Of Journal Editors and Editorial Boards: Who Are the Trailblazers in Increasing Editorial Board Gender Equality?
| Author | Isabel Metz,Michael J. Zyphur,Anne‐Wil Harzing |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12133 |
| Date | 01 October 2016 |
| Published date | 01 October 2016 |
British Journal of Management, Vol. 27, 712–726 (2016)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12133
Of Journal Editors and Editorial Boards:
Who Are the Trailblazers in Increasing
Editorial Board Gender Equality?
Isabel Metz, Anne-Wil Harzing1and Michael J. Zyphur2
Melbourne Business School, University of Melbourne, 200 Leicester Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia,
1Middlesex University, The Burroughs, Hendon, London, NW4 4BT, UK, and 2Department of Management &
Marketing, University of Melbourne, Parkville Campus, Parkville,Victoria 3010, Australia
Corresponding author email: i.metz@mbs.edu
Female academics continue to be under-represented on the editorial boards of many, but
not all, management journals. This variability is intriguing, because it is reasonable to
assume that the size of the pool of female faculty available and willing to serve on edi-
torial boards is similar for all management journals. This paper therefore focuses on the
characteristics of the journal editors to explain this variability; journal editors or editors-
in-chief are the most influential people in the selection of editorial board members. The
authors draw on social identity and homosocial reproduction theories, and on the gender
and careers literature to examine the relationship between an editor’s academic perfor-
mance, professional age and gender, and editorial board gender equality. Longitudinal
data are collected at five points in time, using five-year intervals, from 52 management
journals. To account for the nested structure of the data, a three-level multilevel model
was estimated. Overall, it is found that the prospects of board membership improve for
women when editors are high-performing, professionally young or female. The authors
discuss these findings and their implications for management journals with low, stagnant
or declining representation of women in their boards.
Introduction
Gender equality in academic journal editorial
boards (EBs) has gradually increased (Addis and
Villa, 2003; Maule´
on et al., 2013; Metz and Harz-
ing, 2009). This literature suggests that this in-
crease is parallel to, but lower than, the gradual
increase in female academics in various fields over
time. Further, despite this upward trend in gender
equality in academic journal EBs, there is still sub-
stantial variability in women’s level of representa-
tion on EBs across journals in the same field of
study. As the pool of female scholars from which
to select EB members is similar for all journals in
a given field, how can this variabilitybe explained?
To answer this question requires a shift in atten-
tion from the supply side (female academics) to the
demand side (journal editors) of the EB member
selection process.
Journal editors or editors-in-chief are at the top
of the EB hierarchy and are the most influential
people in the selection of EB members (Feldman,
2008). Although the process of selecting the editor-
in-chief has become more formalized over time for
some journals (Cascio, 2008), the same does not
always apply to the selection of EB members (e.g.
Addis and Villa, 2003; Burgess and Shaw, 2010).
At best, editors-in-chief have an understanding of
process ‘best practice’ in their selection of board
members (Feldman, 2008; Zedeck, 2008). Thus, it
is probable that a journal editor’s characteristics
can explain variability in women’s representation
on EBs.
This study examines the relationship between
the editor’s academic performance, professional
age and gender, on the one hand, and a jour-
nal’s EB gender equality, on the other. This
association is important, given the role of top
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