Step One

The third year in most management doctoral programs has the potential to be wasted. This is the year that marks the beginning of the transition from knowledge consumer to knowledge producer. Making that transition is the key to successfully completing a doctoral program.

The first two years of my doctoral education consisted on exposure to the biggest ideas in the field. Now, I need to understand the many conversations that scholars are engaged in. In order to do so, my advisor has given me a rather fun task: read all the abstracts for all the articles in our top journals for the last five years. Then, carefully read the articles that are the most interesting to me.

Since my field is strategic management and I am interested in healthcare, I have selected the following journals to review:

1. Strategic Management Journal
2. Academy of Management Journal
3. Academy of Management Review
4. Organization Science
5. Health Services Research

Just as a rough indication of the scope of this project, here are the number of articles per journal:

1. SMJ: 390
2. AMJ: 270
3. AMR: 180
4. OrgSci: 300
5. HSR: 590

My plan is to tackle one year at a time, so I have a sense of who is talking about what and where - and how those conversations change over time.

It seems that I have my work cut out for me!