Can Econ job candidates apply for management jobs?
Pursuing a Ph.D. in Strategy. Is it worth?
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Can Econ job candidates apply for management jobs?
Yes, but it is not likely you'll get one since you do not know how to publish in management journals.
The exception is if you're 1) from HRM; 2) do something somehow related to strategy (for example, management labour markets if you are doing labour); 3) a HRM or MRM school with a strong econ focus is hiring (HBS/Duke/Wharton etc.).
Very low chance a traditional management department (especially if they combine STR & OB, which most do) will hire you. -
especially in management departments, are really sociologists in disguise, completely oblivious to what identification even means, let alone being able to implement it.
You are conflating OB with strategy. I don't think you can publish anything in any top-5 strategy journal today without some pretty good empirics (identification was so 10 years ago). And by pretty good, I mean what was the gold standard in econ/finance 5 years ago.
And yes, some are "sociologists in disguise". But that doesn't mean they aren't empirically capable. Those "sociologists in disguise" in strategy that can publish in top-5s are probably better than the top 1% of sociologists in terms of empirics.
Basically, strategy today is at the level of the Journal of Corporate Finance. That's the equivalent level of effort required. If you read SMJ, or strategy articles in AMJ, empirically it is about at the level of JCF. I've heard finance people who publish in top finance journals say that SMJ is actually more demanding empirically than JCF. And that is actually not bad.
And again, not to be confused with OB people in management departments. They are a completely different thing.
It is more "cliquey" however. So if you know the right people, and have the right name, you can get away with worst empirical work getting published in top-5s.
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especially in management departments, are really sociologists in disguise, completely oblivious to what identification even means, let alone being able to implement it.
You are conflating OB with strategy. I don't think you can publish anything in any top-5 strategy journal today without some pretty good empirics (identification was so 10 years ago). And by pretty good, I mean what was the gold standard in econ/finance 5 years ago.
And yes, some are "sociologists in disguise". But that doesn't mean they aren't empirically capable. Those "sociologists in disguise" in strategy that can publish in top-5s are probably better than the top 1% of sociologists in terms of empirics.
Basically, strategy today is at the level of the Journal of Corporate Finance. That's the equivalent level of effort required. If you read SMJ, or strategy articles in AMJ, empirically it is about at the level of JCF. I've heard finance people who publish in top finance journals say that SMJ is actually more demanding empirically than JCF. And that is actually not bad.
And again, not to be confused with OB people in management departments. They are a completely different thing.
It is more "cliquey" however. So if you know the right people, and have the right name, you can get away with worst empirical work getting published in top-5s.I am not conflating anything. I have an active project portfolio with many strategy professors, each of which has at least published one A pub and most are world famous. I also have projects with people from finance, some of which are well known in their sub-fields and have published JFs and some of them in top econ journals as well, so I think I have an excellent comparison point. The fact that many strategy papers are published in A journals without any identification is very easy to check, and this is especially pronounced in AMJ and ASQ and in sub-fields dominated by sociologists (corporate governance, BTOF, reputation). SMJ is somewhat better, but even there, many papers have no identification. JCF is a rather low bar by itself, and in reality, most strategy papers do not even reach that. Senior professors especially are clueless about econometrics and I had conversations with a former AE of a top journal who would get angry if you mention endogeneity, as he does not "believe" that exogenous variation is needed if you know "theory" well enough to specify a standard regression model.
The usual explanation is that management requires a paper to be interesting (according to a reviewer's subject perception), which prevents rigorous methods. In reality, it's a field that is much more about storytelling than rigor, except for some very rare cases of professors who usually come with econ PhDs and work in areas that are somewhat conducive to this type of approach.
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I am not conflating anything. I have an active project portfolio with many strategy professors, each of which has at least published one A pub and most are world famous. I also have projects with people from finance, some of which are well known in their sub-fields and have published JFs and some of them in top econ journals as well, so I think I have an excellent comparison point. The fact that many strategy papers are published in A journals without any identification is very easy to check, and this is especially pronounced in AMJ and ASQ and in sub-fields dominated by sociologists (corporate governance, BTOF, reputation). SMJ is somewhat better, but even there, many papers have no identification. JCF is a rather low bar by itself, and in reality, most strategy papers do not even reach that. Senior professors especially are clueless about econometrics and I had conversations with a former AE of a top journal who would get angry if you mention endogeneity, as he does not "believe" that exogenous variation is needed if you know "theory" well enough to specify a standard regression model.
The usual explanation is that management requires a paper to be interesting (according to a reviewer's subject perception), which prevents rigorous methods. In reality, it's a field that is much more about storytelling than rigor, except for some very rare cases of professors who usually come with econ PhDs and work in areas that are somewhat conducive to this type of approach.I won't disagree with much of what you're saying, but neither does much of what you're saying contradict what I've said.
Senior people are certainly mostly hopeless, but not people who have graduated with a strategy PhD in the last 10 year or so. Even at our top-100 PhD program, all our PhD strategy students take the econometric PhD courses in econ.
ASQ is indeed a joke journal, but it is 90% OB and sociologists. Very few strategy papers there, and it simply remains known due to inertia.
And yes, JCF isn't such a high bar. But 99% of people here couldn't publish in JCF anyway, so it's a pretty decent bar.
BTOF is a d/3/@/d field these days since it is a theory from 60 years ago, and yes reputation is mostly a field for sociologists to play in. But again, the sociologists masquerading as strategy people are still at the empirical level of the top 1% of sociologists. As for corporate governance, I really don't think you can publish anything in corporate governance today that isn't at the same level as finance was 5 years go in terms of empirics. Given that 99% of strategy corporate governance papers are copy-pastes from finance or accounting research published a few years prior.
We are certainly at the bottom of the empirical totem pole in b-schools, other than OB which is far below us. But we're still only about 5 years behind finance.
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Can Econ job candidates apply for management jobs?
Yes, but it is not likely you'll get one since you do not know how to publish in management journals.
The exception is if you're 1) from HRM; 2) do something somehow related to strategy (for example, management labour markets if you are doing labour); 3) a HRM or MRM school with a strong econ focus is hiring (HBS/Duke/Wharton etc.).
Very low chance a traditional management department (especially if they combine STR & OB, which most do) will hire you.wharton is not econ focused
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Can Econ job candidates apply for management jobs?
Yes, but it is not likely you'll get one since you do not know how to publish in management journals.
The exception is if you're 1) from HRM; 2) do something somehow related to strategy (for example, management labour markets if you are doing labour); 3) a HRM or MRM school with a strong econ focus is hiring (HBS/Duke/Wharton etc.).
Very low chance a traditional management department (especially if they combine STR & OB, which most do) will hire you.wharton is not econ focused
It's not primarily, but there are people with econ backgrounds there (Siggelkow), so an econ PhD might get a look. Unlike places like Penn State / Arizona State, which wouldn't even look at a non-strategy applicant.
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Can Econ job candidates apply for management jobs?
Yes, but it is not likely you'll get one since you do not know how to publish in management journals.
The exception is if you're 1) from HRM; 2) do something somehow related to strategy (for example, management labour markets if you are doing labour); 3) a HRM or MRM school with a strong econ focus is hiring (HBS/Duke/Wharton etc.).
Very low chance a traditional management department (especially if they combine STR & OB, which most do) will hire you.wharton is not econ focused
It's not primarily, but there are people with econ backgrounds there (Siggelkow), so an econ PhD might get a look. Unlike places like Penn State / Arizona State, which wouldn't even look at a non-strategy applicant.
I agree. I think WUSTL, Utah, and Gatech are probably more econ friendly.
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With my hiring experience, Chinese strategy PhDs usually find a Chinese faculty to be their advisors. And some also just generally focus on China-related political research. You can easily find candidate examples like this at aom, ccc, and the job market.
Like all econ/b-school fields, it is filled with Chinese too. All of them doing copy-paste work from finance/accounting journals.
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The person who said
"Whether "you~" find it helpful or not is irrelevant,
this is what "weeee~" require"
should not be teaching prospectus development classes
where a professor only "requires" output and progress from students."You~" taught 785 before right? Even though whether students find
it helpful or not would still be "i~~relevant",
you would at least have to deliver lectures and prepare notes
before you "can require".By the way, if students want to work with Williams, Shin and Leonard,
could these three professors team up to teach 891 and 892 together?The department once crammed five professors into 610,
why can't you do the same for 891 and 892?All these three are now full professors who have enough time
on their hands to do a little bit more than life-work "balance" -
With my hiring experience, Chinese strategy PhDs usually find a Chinese faculty to be their advisors. And some also just generally focus on China-related political research. You can easily find candidate examples like this at aom, ccc, and the job market.
Like all econ/b-school fields, it is filled with Chinese too. All of them doing copy-paste work from finance/accounting journals.
True. We are hiring and I have been reviewing the job candidates this year. What they do in JMPs is copy-pasting finance/accounting ideas. The novel data in those papers is only new to the strategy field.
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With my hiring experience, Chinese strategy PhDs usually find a Chinese faculty to be their advisors. And some also just generally focus on China-related political research. You can easily find candidate examples like this at aom, ccc, and the job market.
Like all econ/b-school fields, it is filled with Chinese too. All of them doing copy-paste work from finance/accounting journals.
True. We are hiring and I have been reviewing the job candidates this year. What they do in JMPs is copy-pasting finance/accounting ideas. The novel data in those papers is only new to the strategy field.
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I echo this as I meet some nonmarket or political strategy candidates this year…
With my hiring experience, Chinese strategy PhDs usually find a Chinese faculty to be their advisors. And some also just generally focus on China-related political research. You can easily find candidate examples like this at aom, ccc, and the job market.
Like all econ/b-school fields, it is filled with Chinese too. All of them doing copy-paste work from finance/accounting journals.
True. We are hiring and I have been reviewing the job candidates this year. What they do in JMPs is copy-pasting finance/accounting ideas. The novel data in those papers is only new to the strategy field.