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name: jms-workflow description: Use when deciding which jms-* sub-skill to invoke next, or when sequencing manuscript work from topic through rebuttal for a Journal of Management Studies (JMS) submission. Routes — it does not replace — the specialized skills.

JMS Workflow Router (jms-workflow)

Overview

This is the router. It tells you which jms- skill to use at the current stage* of a manuscript aimed at the Journal of Management Studies (JMS) — the Society for the Advancement of Management Studies (SAMS) journal published by Wiley, an internationally oriented, European-rooted outlet for management and organization studies: strategy, organization theory, entrepreneurship, innovation, OB, and the broader study of management. JMS's defining trait is methodological pluralism: it publishes strong quantitative and strong qualitative / interpretive / process / theory-building work, plus Point–CounterPoint debates and JMS Says essays. What earns space is a genuine theoretical contribution engaged with an organizational phenomenon — the "so what for management theory and practice."

Default assumption: unless the user says otherwise, treat the target as JMS. Tells that you are at JMS and not a sibling: double-blind review with full anonymisation; Harvard author-date referencing; a typical length of 10,000–13,000 words inclusive of tables/figures/references; submission via ScholarOne (mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jmstudies); editorial office at Durham University; and a house culture that treats a rigorous qualitative case or process study as first-class rather than second-best. Mark volatile specifics (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准).

When to trigger

• The user asks "what should I do next?" on a JMS-bound paper
• A draft needs its current bottleneck diagnosed
• Work is ping-ponging between theory, design, evidence, framing, writing, and the response letter
• A JMS decision letter arrived and the user needs to switch into revision mode

Routing table

Current symptom	Next skill
Topic feels narrow / not clearly a management-theory question	jms-topic-selection
The theoretical mechanism / propositions are thin or borrowed	jms-theory-development
Contribution vs. the conversation is fuzzy or oversold	jms-literature-positioning
Design (qual/quant/multi-method) does not fit the theory	jms-methods
Estimation, coding, or trustworthiness of the analysis is weak	jms-data-analysis
The "so what for theory & practice" is not sharp	jms-contribution-framing
Tables/figures (or a data structure / process figure) are dense	jms-tables-figures
Prose buries the idea; abstract/intro do not land	jms-writing-style
Anonymisation, Harvard refs, word count, portal preflight	jms-submission
Want to understand the developmental review timeline / desk-reject odds	jms-review-process
Received an R&R; need a response-letter strategy	jms-rebuttal

Default order

1. jms-topic-selection — lock a phenomenon-grounded management question
2. jms-theory-development — build the mechanism / propositions (or hypotheses)
3. jms-literature-positioning — stake the contribution to a live conversation
4. jms-methods — match design to the question (qual / quant / multi-method)
5. jms-data-analysis — estimation or qualitative trustworthiness
6. jms-contribution-framing — sharpen the "so what for theory & practice"
7. jms-tables-figures — exhibits, data tables, process / data-structure figures
8. jms-writing-style — make the idea land (abstract + intro last)
9. jms-submission — ScholarOne preflight (anonymisation, Harvard, word count)
10. jms-review-process — calibrate the developmental, multi-round culture
11. jms-rebuttal — after the R&R

jms-writing-style is a late-stage polish; do not rewrite the intro before the theory and evidence settle. For qualitative work, theory and data co-evolve, so cycle 2↔4↔5 more than once.

Routing by paper archetype

JMS spans four archetypes, and the binding constraint differs by archetype. Read the archetype, then enter the chain at the right link.

Archetype	Likely first bottleneck	Enter at
qualitative / grounded theory-building (cases, ethnography)	data-to-construct transparency + theoretical model from data	jms-theory-development → jms-methods
process / longitudinal (how things unfold over time)	temporal bracketing, mechanism, narrative-to-theory	jms-theory-development → jms-data-analysis
quantitative hypothesis-testing (survey / archival)	endogeneity, CMB, a non-bald mechanism	jms-methods → jms-data-analysis
Point–CounterPoint / review essay / JMS Says	a contestable claim + a conversation worth moving	jms-contribution-framing → jms-literature-positioning

Worked routing example (illustrative)

A user says: "My inductive study of how family firms professionalise is rich, but a reviewer says the contribution is 'a nice description, not theory,' and the data structure is hard to follow." That is two JMS pushbacks — no abstracted theoretical model and opaque data-to-theory chain — owned by jms-theory-development (abstract the first-order codes into second-order themes and aggregate dimensions, then a process model) and jms-tables-figures (a Gioia-style data-structure figure plus a representative-quotes table). Route to theory first; only once the emergent model is crisp do you return to exhibits and jms-contribution-framing.

Anti-patterns

• Treating JMS like AMJ (US hypothetico-deductive default), Organization Studies (more EGOS / process-theoretical), Journal of Management (SMA, US general/meta-analytic), or SMJ (strategy-economics) — JMS is the SAMS pluralist outlet that genuinely welcomes strong qualitative work
• Polishing prose before the theoretical contribution and evidence hierarchy are stable
• Forcing a qualitative study into a hypotheses-and-controls template, or judging it by quant criteria
• Letting an online appendix carry claims the 13,000-word main text must establish

Output format

【Target】Journal of Management Studies (JMS)
【Archetype】qualitative / process / quantitative / Point-CounterPoint
【Current bottleneck】topic / theory / positioning / design / evidence / framing / exhibits / style / submission / revision
【Next skill】<one jms-* skill>
【Reason】why this step is the binding constraint
【Source check】official facts verified or marked 待核实