Administrative Science Quarterly (administrative-science-quarterly)

Journal positioning

ASQ, published from Cornell, is one of the most selective and prestigious outlets in management and the home of organization theory and the sociology of organizations. It publishes deep, craft-intensive work — both qualitative and quantitative — whose defining feature is a major theoretical contribution to how we understand organizations as social systems. ASQ is not a place for incremental hypothesis-tweaking or applied results; it rewards papers that are theoretically ambitious, beautifully executed, and that other organizational scholars will treat as foundational. The audience is organizational sociologists and theorists, so the contribution must be conceptual, not merely empirical.

This skill is a fit / venue-selection / re-framing tool. It does not replace the journal's current official submission guidelines. Before submitting, re-check the live author instructions on the ASQ / Cornell / SAGE site and the submission system.

When to trigger

• The author names ASQ (or the elite organization-theory tier / FT50 management list) as the venue.
• A paper makes a genuine organization-theory contribution and is executed with exceptional craft, qualitative or quantitative.
• A strong empirical org study needs re-framing so the theoretical contribution — not the finding — leads.
• The author needs ASQ's desk-reject risks and a credible organization-science / academy-of-management-journal / organization-studies alternative list.

Scope & topic fit