Editorial

As 2020 comes to a close, it is a year that few will forget or could have envisioned how it would unfold. It has been a year of change. For the Organization Management Journal, the changes the journal experienced were planned. We began the year under a new publisher and a new partnership. The journal is now published by Emerald and the Eastern Academy of Management sponsors the journal along with the Southwest Academy of Management. Also, we have added several new Associates and Editorial Board members since January 2020. These changes have expanded our reach and visibility.

For many, however, the changes of 2020 were unplanned. As the months of this year unfolded, the world began to see the global impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic. With over 50 million cases globally (Coronavirus Tally: Global Cases Of COVID-19 Near 51 Million, US Counts Another 130,000 Cases In One Day – MarketWatch, 2020), there are few places in the world left untouched. As a result of the virus over 90% of the world is living in countries with travel restrictions (Salcedo, Yar, & Cherelus, 2020). Thus, much of the global workforce has been forced to work virtually and others have been laid off. In the USA, about 43% of the Labor Force is working from home full-time, while 33% are not working at all (Wong, 2020). Some have noted that this current environment has created an American Female Recession with 11 million women’s jobs disappearing in the early months of the Pandemic (Chabeli, 2020). The long-term impact of the transition to virtual work and the loss of jobs may not be evident for years.

Many educational institutions have also been impacted by the virus. Some higher education institutions started in a hybrid format, but students found that courses were mostly online (Quintana, 2020). Many schools that opted for in-person instruction at the start of the semester have sent students home for virtual instruction at some point during the fall semester (Burke, 2020). These changes have resulted in students and faculty needing to adjust.

Another significant event in 2020 was the call for racial equality and the Black Lives Matter movement. While the Black Lives Matter movement can be traced to 2013, the events of 2020 which includes the deaths of people of color such George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner and Michael Brown, have triggered a global activism for racial equality (Maqbool, 2020). Many countries around the world protested in solidarity with US protesters (Liubchenkova, 2020).

While these are only a few of the significant events of 2020, they are ones that have defined the year for many. As we move into 2021, as management researchers and educators, we need to consider these events. Researchers will need to examine the impact on the workforce and organizations. Educators must consider the teaching and learning of their students and where we succeeded and where we failed. The scholarship developed and the lessons learned will guide us into the future of management and management education. The Organization Management Journal aims to be at the forefront of developing scholarship in these areas.