Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis: A Journal of Management Research is a bi-annual, peer-reviewed international journal published by the Indian Institute of Management Lucknow in association with SAGE Publications. Its full name states its purpose: it is dedicated to promoting the understanding of management among academics and practitioners through empirical investigation, theoretical analysis and the exchange of ideas, with rigour and relevance as its twin tests. It adheres to a rigorous double-blind reviewing policy, it publishes original research alongside case studies, discussions, interviews and book reviews, and it carries the print ISSN 0972-6225 and the online ISSN 2348-9324. From Lucknow, in Uttar Pradesh, the journal of one of India's premier management institutes addresses a global scholarly audience twice a year.

The journal of IIM Lucknow

Institutional parentage defines Metamorphosis. The Indian Institute of Management Lucknow, established in 1984, is one of India's leading management schools, and its journal carries the institute's research reputation into print. Directories of Indian management journals listed Metamorphosis at IIM Lucknow with SAGE Publications as its publishing partner and named editorial leadership drawn from the institute's faculty. The journal is published biannually by the institute, and its editorial office can be reached through the institute — submissions and correspondence have been directed to the journal's IIM Lucknow addresses. For a business school, a journal is both an outlet and a signal: it shows the questions its academic community considers important, and it invites the wider world to answer them in its pages.

Rigour and relevance

The journal's mission pairs two words that academic publishing often pulls apart: rigour and relevance. Metamorphosis states that it promotes understanding of management through empirical investigation, theoretical analysis and exchange of thought, by rigour and relevance. Its submission guidance sharpens the point: an ideal article is one that is both rigorous and practical, achieving the greatest possible impact on managerial practice, and there should be no compromise with rigorous analysis. At the same time, the journal encourages authors to consider case studies, participant observations and other research approaches that shed light on strategies, structures, systems and processes that are currently evolving, or that might prove useful in the days to come. That openness to method — so long as the analysis is rigorous — is the journal's editorial signature.

Double-blind review

Metamorphosis adheres to a rigorous double-blind reviewing policy in which the identity of both reviewer and author are concealed from both parties. That anonymity is the standard safeguard of fairness in scholarly publishing: papers are judged on their arguments and evidence rather than on the reputation of their authors or institutions. Combined with the journal's insistence on clarity, the review policy shapes what appears in its pages. The journal asks that papers be in English, written in a clear, concise and straightforward manner, in language simple, precise and cohesive enough that readers can absorb even complex ideas clearly. Vigorous, direct, clear and concise communication, it instructs, should be the main focus of all articles, and authors must avoid excessive jargon and technical terms.

What it publishes

A scientometric analysis of the journal, published in the library and information science literature, catalogues the range of its contents: Metamorphosis publishes original research contributions as full research articles, book review papers, discussions, forums, management case studies, interviews and conference notes. The subjects those contributions covered, in the period analysed, included health care service quality management, demand management, material management, customer relationship management, education management, e-commerce, international marketing research, foreign direct investment performance with India, the apparel industry, internet banking, supply chain planning, sanitation services, interest rates, service quality and intellectual property rights, among other management areas. That spread — from sanitation services to interest rates — shows a general management journal in the true sense, following management problems wherever they arise in the Indian and international economy.

Evidence of its contents

Individual articles illustrate the journal's continuing concerns. A study of recruitment through artificial intelligence in selected Indian companies, published in Metamorphosis in 2022, used thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with experts in information technology organisations to examine how employers accept automation in human resource management and how recruiters can use AI in hiring — research the authors offered as useful to recruiters and HR managers weighing the cost-cutting possibilities of new technical developments. A single example, but a representative one: an emerging management practice, studied empirically in Indian firms, analysed rigorously and written for practitioners as much as for scholars. It is the rigour-and-relevance formula working exactly as the journal's mission describes.

Indexing and discoverability

The journal's abstracting and indexing list, as published by SAGE, includes the CABS Academic Journal Guide, DeepDyve, the Dutch-KB national library service, J-Gate, OCLC, OhioLINK, Portico and Research Papers in Economics (RePEc). Each entry is a channel through which libraries and researchers find the journal: Portico preserves it, RePEc connects it to the economics research community, J-Gate serves Indian academic libraries, and the CABS guide places it within the reference list British and international business schools use to assess journals. Bibliometric snapshots record several hundred documents published under the title. For a bi-annual journal, such infrastructure matters disproportionately — with only two issues a year, every article must be findable for the journal to accumulate the citations and influence it seeks.

How to write for Metamorphosis

The journal's author guidance is unusually expressive, and worth recording because it tells readers what kind of prose to expect. Papers must be in English; they must be written clearly, concisely and straightforwardly; vigorous, direct communication is the focus; jargon and technical terms are to be avoided; rigorous analysis admits no compromise; the ideal article is both rigorous and practical, with the greatest possible impact on managerial practice; and authors must avoid terms or usages that could be considered denigrating to ethnic or other groups. Read together, those rules describe an editorial personality — impatient with obscurity, insistent on substance, conscious of its practitioner readers. Subscription listings confirm the journal's half-yearly frequency, its English language and its availability in print and digital editions for Indian subscribers.

Scholarly attention to the journal itself

Metamorphosis has itself become an object of study, a marker of a journal that has published long and consistently enough to reward analysis. The scientometric study of the journal examined its year-wise distribution of articles, the annual growth rate of its research articles, its authorship patterns, its degree of collaboration and collaborative index, its country-wise distribution of contributions and its citation patterns, drawing on the framework of earlier scientometric studies of Indian journals. Such studies serve authors choosing venues and librarians weighing subscriptions. Their existence testifies that Metamorphosis has built the sustained, analysable record — volume after volume of attributable, citable research — that distinguishes an established journal from a occasional publication.

Its place among IIM journals

India's Institutes of Management publish some of the country's most respected management journals, and Metamorphosis is IIM Lucknow's entry in that company — a peer-reviewed, SAGE-published, internationally addressed title with a double-blind process and a mission phrased around rigour and relevance. Its bi-annual rhythm, its welcome for case studies and participant observation alongside conventional empirical and theoretical work, and its insistence on clear, jargon-free writing give it a character of its own within that company. From Lucknow it continues, issue by issue, to do what its name promises: to track management knowledge as it changes form — new strategies, structures, systems and processes — and to publish the research that helps academics and practitioners understand the change.