Behind the emergence of management scholarly communities in Asia and Africa

Management scholarly communities have recently emerged in Asia and Africa. What are the antecedents behind their rise? What are the processes that facilitate their acceptance by internal and external stakeholders? Drawing on the sociology of science literature, this article develops a model behind the emergence of management scholarly communities underpinned by antecedents and processes. We identify relative deprivation, motivation to excel, and availability of role models as three key antecedents, and differentiation, mobilization, and legitimation as three key processes. We offer propositions based on in-depth analysis of three management scholarly communities in Asia (Asia Academy of Management [AAOM], India Academy of Management [INDAM], and International Association for Chinese Management Research [IACMR]) and one in Africa (Africa Academy of Management [AFAM]). For the first time in the literature, we have compared and contrasted the emergence of management scholarly communities in Asia and Africa, culminating in a model that may be generalizable to other aspiring scholars endeavoring to expand such communities in other parts of the world.