Contribution Framing & Discussion (jmgmt-contribution-framing)

When to trigger

• Results are in but the "so what for theory" is vague or missing
• The discussion restates findings instead of advancing the theory
• A reviewer says the contribution is "incremental," "descriptive," or "unclear"
• You can describe what you found but not what the field now knows that it did not before
• A meta-analysis reports corrected effects but never says what theory they settle
• The practical-implications paragraph is generic ("managers should pay attention to X")

The contribution question JOM asks

JOM's gate is the theoretical contribution: what do we now understand about the theory that we did not before? Strong results with no theoretical advance read as a technical report, not a JOM paper — and that is true for empirical papers and for meta-analyses/reviews, which must move theory, not merely tally effects. Because JOM is a general-management journal, the best contributions also travel across subfields: a mechanism uncovered in HR that informs strategy or entrepreneurship is exactly the kind of cross-cutting advance JOM prizes.

Types of theoretical contribution (claim the right one)