Editors’ Comment

When developing the Call for Proposals for Group & Organization Management’s (GOM) Conceptual Issue, we had lengthy discussions with colleagues and with each other about the best way to phrase the Call, and to increase the likelihood that potential authors would submit viable proposals. However, these conversations quickly turned to questions regarding “what is a conceptual paper?” Are conceptual papers just papers without data? Are conceptual papers different from theoretical papers? What about review papers, are they different from these? Within the management field, we tend to group nonempirical papers into theory, review, or commentary/critique pieces (Cropanzano, 2009). So, what is a conceptual paper? To some extent, the answer to each of the questions posed above is, “yes, but not quite.” Thus, in the Call for Proposals, we noted that “beyond summarizing recent research, manuscripts should provide an integration of literatures, offer an integrated framework, provide value added, and highlight directions for future inquiry. Papers are not expected to offer empirical data.” So, what does this really mean?