Cynthia E. Devers Will Be the Next Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Management

Cynthia E. Devers, the R.B. Pamplin Professor of Management in the School of Business at Virginian Polytechnic Institute and State University, has been named the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Management, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by SAGE Publications. The Journal of Management is an official journal of the Southern Management Association. It publishes scholarly empirical and theoretical research articles that have a high impact on the management field.

When she becomes editor-in-chief of the Journal of Management on July 1, Dr. Devers will be tasked with reviewing over 1,600 research manuscripts submitted to the journal each month as well as overseeing a team of 22 action editors and an editorial board of over 350 reviewers.

“Some journals are targeted, such that they publish only psychology papers, entrepreneurship papers, strategy papers, etc. The Journal of Management is a ‘big tent’ journal, which means it is one of the few journals that publish broad-based management research from numerous areas,” said Professor Devers. “That’s what attracted me to the position as I’ve been able to publish some of my most interesting research in ‘big tent’ journals.”

Dr. Devers’ research examines the influence of formal and informal governance mechanisms, social evaluations, and individual differences on managerial decision-making and individual and organizational outcomes. Her work has been cited more than 1,500 times by Web of Science and 4,700 times according to Google Scholar.

“I’m a strategy scholar, but I really research how people make decisions,” explains Professor Devers. “I have a minor in industrial and organizational psychology, so I try to understand how people make decisions in high-level organizational contexts such as top management teams and boards of directors. The Journal of Management is diverse in the type of research it publishes and my research is diverse, so this is a good fit.”

Before joining Virginia Tech in the fall of 2022, Dr. Devers served as Lawrence E. Fouraker Professor in Business and was associate head in the department of management at the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. She holds a Ph.D. in strategic management from Michigan State University.