Academy of Management Journal

EDITOR
Jason A. Colquitt
University of Georgia
colq@uga.edu
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
Pratima (Tima) Bansal
University of Western Ontario
tbansal@ivey.uwo.ca
Joyce E. Bono
University of Florida
joyce.bono@ufl.edu
Kevin G. Corley
Arizona State University
corleyamj@asu.edu
Marta A. Geletkanycz
Boston College
geletkan@bc.edu
Gerard George
Imperial College London
g.george@imperial.ac.uk
Adam M. Grant
University of Pennsylvania
grantad@wharton.upenn.edu
Kyle J. Mayer
University of Southern California
kmayer@marshall.usc.edu
Gerry McNamara
Michigan State University
mcnama39@msu.edu
Timothy G. Pollock
Pennsylvania State University
tpollock@psu.edu
Jason D. Shaw
University of Minnesota
shawx218@umn.edu
Raymond T. Sparrowe
Washington University in St. Louis
sparrowe@wustl.edu
Bennett J. Tepper
Georgia State University
btepper@gsu.edu
Yan Zhang (Anthea)
Rice University
antheazhang_amj@rice.edu
MANAGING EDITOR
Michael P. Malgrande
Academy of Management
mmalgrande@pace.edu
PRODUCTION/COPY EDITOR
Persephone Doliner
Ithaca, NY
pdoliner@twcny.rr.com

July 19th, 2012

Dear Dr. Ho:
On behalf of the editorial team, I want to thank you for submitting your paper,
titled Testing high performance work systems (HPWS), employee outcomes, and
firm performance from mainstream and critical thinking perspectives, to
Academy of Management Journal (AMJ) for publication consideration. We
appreciate your interest in having your work reviewed by AMJ. Your manuscript
is logged into our system with the identifying number AMJ 2012-0590.
As AMJs Editor, one of my responsibilities is to complete a preliminary
screening of a manuscript before entering it into our review process. When
completing this work, my objective is to assess the degree to which a submitted
manuscript (a) fits the criteria described in AMJs Mission Statement and
Information for Contributors, both of which can be found at this link:
http://journals.aomonline.org/amj/information-for-contributors.html, and (b)
generates a belief that in its current state, it has at least a minimal likelihood of
being favorably evaluated by AMJs reviewers. When a submission fails to satisfy
one or the other of these criteria, it is given a Desk Edit. This means that it is
returned to the authors instead of being entered into AMJs full double-blind
review process. When this occurs, and where possible, the Desk Edit letter details
the specific concerns that would need to be addressed to place the article under
review. Addressing those concerns often requires improving the submissions
theoretical and empirical contribution, and sometimes also requires the collection
of additional data.
We make this Desk Edit decision in an effort to conserve the time and energy of
our reviewers, who are always stretched thin given the number of submissions
that AMJ receives. However, we also make this decision with the authors
interests in mind. Sometimes the decision reveals that an author might be better
off submitting a manuscript to another journal immediately, as opposed to after
the AMJ review process has run its course. Other times the decision saves the
author from a true Reject decision, which would preclude any resubmission of the
manuscript to the journal (see Ireland, 2009, Academy of Management Journal,
52: 9-10, for a description of these guidelines).

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I regret to inform you that I believe a Desk Edit is in order for your manuscript. As detailed below,
there are some disconnects between your manuscript and the journals Information for Contributors,
and I do not believe it possesses a minimal likelihood of being favorably evaluated by AMJs
reviewers. In the paragraphs below, I describe the specific concerns that would need to be addressed
for your manuscript to be entered into our full double-blind review process. Those concerns center
on your theoretical contribution, construct and statistical conclusion validity issues, and writing
issues. If you are willing to address these concerns, we would conduct a further evaluation of your
manuscript. Please know, however, that we will closely examine any resubmitted manuscript to
ensure that it has risen above the Desk Edit bar. Of course, we will understand if you choose to
pursue a different outlet for your work. It is a lot to ask for authors to spend additional time
improving a submission, only to then face the same imposingly high rejection rate as other fullyreviewed submissions. All that said, the concerns we are asking you to address are described below.
1. Theoretical Contribution. The degree to which an article offers a significant theoretical
contribution is an important point of emphasis for AMJ. Articles can make a theoretical
contribution by either building theory or testing theory. Whats important is that they change,
challenge, or fundamentally advance our knowledge of the concepts, relationships, models, or
theories embedded in the relevant literatures. In this way, they cause us to think about some
organizational phenomenon in a way that would not normally be anticipated from extrapolations
of existing work. It is not clear that your manuscript actively attempts to build theory or test
theory, leaving its overall theoretical contribution quite limited. You distinguish the mainstream
view of high performance work systems (HPWS) with the critical thinking view, but its not
clear if those are categories of your own making or categories that the extant literature has
articulated. More importantly, your review of the critical thinking view does not reveal how many
of those works are empirical studies in peer-reviewed journals that had linked HPWS facets to
outcomes such as stress, insecurity, and work intensification, and how many of those works are
conceptual argumentations in non-refereed outlets. The reader needs that clarity to know how to
weigh the two sides of the debate that you are drawing. Any resubmission will need to make these
matters more clear, and will also need to draw a bridge from your debate to existing theory in the
Management literature.
2. Construct and Statistical Conclusion Validity Issues. One strength of your study is that you
included a number of mediators of the HPWS-performance relationship, including mediators that
flow from the mainstream and critical thinking perspectives (e.g., commitment on the one
hand and intensification on the other). Unfortunately, you did not measure your variables of
interest with scales that were published and validated in top scholarly journals, given your
reliance on a national database. The question therefore becomes whether the benefits of your
increased statistical power offset potential decrements in construct validity. This is a critical issue
because the reader needs to know that your mainstream mediators were measured in just as
valid a manner as your critical thinking mediators. Otherwise, the comparisons in your debate
are not fair. Any resubmission will need to collect some additional data, from a secondary sample,
that exhibits adequate convergent validity between your scales and some published and validated
scholarly analogs. In terms of statistical conclusion validity, I should also note that your analyses

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are much less sophisticated than those of a typical AMJ submission. It is common to use structural
equation modeling to test both a measurement model and a path model, and to use those path
model results to test mediation (while also gauging omnibus model fit). Any resubmission will
need to include such modeling. My advice is to thumb through the last several issues of AMJ to
look for a model and sample similar to yours, to gain a better idea of what the reviewers expect in
this vein.
3. Writing Issues. The quality of ones writing is obviously a critical piece of the puzzle for any
scholarly journal. Science is about advancing knowledge, and that advancement requires writing
that is very clear. Unfortunately, there were a number of grammatical and typographical errors in
your manuscript. It may well be that English is your second language. If so, I would encourage
you to use ScholarOnes AJE feature, which allows you to submit your manuscript to American
Journal Editors for English-language copyediting. This feature is available on the Author
Dashboard of Manuscript Central, right below the link that you used to submit this manuscript to
AMJ. I might also suggest seeking the help of a professional copy-editor to improve the clarity of
your general writing style. In addition, many elements of your manuscripts presentation were
inconsistent with AMJs typical flow and progression, while being 20 pages longer than the 40page guideline. If you choose to resubmit this manuscript to AMJ, or if you target AMJ with a
future submission, I would urge you to familiarize yourself with the look and feel of a typical
AMJ article. That familiarity will allow you to discuss issues in the places that reviewers expect to
find them, which will increase the accessibility of your work dramatically.
In addition to this feedback, I would encourage you to take two steps before submitting your next
manuscript to AMJ, whether that be the resubmission of this paper or one connected to another study.
Firstif you have not alreadyit is often helpful to get a friendly review from a colleague who
has previously reviewed for, or published in, AMJ. Often another set of eyes can point out issues that
we do not see in our own work, particularly issues that pertain to fit with a particular journal.
Second, I would invite you to peruse the new Author Resources page on AMJs website, which can
be accessed at this link: http://journals.aomonline.org/amj/author-resources. This page includes
several discussions of what constitutes a contribution at AMJ, how the review process works at AMJ,
and what some relevant trends have been for the journal. It also includes some discussions of more
specific topics, like publishing laboratory or qualitative research in the journal.
I do sincerely hope that this feedback will prove to be of some value to you. If you are willing to
address the concerns outlined above, we would be open to a resubmission of your manuscript. To
resubmit, log into your Author Center in Manuscript Central and click on Manuscripts with
Decisions. Next to the listing of this manuscript, you should see Create a Resubmission. Simply
click that link and follow the instructions. Unlike a revision, there is no need for any sort of
responses document that addresses the issues raised in the Desk Edit letter. Simply note in your
cover letter that this is a resubmission of a Desk Edited manuscript, and please indicate the number
assigned to that manuscript. Thank you for the opportunity to read your paper. We value your interest
in AMJ and we truly do wish you and your co-authors all the best in terms of your research projects.

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Warm regards,

Jason A. Colquitt
Jason A. Colquitt
Editor
Academy of Management Journal