Group & Organization Management 2015, Vol. 40(2) 127–130 © The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1059601115576425 gom.sagepub.com Editorial Editors’ Comment: So, What Is a Conceptual Paper? Lucy L. Gilson 1 and Caren B. Goldberg 2 When developing the Call for Proposals for Group & Organization Management’s (GOM) Conceptual Issue, we had lengthy discussions with colleagues and with each other about the best way to phrase the Call, and to increase the likelihood that potential authors would submit viable proposals. However, these conversations quickly turned to questions regarding “what is a conceptual paper?” Are conceptual papers just papers without data? Are conceptual papers different from theoretical papers? What about review papers, are they different from these? Within the management field, we tend to group nonempirical papers into theory, review, or commentary/critique pieces (Cropanzano, 2009). So, what is a conceptual paper? To some extent, the answer to each of the questions posed above is, “yes, but not quite.” Thus, in the Call for Proposals, we noted that “beyond summarizing recent research, manuscripts should provide an integration of literatures, offer an integrated framework, provide value added, and highlight directions for future inquiry. Papers are not expected to offer empirical data.” So, what does this really mean? The simplest question to answer is that of whether conceptual papers are simply papers without data. Yes, conceptual papers do not have data, because their focus is on integration and proposing new relationships among con- structs. Thus, the onus is on developing logical and complete arguments for associations rather than testing them empirically. The “but not quite” part of the response to this question centers on the fact that there are plenty of papers that have no data, but which, nonetheless are not what we would consider conceptual papers. 1 University of Connectuct, Storrs CT, USA 2 George Mason Univesrity, Fairfax VA, USA Corresponding Author: Emails: lgilson@business.uconn.edu; caren.goldberg@yahoo.com 576425GOM XX X 10.1177/1059601115576425Group & Organization ManagementGilson and Goldberg research-article 2015