The mission of Journal of Operations Management (JOM) is to publish original, empirical operations management research that demonstrates both academic and practical relevance.Academic relevance means the research contributes to on-going academic discussions and debates on relevant topics in operations management. All manuscripts published in JOM must, in one way or another, also transcend the immediate empirical context in which the research is embedded. An ideal manuscript is one that simultaneously takes the context seriously (is empirically disciplined) and seeks some sense of generality.Practical relevance means the manuscript links explicitly to an actual, relevant managerial challenge. While manuscripts published in JOM do not necessarily have to give advice to managers, they must have something non-obvious to say about the practice of operations management. In preparing your manuscript, ask yourself: Do I think I could keep a manager interested in talking about my research for an hour? What would I say, what would I argue?An ideal manuscript balances rigor with relevance and offers a novel aspect to a topic of contemporary concern. Novelty does not necessarily mean focusing on emerging phenomena, novel approaches to examinations of established phenomena are equally interesting and relevant.