ABDC A* PUBLICATIONS
The Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) publishes a ranking of journals in the business and management space. Roughly, the top 5%-7% peer-reviewed academic journals are classified as A*. Over the years, I have published 10 ABDC A* research articles (plus an editorial and four reviews).
Research Papers
Spoor, J. R., Jameson, T., Billsberry, J., & Vogus, T. J. (2026). A design for all: De-neurotypicalizing business schools and achieving substantive performativity. Academy of Management Learning & Education. https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2025.0023
Neurodivergent people experience significant disadvantages obtaining and maintaining employment. Locating our analysis at the intersection of the performativity, neurodiversity, and role of business school literatures, we argue that business schools exacerbate these issues by being designed and operated around neurotypical culture, curriculum, and teaching practices. Substantively redressing these issues and making business schools neuroinclusive requires more than the symbolic performativity that is typically the case with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Instead, there is an urgent need to move to substantive performativity through a process that we call de-neurotypicalizing the business school. De-neurotypicalization involves challenging and changing the implicit neurotypical assumptions that pervade business school education and work practices. A key mechanism is applying universal design principles to both learning and work. By taking substantive actions toward de-neurotypicalization, we argue that business schools will make business education genuinely open to both neurodivergent and neurotypical people. Our analysis also advances theory on DEI in business schools by illustrating that universal design offers an inclusive solution to broader equity concerns.
Volk, S., Billsberry, J., & Ambrosini, V. (2026). Rise and shine: A circadian perspective on learning and wellbeing in management education. Academy of Management Learning & Education. https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2024.0210
In this essay, we argue that lack of attention to circadian health is undermining learning and well-being in business schools. We draw on research in chronobiology to explain how the normalization of sleep deprivation and misaligned circadian rhythms negatively affect not only students’ health and well-being but also their learning capacity and work performance. In our call to action, we urge business schools to challenge the institutionalization of poor circadian health as an acceptable aspect of management education and management careers. To this end, we discuss how educating students about circadian principles of management and leadership can help them improve their own well-being and productivity and better lead others through knowledge of how biological rhythms interact with workplace practices. We also critically analyze how current approaches to teaching and learning in business schools can be better aligned with stu- dents’ circadian predispositions and natural rhythms of learning, working, and living. In doing so, we make a contribution by demonstrating how a circadian perspective can help business schools cultivate healthier and more productive cultures within their institutions and empower students to foster similar environments in their future industries and professions.
Escobar Vega, C., Billsberry, J., Molineux, J., & Lowe, K. B. (2025). The development of implicit leadership theories during childhood: A reconceptualization through the lens of overlapping waves theory. Psychological Review. 132(3), 719-743. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000484
Implicit leadership theories (ILTs) are people’s lay theories, definitions, or conceptualizations of leadership. In adults, they determine what actions we perceive as leadership, influence to whom we grant leadership status, and shape our own behaviors when we want to be seen as leader. Naturally, there has been an enduring interest in how these ILTs develop in children. Current theorizing on the development of leadership conceptualizations in children aligns with a stepwise progression mirroring Piaget’s stage-based approach to cognitive development. However, contemporary approaches to cognitive development, such as Siegler’s overlapping waves theory, acknowledge that children’s development is linked to cognitive success and failure. This paper integrates the findings from empirical studies into children’s leadership conceptualizations and reinterprets them against overlapping waves theory. This reinterpretation resolves findings that align poorly with a stepwise approach and demonstrates a strong fit with overlapping waves theory. As such, children’s leadership conceptualizations develop by generating and testing cognitive approaches – physical-spatio-temporal, functional, socio-emotional, and humanitarian – and instead of progressing through these in order and according to age, they display variation and selection, that with experience and exposure, lay down selective combinations, which often engage multiple dimensions simultaneously. Consequently, the development of children’s understanding of leaders is non-linear, can be multidimensional, and is based on trial and error largely in response to their experiences. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for future research and practice.
Billsberry, J., Ambrosini, V., & Thomas, L. (2023). Managerialist control in post-pandemic business schools: The tragedy of the new normal and a new hope. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 22(3), 439–458. https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2022.0167
As neoliberalism gained a hold in the 1980s, universities mirrored this societal change and implemented managerialist forms of control. By the time the COVID-19 pandemic struck, business schools had become bastions of managerialism. In Australia, this dominant paradigm was challenged through three phases of the pandemic. In the first, managerialist controls were greatly loosened, with positive results. In the second, Australian business schools’ leaders reintroduced managerialist control and embedded this in the third phase, the “new normal,” revealing how pernicious they are. First, we question why leaders missed an opportunity to build on the motivational benefits of the first phase when academics demonstrated their capacity to self-manage and adapt quickly. Second, we question why academics did not capitalize on the loosening of control they experienced early in the pandemic and failed to assert themselves as the pandemic subsided. By exposing the differences between current leaders and academics in their ability to overhaul the managerialist paradigm, we theorize how managerialism might be unseated. We clarify the mechanisms through which this can occur: infiltrating the system and collective action. Recognizing the interdependence of academics, business schools, and society, such action can erode managerialist control and hasten the arrival of a sustainability-oriented future.
Vleugels, W., Verbruggen, M., De Cooman, R., & Billsberry, J. (2023). A systematic review of temporal person–environment fit research: Trends, developments, obstacles, and opportunities for future research. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 44(2), 376-398. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2607
In this systematic review, we present a comprehensive overview of the temporal per- son environment (PE) fit literature. To this end, we organize and integrate extant temporal fit research and discuss research trends and developments in the temporal domain. Our analysis reveals that temporal conceptualizations of fit vary in terms of change process (transitional, developmental, transformational), level of aggregation (situational vs. baseline level), and temporal frame (clock time vs. psychological time), all of which divide the temporal fit literature in significant ways. Furthermore, our analysis shows that progress in the temporal fit domain has been confined by five major obstacles: An emphasis on selection and socialization processes, a narrow focus on the between-person level of analysis, preoccupation with linear change, a strong interest in normal causation questions, and a lack of attention to misfit. We conclude with a discussion of the research challenges that lie ahead and provide suggestions to tackle these challenges and expand temporal PE fit research in new directions.
Munoz, A., Billsberry, J., & Ambrosini, V. (2022). Resilience, robustness, and antifragility: Towards an appreciation of distinct organizational responses to adversity. International Journal of Management Reviews, 24(2), 181-187. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12289 (A when published, A* now)
Hillmann and Guenther provide an extensive review of research into organizational resilience in which they examine the different conceptualisations of the concept and their associated measurement scales. Their article emphasises stability, rather than other domains such as growth, as core to organizational resilience. We argue that this emphasis does not acknowledge the overlap between resilience and associated but distinctly different concepts like robustness and antifragility as observable phenomena in organizational responses to adversity. To extend Hillmann and Guenther’s work, we therefore conceptually contrast resilience with robustness and antifragility so that future research might craft a more nuanced understanding of the presence of all three concepts in management research, which is currently dominated by resilience.
Billsberry, J., Ambrosini, V., Garrido-Lopez, M., & Stiles, D. (2019). Towards a non-essentialist approach to management education: Philosophical underpinnings from phenomenography. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 18(4), 626-638.
The classic approach to management education is managercentric and assumes an essential nature to management. Drawing on ideas from interpretivist epistemologies, the social construction of leadership, phenomenography, and variation theory, we discuss the implications for management education of taking a non-essentialist approach and regarding the nature of management as unknown and unknowable. We focus on phenomenography for two reasons: First, when applied to the task of defining management, it is built on interpretivist roots where the knowledge and understanding of the observer is paramount. Second, it is also a theory of learning with direct appli- cation to management research and teaching. Building on these insights, we highlight the importance of students becoming active investigators of management and offer practical teaching implications on how students might be encouraged to engage in experiences that identify variations in the ways that management is conceptualized and performed. We also consider how such an approach brings a fresh perspective on what management education is about, the role of the educator, and how it informs the ongoing debates relating to the institutional pressures that business schools face.
Follmer, E. H., Talbot, D. L., Kristof-Brown, A. L., Astrove, S. L. , & Billsberry, J. (2018). Resolution, relief, and resignation: A qualitative study of responses to misfit at work. Academy of Management Journal, 61(2), 440-465.
Research has portrayed person–environment (PE) fit as a pleasant condition resulting from people being attracted to and selected into compatible work environments; yet, our study reveals that creating and maintaining a sense offit frequently involves an effortful, dynamic set of strategies. We used a two-phase, qualitative design to allow employees to report how they become aware of and experience misfit, and what they do in response. To address these questions, we conducted interviews with 81 individuals sampled from diverse industries and occupations. Through their descriptions, we identified three broad responses to the experience of misfit: resolution, relief, and resignation. Within these approaches, we identified distinct strategies for responding to misfit. We present a model of how participants used these strategies, often in combination, and develop propositions regarding their effectiveness at reducing strain associated with misfit. These results expand PE fit theory by providing new insight into how individuals experience and react to misfit—portraying them as active, motivated creators oftheir own fit experience at work.
Billsberry, J., Mueller, J., Skinner, J., Swanson, S., Corbett, B., & Ferkins, L. (2018). Reimagining leadership in sport management: Lessons from the social construction of leadership. Journal of Sport Management, 32(2), 170-182. (A* when published, A now)
Conventional approaches to leadership in sport management regard leadership as a leader-centric phenomenon. Recent advances in the generic leadership literature have highlighted the way that people construct their own understanding of leadership and shown that these influence their assessment and responses to people they regard as leaders. This observer-centric perspective is collectively known as the social construction of leadership. In this conceptual paper, we demonstrate how this emerging theoretical approach can reframe and invigorate our understanding of leadership in sport management. We explore the research implications of this new approach, reflect on what this might mean for teaching, and discuss the practical ramifications for leadership in sport management that might flow from the adoption of this approach.
Barton, L., Billsberry, J., Ambrosini, V., & Barton, H. (2014). Convergence and divergence dynamics in UK and French business schools: How will the pressure for accreditation influence these dynamics? British Journal of Management, 25(2), 305-319. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12007 (A when published, A* now)
This paper focuses on convergence and divergence dynamics among leading British and French business schools and explores how the pressure for accreditation influences these dynamics. We illustrate that despite historical differences in approaches to management education in Britain and France, these approaches have converged partly based on the influence of the American model of management education but more recently through the pursuit of accreditation, in particular from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business and the European Quality Improvement Standard. We explore these dynamics through the application of the resource-based view of the firm and institutional theory and suggest that, whilst achieving accreditation is a necessary precursor for international competition, it is no longer a form of competitive advantage. The pursuit of accreditation has fostered a form of competitive mimicry reducing national distinctive- ness. The resource-based view of the firm suggests that the top schools need a more heterogeneous approach that is not easily replicable if they are to outperform the competitors. Consequently, the convergence of management education in Britain and France will become a new impetus for divergence. We assert that future growth and competitive advantage might be better achieved through the reassertion of national, regional and local cultural characteristics.
Editorial and Reviews
Billsberry, J., Köhler, T., Stratton, M., Cohen, M., & Taylor, M. S. (2019). Introduction to the special issue on rhythms of academic life. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 18(2), 119-127. https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2019.0131
Billsberry, J. (2019). HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Leadership Lessons from Sports by Harvard Business Review. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 18(1), 114-116. https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2018.0299
Billsberry, J. (2019). Concussion (and other off-field sport business movies), by Peter Landesman (Director), & Elizabeth Cantillon, Giannina Scott, Ridley Scott, Larry Shuman, & David Wolthoff (Producers). Academy of Management Learning & Education, 18(1), 112-114. https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2018.0298
Billsberry, J., Talbot, D., Nelson, P. C., Edwards, J. A., Godrich, S. G., Davidson, R. A. G., & Carter, C. J. P. (2010). The people make the place: Dynamic linkages between individuals and organizations edited by D. Brent Smith, Personnel Psychology, 63(2), 483-487.
Billsberry, J., Edwards, J. A., Talbot, D., Nelson, P. C., Davidson, R. A. G., Godrich, S. G., & Marsh, P. J. G. (2009). Perspectives on Organizatonal Fit edited by Cheri Ostroff and Timothy A. Judge, Personnel Psychology, 62(4), 880-883.
