2009). Getting even with one’s supervisor and one’s organization: Relationships among types of injustice, desires for revenge, and counterproductive work behaviors. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 30,

525–542.Joshi, A., Pandey, N., & Han, G. H. (2009). Bracketing team boundary spanning: An examination of task-based,

team-level, and contextual antecedents. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 30, 731–759.Lavelle, J. G., Brockner, J., Konovsky, M. A., Price, K. H., Henley, A. B., ATaneja, A., & Vinekar, V. (2009).

Commitment, procedural fairness, and organizational citizenship behavior: A multifoci analysis. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 30, 337–357.

Ng, T. W. H., & Feldman, D. C. (2009). Age, work experience, and the psychological contract. Journal of

Organizational Behavior , 30, 1053–1075.Schaufeli, W. B., Bakker, A. B., & Van Rhenen, W. (2009). How changes in job demands and resources predict

burnout, work engagement, and sickness absenteeism. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 30, 893–917.Starbuck, W. H. & Farjoun M. (Eds.), (2005). Organization at the limit: Lessons from the Columbia Disaster .

Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.Tams, S., & Arthur, M. B. (2010). New directions for boundaryless careers: Agency and interdependence in a

changing world. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 31, 629–646.

van Steenbergen, E. F., & Ellemers, N. (2009). Is managing the work–family interface worthwhile? Benefits foremployee health and performance. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 30, 617–642.

Wright, T. A., & Bonett, D. G. (2010). The researcher’s notebook: Mission and scope. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 31, 773–775.

Wright, T. A., & Quick, J. C. (2010). The emerging positive agenda in organizations: Greater than a trickle, but notyet a deluge. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 31, 147–159.

Copyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 32, 1–3 (2011)

DOI: 10.1002/job

EDITORIAL 3

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