The influence of management journals in the 1980s and 1990s

Abstract It is difficult to get a clear picture of the relative influence of management journals because previous studies have focused on a single sub‐area in the field over a relatively restricted number of years, and/or have used inconsistent criteria to judge journal influence. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine journal influence using citations from 28 journals over the past two decades. The findings show that the top seven journals accounted for 61 percent of all of the citations in the journals included, and that the three journals that showed the greatest increase in influence over the past 20 years were AMJ, AMR , and SMJ . Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.