Thank You and Goodbye! Reflections of a Departing Editor-in-Chief

Abstract

How quickly time flies! It seems like only yesterday when I took up the editorship of Organization Studies (OSS) and the editorial office moved to Athens in late August 2003. Writing up what has taken place in the past five years seems separated by only a few minutes from writing the Editorial five years ago, in which we described our plans and articulated the vision for the journal! The triumph of kairos over chronos. Soon after the leading editorial team (the Editor-in-Chief and the initially two Co-editors) started, we wrote in our first Editorial that we had three objectives upon taking over: first, to make OSS a global journal; second, to articulate and inspire a new commanding intellectual vision which, while grounded in the social sciences at large (the differentiating feature of OSS, historically), would seek to advance an ‘ecological’ style of thinking by actively seeking theoretical cross-fertilization, overcoming long-held dualisms, making links between different levels of analysis, and looking for insights from different disciplines; and third, to adhere to the highest quality standards, both intellectually and operationally (Tsoukas, Garud and Hardy, 2003). Our overarching vision was to make Organization Studies the hub of a learning community of authors, reviewers, editors and readers, whose defining characteristics were a passion for ideas, open-minded intellectual curiosity, collegiate critique and uncompromising adherence to the highest scholarly standards. Our aim was to enhance OSS’s academic reputation so that it entered the league of the top 10 international management journals. That was what we set out to do five years ago. What have we achieved?