14 years ago, Maurice Yolles and Paul Iles founded the Journal for Organisational Transformation and Social Change (JOTSC) and have been its editors ever since. They have accomplished a lot with a variety of widely cited papers and interesting debates they initiated. Today JOTSC is one of the highest ranked change management journals worldwide. Maurice’s and Paul’s contribution to this cannot be underestimated. Proudly following them as editor in chief of JOTSC it evokes for me the image of standing on the shoulders of giants.
My gratitude is echoed widely in the systems and cybernetics community. Certainly, the backbone of this recognition is the special relationship of JOTSC with the International Society of Systems Sciences (ISSS) which runs a special integration group on organisational transformation and social change (OTSC SIG) at its annual meetings. The upcoming special issue on ISSS 2016 (JOTSC 14.3) will again illustrate this quite profoundly. JOTSC taps independently into the larger systems and cybernetics community with closes ties to the World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics (WOSC), the International Federation of Systems Research (ISFR) and the European Meeting on Cybernetic and Systems Research (EMCSR) just to name the most prominent ones and their adjunct journals, the Systems Research and Behavioural Sciences (SRBS) and Kybernetes. And like the last issue (JOTSC 14.1) shows new developments like those fostered by the Business Systems Laboratories (BSLabs) find their platform in JOTSC.
Following Maurice Yolles and Paul Iles as editor in chief of JOTSC is a great honour for me and it provides a promising opportunity to broaden a systems and cybernetic discourse in the realm of social systems. Being the head of two think tanks, dean of the European School of Governance in the public sphere and president of the Systemic Excellence Group in the private sphere, I very much welcome the chance to forester and facilitate a scientific community which ventures social systems research as a contribution to new thinking for the complex challenges and wicked problems of our global presence.
JOTSC aspires to become the leading journal for inter- and transdisciplinary thinking for social and systemic change which challenges the paradigmatic propositions and paves the way for new solutions. The journal wants to be a hub for facilitating dynamic and innovative debates towards scientific co-creation. In this respect, not only guest editors but the very reviewers shall be recognised, acknowledged and promoted for a broader audience. Co-creating quality lies at the very heart of this understanding of a scientific community. Sure, that calls for a double-blind peer review, and the according technical Editorial Manager platform was already launched, however, this pushes the idea that joint papers with two to four authors shall be preferred over single author papers. Feedback rules! And a vivid discussion of peers shall be reflected in the journal and carry forward scientific co-creation.
This aspiration has formal and technical implications. The first is indeed the technical facilitation of a double-blind peer review. JOTSC was launched recently on Taylor & Francis Editorial Manager platform. Certainly, we will see a few hick-ups before the journal runs in a steady sate again, however, the first experiences are very promising. In consequence, further submissions need to go through the journals website and enter directly into the Editorial Manager. With the submission comes the invitation to review other papers and become member of this ambitious community.
Fostering this community, the idea is to move the journal towards a string of special issues which are dedicated to new, relevant topics. So, it will be rather guest editors issuing specific calls for papers which shape the agenda. Since the journal already attracts some attention along these lines it will be very likely to move to a quarterly, adding one issue more per year. And while these are rather formal aspects the actual vision reaches out to become a relevant journal for a broader public which eventually hits the well-assorted newsstands, not only at stations and airports.
Programmatically JOTSC wants to explore the conditions of the possibilities of paradigms, cultures, social design and social practices as well as their implications. The addressed scientific frame remains systems and cybernetics working towards a deeper understanding of social systems research. Methodologically anything goes, as long as it is, in terms of academic rigour, well described. Certainly, there is a preference for contemporary approaches such as action research, learning journeys and critical narrative theory. This comes with the fascination of participatory research in moments when the future is still open and not determined. There is a preference for auto ethnography which acknowledges not only the participation of the researcher but the implications of the research for the researchers and their individual development. And finally, social systems research needs to refocus sense making and meaning creation as the embedding paradigmatic dynamics of groups, organisations and societies. Hence not only research projects and their findings drive the journal’s agenda but equally well-reasoned ideas and speculations in an early stage which want to test their potential to gather attention and open new fields for new thinking.
JOTSC will be a community’s journal, with an agenda shaped by guest editors, authors and reviewers co-creating the innovative thinking we need for solutions for the global and complex challenges of our times. I am looking forward to serving the JOTSC community as Maurice and Paul did it in the last 14 years, being relieved that they will continue to contribute as associated editors to the further course of the journal. With a deep sense of gratitude, it is our finest obligation now to build on the foundations those giants provided.