Thatcher, an expert in the area of team faultlines and conflict, has been a trailblazer in educating young scholars on how to write conceptual manuscripts. As editor-in-chief of the Academy of Management Review, the top conceptual journal of the field, Thatcher has developed training materials and conducted workshops virtually and around the world in countries such as Egypt, Argentina, Australia, England, Switzerland, Brazil and Spain. During the past 2.5 years, Thatcher and her team have provided guidance to over 7,000 scholars interested in publishing a conceptual manuscript.

Management and Entrepreneurship – Faculty

When Sherry Thatcher became editor-in-chief of the Academy of Management Review (AMR) in 2021, she had a vision of intentional inclusion. She wanted scholars from all types of universities and geographic locations to know that their diverse voices are important, valuable and essential to the future of management theory. Thus, Thatcher developed several initiatives to ensure that scholars around the world view publishing in AMR, the top conceptual journal in the management field, as attainable.

“There are thousands of brilliant scholars who have not had the luxury of strong theoretical training. I love that I am able to use my position to provide scholars with the knowledge, training and belief that their voices are valuable and necessary in management theory,” Thatcher says.

One initiative is the design and creation of training tools that are used to facilitate workshops virtually and around the world. Over the last year, in-person workshops have been conducted in Singapore, Barcelona, Madrid, Durham, Cairo, Queensland, Buenos Aires, Sao Paolo and Warsaw. Future in-person workshops are planned for Copenhagen, Auckland, Sydney and Bath, as well as here in Knoxville.

Several virtual workshops have been conducted that focused on participants from certain regions (e.g., Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean), from certain populations (e.g., members of the Ph.D. Project) and who have certain research interests (e.g., trust, time).

The Bridge Reviewer program is another initiative spearheaded by Thatcher. The Bridge Reviewer program is designed to provide young scholars, who are often intimidated by the idea of reviewing for a top conceptual journal, with the opportunity to act as a shadow reviewer. Graduated Bridge Reviewers have remarked that they not only feel more confident about reviewing for AMR, they are also more likely to submit their research to AMR.

A third initiative, AMR’s Origins Series, is a series of interviews of recent AMR authors. These interviews are designed to demystify where theory comes from and are intended to encourage scholars to submit their work to AMR. The interviews are posted on YouTube and on a variety of podcasts in an effort to reach a wide number of scholars.

Thatcher remarks, “It is an incredible honor to be editor-in-chief of AMR. I hope that these initiatives spur growth in the number of AMR submissions from scholars across the globe and with diverse perspectives. Our conceptual scholarship needs to reflect the increasingly complex and diverse world we live in. Intentional inclusion can make this a reality.”

Thatcher recently joined the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Haslam College of Business as the Skinner Professor of Business. Thatcher plans to bring her intentional inclusion perspective to UT, where her research interests include diversity, identity and conflict. Further, she is one of the leading experts on team faultlines. Her work appears in the top journals of her field. Thatcher teaches the undergraduate course on intercultural management and will be teaching a Ph.D. class on writing theory.