Date/Time
Date(s) - 17/04/2026 9:00 am - 12:00 pm
Audience:
NARTI Online Training & Development
Writing for Publication and Impact: Guidance and Tips Masterclass
With Professors Stephanie Decker and Emmanuella Plakoyiannaki
Friday 17th April 2026 (09.00-12.00 UK time)
Online via Zoom
We are pleased to welcome Professors Stephanie Decker (University of Birmingham) and Emmanuella Plakoyiannaki (University of Vienna) to share their expertise and experience in writing for publication and impact. The masterclass is open to researchers at all study levels and career stages, and we hope that you can join us.
Schedule:
09.00-10.00
Publication Strategies: How to target the academic journal and increase your chances for success with Stephanie Decker
You’ve done the research, now you want to publish it – but how? And where? As everyone talks about publish-or-perish, it feels urgent, but sky-high rejection rates also make it feel like an uphill struggle. In this workshop, we will start with the reasons to publish, how to figure out what the right journals are for your work, preparing your research for publication by thinking of your audience, and, crucially, providing pointers for your editor. We discuss how to respond to reviewer comments and handle “reject” decisions. Finally, we discuss how to get better at publishing: using conferences to gain feedback, better understanding your audience, and learning how to frame a contribution.
10.00-10.10
Comfort break
10.10-11.10
Publishing Qualitative Research in Business and Management: Key Challenges and Pathways Forward with Emmanuella Plakoyiannaki
In this presentation, Emmanuella draws on her extensive editorial experience to examine the key challenges associated with reporting and publishing qualitative research in business and management, and to propose constructive ways forward. Despite growing methodological openness, qualitative manuscripts are often assessed through implicitly positivist standards that privilege large samples, statistical generalizability, and procedural transparency over depth, contextual richness, and interpretive insight.
Through her experience handling qualitative submissions, she frequently encounters challenges related to unclear philosophical foundations and the role of theory in qualitative inquiry; concerns about the authenticity of data collection and analysis; misconceptions regarding appropriate quality criteria; and difficulties in articulating meaningful theoretical contributions. She also observes that authors sometimes struggle to justify their methodological choices coherently, occasionally relying on formulaic descriptions rather than demonstrating their own methodological agency in the field.
Emmanuella argues that successfully publishing qualitative research requires coherence between philosophical foundations and methodological choices enacted in the field.
11.10-11.20
Comfort break
11.20-11.40
Writing for Impact: Speaking to Practitioners with Stephanie Decker
Much of what academics do is speak to one another. But what if you actually want to reach a variety of practitioners who have a direct stake or interest in your research? Maybe you are going for an engagement-and-impact career path, or you are thinking about pursuing an education-only path, but you want to keep up with publishing? Publishing in academic journals is slow, feedback can take a long time, be unreasonable or difficult to implement, and not offer you great career advantages or personal satisfaction. There are a range of opportunities: The Conversation, scholarly and professional blogs (LSE’s Impact blog, BAM’s Business Research Unpacked, sector-specific or university-run publications), and the business press like Harvard Business Review. What is key to publishing for a different audience is to snap out of academic modes of presentation and considering questions such as: What is interesting? Who would be interested in it and why? How much do they know, and what do you they want to know?
11.40-12.00
Q&A
Presenter bios:
Stephanie Decker FAcSS FBAM is Professor of Strategy at Birmingham Business School and Vice Dean of Fellows and Doctoral Symposium Convenor at the British Academy of Management (BAM). She is known for her work at the intersection of history and management studies and has published widely on African business history. Her work has been published in journals such as the Academy of Management Review, Human Relations, Journal of Management Studies, Organization, Business History, and Business History Review (where she won the Henrietta Larson Award for the best article twice). She is the creator and business editor for Business Research Unpacked, the practitioner-focused blog by the BAM.
Emmanuella Plakoyiannaki, FBAM, EIBA Fellow, is Chaired Professor of International Business at the University of Vienna and Visiting Professor at the University of Turku. She serves as Associate Editor of the British Journal of Management and is a member of the editorial review board of the Journal of International Business Studies. Her research focuses on qualitative research methodology and the philosophy of science, as well as SME and family firm internationalization. She has published in leading journals, including the Academy of Management Review, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Journal of International Business Studies, and Journal of World Business, among others. She is a recipient of the JIBS Decade Award (2021) and the Medal for Research of the British Academy of Management (2023).
If you would like to join the session, please register via the link at the top of the email and an outlook invite will be sent to you.