Research in Management

This series is sponsored by the Southern Management Association (SMA) as part of its research and publication mission for SMA members, Academy of Management members, and the profession at large. We sincerely appreciate the work of former SMA President Pamela L. Perrewé (Florida State University) and the SMA Board of Governors in commissioning this series and in approving of this affiliation. As envisioned, the role of this series is to complement and not compete with the SMA's scholarly journal, the Journal of Management. As part of the series' charter with the SMA, this series will publish the paper that wins the overall best paper award at the Annual SMA Meeting (subject to the author[s] consent). This best paper will appear as the first chapter in each volume and determine the general topic of the volume; the remaining chapters will then be invited from prominent scholars in the area and will be designed to complement the initial chapter and build a thematically coherent volume.

In conclusion, this volume highlights research and conceptual insights into one of the most basic, and yet, perplexing research issues in management-handling and assessing the comparability of our measurement devices across groups and measures. One of the most consistently difficult concerns in management research over the past three decades has been trying to reconcile measurement equivalence issues utilizing diverse samples. Given the emphasis on diversity in the human resources area and the internationalization of business and management, measurement equivalence is more of a general concern now than ever before. If we are not able to successfully address concerns about measurement equivalence, research examining differences between groups could be highly misleading and/or erroneous. Consequently, we hope that the thoughtful contributions of the scholars in this volume will help future scholars to better address measurement equivalence concerns.