Obituary

• Published date: 01 March 2020
• Date: 01 March 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12554
• Author: Timothy Clark

© 2020 Society for the Advancement of Management Studies and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Obituary

Timothy Clark

Provost, Singapore Management University

Professor Mike Wright (11 April 1952 – 25 November 2019)

Chair of the Society for the Advancement of Management Studies and

Former Editor of the Journal of Management Studies

News of Mike’s passing has left a great many people in the business and management

community in a state of shock. Mike was an intellectual leader of the first order, collabo-

rator, mentor, role model and standard bearer for a great many people. His passing leaves

a void in many people’s lives and in the community as a whole.

I heard of Mike’s passing as Dave Ketchen and I were finalising the prepublication

process for the second edition of a book the three of us have edited: How to Get Published

in Top Management Journals. Days before I received the news, I had read the page proofs

of Mike’s chapter in which he outlined the strategies he had employed to sustain an in-

credible publication career for over 40 years. Reading it with no knowledge of the news I

would receive a few days later, I was left in awe. What an incredible career. It is not simply

the length of time over which Mike published that is impressive, but also his enormous

adaptability as he developed new areas of research and forged new collaborations. At

the heart of Mike’s professional achievements is not simply his intellectual contributions

through his numerous publication outputs, but the collaborative relationships that un-

derpinned them. Mike was an inherently collaborative person and had a rare ability to

build and rebuild teams over time. He knew how to bring the right people together into a

strong writing team. Going to conferences with him was challenging. He was constantly

darting off to meet this person or that person to push a writing project a little further.

His attention was regularly distracted by messages on his Blackberry and his immediate

response to them.

Mike was a consummate academic. His professional achievements and contributions

were numerous and will endure for years to come. One of these is his contribution to the

development of Journal of Management Studies as one of the leading general management

journals in the world. We were the joint Editors of Journal of Management Studies for 5 years

(2003–08). In this role, I remember a wonderfully dedicated friend who was a ball of en-

ergy with a sharp mind and a strong sense of high standards honed from years of writing,

Journal of Man agement Studi es 57:2 March 2020

doi:10. 1111/j oms .12 55 4