Editor's Notes

• Published date: 01 September 2019
• Date: 01 September 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nml.21393
• Author: Mark A. Hager

EDITOR'S NOTES

In the summer of 2019, I had the pleasure of representing Nonprofit Management & Leadership at

the fourth annual conference sponsored by the Association for Research on Civil Society in Africa

(AROCSA) and the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action

(ARNOVA). The Nairobi, Kenya meeting provided my first opportunity to discuss the journal with a

predominantly African audience. I advanced my common talking point that prospective authors can

benefit from understanding and connecting with the literature, research questions, and prevailing

language of the field. For the first time, I referred to a field and journal “culture,”where an author's

behavior marks him or her as a cultural insider or outsider, with consequences for whether manu-

scripts gain acceptance among critics and editors. I thought this an important point to emphasize at

this meeting, as manuscripts outside the United States, Canada, and western Europe often struggle

when their research questions and language feel foreign to field insiders.

I wish I had more time to discuss this and other questions with the conference audience, but I was

one of three panelists, questions and topics ranged widely, and our panel was immediately followed

by a different one. The African scholars were clearly concerned with their need for respected schol-

arly outlets for their work, and for fair access to publishing in the field's journals. They voiced their

desire for their manuscripts to be reviewed by other Africans, rather than a review panel loaded with

the journal's usual suspects. They voiced a desire for more Africans to be included on the editorial

boards of the field's journals. As AROCSA grows and matures, I suspect we will see more manu-

scripts from Africa, more African reviewers, and more representation generally. That said, I think this

representation will come slowly. China and other parts of Asia are ahead of most of Africa in their

alignment with the nonprofit studies field, and China, too, is underrepresented in the field's venues.

The field has become much more international and interconnected over the past ten years. I expect

the same degree of change in the coming ten.

This change is reflected in the offerings of Nonprofit Management & Leadership. Last week, my

home was in disarray as we prepared to have some of our rooms painted. Excavation of shelves

uncovered a 2011 issue of the journal that included one of my own articles (Volume 22, Issue 2).

I was struck by the thinness of the issue: four articles, a case study, and a “from the field”entry covering

113 pages. In contrast, the current 2019 issue of the journal features seven articles and two research notes

covering 169 pages, the thickest issue of the journal ever.

While the 2011 issue did include contributions from Canada, the United Kingdom, and Italy,

today's Nonprofit Management & Leadership is publishing a broader scope of international offerings.

The lead article in the current issue features work on funder-grantee reputations by German scholars

studying the United Kingdom. Shin and Choi report on innovation among human service organi-

zations in South Korea. Brudney, Meijs, and Vogel report on volunteer management in the

Netherlands, while Chui and Chan address a different dimension of this topic in Hong Kong.

Marberg and colleagues provide more insights from the Netherlands, and Asarkaya and Taysir

report on social entrepreneurship in Turkey. The issue rounds out with collaborative research

from scholars in Vietnam, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia. Articles from

the United States are a distinct minority, representedonlybyBrimhall'sworkoninclusionand

commitment, and Knapp and colleagues' research on trust. Today's Nonprofit Management &

Leadership is thick, broad, and international. No Africa in this issue, but that will come.

Mark A. Hager, Ph.D.

Editor

DOI: 10.1002/nml.21393

Nonprofit Management and Leadership. 2019;30:7–8. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/nml © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 7