A CONTENT ANALYSIS OF SIX MANAGEMENT JOURNALS ALONG SELECTED DIMENSIONS OF GENERAL BUSINESS MANAGEMENT: 1966-1986

The purpose of this study was to examine the content of a sample of six representative journals in the field of management, for the years 1966 through 1986, to ascertain trends and emphasis along four dimensions of general business management--"planning, organizing, motivating, and controlling." The journals selected were the Administrative Science Quarterly, Harvard Business Review, Journal of Business, Management Science, Public Administration Review, and the Sloan Management Review. The findings from this examination were interpreted for their meaning to college faculty and students studying general business management. All 2,085 articles in the six journals were examined of which 731 focused on one of the four dimensions of management and were selected for the following analysis: first, the number of articles per journal, per year, for each dimension of management; second, by article length (which was converted into standard inches for comparative purposes); and third, by percentage of articles and number of standard inches along a dimension of management by year and over the entire time frame of the study. The findings revealed that the journals taken altogether were consistent in the number of articles on and standard inches devoted to the four dimensions of management during the period of examination. When looking at the journals individually, and interpreting their usefulness to college faculty and students of management, the Harvard Business Review and the Public Administration Review revealed a balance in their treatment of the dimensions of management analyzed, making them good general resources for management students and faculty; whereas the Journal of Business provided the least balance (with no consideration for the dimension "organizing") making it the most specialized. More so than the other publications, the ASO gave attention to "planning," the SMR to "controlling," and the MS to the four management dimensions as a group in proportion to its total content. Among the four management dimensions, "controlling" was given the most attention by the aggregate of six journals in terms of number of articles and standard inches.