Literature Positioning (jmgmt-literature-positioning)

When to trigger

• The intro reviews the literature but never names the gap it closes
• A reviewer says the contribution is "incremental" or "we already knew this"
• The paper could be read as a near-duplicate of a recent JOM/AMJ piece
• You cite broadly but cannot say which conversation you are joining
• For a review/meta-analysis: you cannot say why a synthesis is needed now

Positioning to the right conversation

JOM is a general-management journal, so the trap is positioning against everything and contributing to nothing. Pick the focal conversation — the specific stream (e.g., the abusive-supervision literature, the dynamic-capabilities debate, the entrepreneurial-orientation–performance relationship) — and stake the gap there. The strongest JOM intros use a problematization move: surface an assumption the literature takes for granted, show it is questionable, and position the paper as resolving the tension. A "gap-spotting" move ("no one has studied X in setting Y") is weaker and reads as incremental.

Differentiating from the siblings (in the text)

Reviewers will be drawn from JOM's neighbors and will ask "why not there?" Pre-empt it in how you frame the contribution: