Professor Kalyan Singhal, Co-editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Management and Business Review, a Newly Launched Journal to Rival HBR.

Launching a new professional business journal is no easy feat. But for the McCurdy Professor of Innovation and Supply-Chain, Kalyan Singhal, a determination to make the world better through transformative research propelled a bold vision for his recently launched journal: Management and Business Review (MBR). As publisher of MBR and one of its three editors in chief, Singhal has been mapping out his latest project for over a decade. He is joined by Wallace J. Hopp, the C.K. Prahalad Distinguished University Professor of Business and Engineering at the University of Michigan, and Christopher Ittner, the EY Professor of Accounting and Chair of the Accounting Department at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, as coeditors in chief. On November 7, 2020, they published the first issue of what is sure to become the world’s next globally influential business journal, Management and Business Review. A complimentary digital copy of its debut issue may be found here.

Drawing upon 28 years of publishing experience with the top-tier management journal, Production and Operations Management, Singhal has created a journal that Forbes.com called a rival to the Harvard Business Review.

MBR strives to draw attention to the questions facing contemporary business and management leaders, scholars, and students and, when possible, to answer them. The inaugural issue includes 27 articles which scrutinize topics ranging from adaptive space to reimagining capitalism, from strategy to climate change, from digital transformation to leadership and organizational change, with much more in between.

MBR’s editors freely admit that there are over 30,000 academic journals publishing research on a vast array of topics and that many of them may be of use to the millions of businesses around the world. So why do we need another business journal? While there are hundreds of business magazines written and edited by journalists, few of them include articles by leading-edge management scholars. The handful of publications that do address the interplay between management research and practice cannot possibly disseminate the research findings of over 200,000 business professors, let alone those of professors from other disciplines or of leading management thinkers outside of academia. The MBR team, along with their academic sponsors, believe it is time for a new journal which will draw management scholars and practitioners closer together worldwide.

“In 1900, Dartmouth College awarded the world’s first MBA degree. About sixty years later, two reports from the Carnegie and Ford Foundations led to the evolution of more rigorous research and modern business education. However, after another 60 years, only a small part of that research has been accessible to executives and managers,” said Singhal. “The new journal is an opportunity to publish articles that translate overlooked leading-edge research into useful insights and thereby help managers to elevate their practices.”

In the words of MBR’s three editors-in-chief, “MBR is designed to publish overviews and discussions of pressing management concerns and to bring the ideas of leading thinkers from academia and industry directly to students to enhance their education and help them to become more effective managers.”

The University of Baltimore’s Merrick School of Business and 11 other top business schools around the world have sponsored the establishment of MBR. Murray Dalziel, dean of The Merrick School of Business is enthusiastic in his support of the publication.

“I see this journal as providing a quality platform to deepen the engagement of management scholars with practitioners in business and vice versa,” said Dalziel. “Engagement with the practice of business and management is so deeply a part of the Merrick School’s mission. We are dedicated to educating the next generation of business professionals and entrepreneurs to be ready for a rapidly changing world. This journal is an important part of their toolkit.”

Kalyan Singhal is a 1967 mechanical engineering graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay at Mumbai, a university once described on CBS’ 60 Minutes as “Harvard, MIT, and Princeton put together.” He founded the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) in 1989. In 1992, he also launched the society’s journal Production and Operations Management (POM) and has since served as its editor in chief.  POM is one of the top twenty journals on the Business Week list. Singhal is also a fellow of INFORMS and POMS.

In celebration of the launch of the journal, the Merrick School of Business will host a virtual celebration on Dec.15, 2020 from 12-1 p.m. EST. The three editors-in-chief will attend and participate in a conversation about business today. To pre-register for this Zoom webinar event, click here.

Check out the Forbes.com article from 2019 that called MBR the rival to Harvard Business Review.