Leadership

http://lea.sagepub.com/

Leadership editorial announcement

Leadership 2013 9: 447
DOI: 10.1177/1742715013503923

The online version of this article can be found at:

http://lea.sagepub.com/content/9/4/447

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

Additional services and information for Leadership can be found at:

Email Alerts: http://lea.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts

Subscriptions: http://lea.sagepub.com/subscriptions

Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav

Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

Citations: http://lea.sagepub.com/content/9/4/447.refs.html

>> Version of Record - Oct 7, 2013

What is This?

Downloaded from lea.sagepub.com at DPB Danmarks on February 4, 2014

Editorial
Leadership
Leadership editorial 9(4) 447–449
! The Author(s) 2013

announcement Reprints and permissions:

sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1742715013503923
lea.sagepub.com

This is the final issue of volume 9 of Leadership and it marks an important milestone in the
evolution of the journal. From January 2014, we will be stepping down as co-editors and
passing over the day-to-day editorial reins to Brad Jackson (University of Auckland,
New Zealand) and Dennis Tourish (Royal Holloway College, University of London). We
would like to extend our many thanks and much appreciation to everyone who has sup-
ported the Leadership journal over the past 10 years (i.e. nine volumes preceded by a year of
preparing the first volume). Most particularly, we wish to acknowledge the vital contribu-
tions of the associate editors, the members of the editorial board, the book review editors,
and the many anonymous reviewers who have served the journal so well during these initial
years. It is precisely because of their generous willingness to volunteer not only their know-
ledge and expertise, but also goodwill, patience and time that the journal has been able to
flourish and to publish high-quality, cutting-edge and critical articles on leadership issues.
Since its inception, these have always been the primary objectives of Leadership: to encour-
age and provide an outlet for critical, interdisciplinary and international perspectives on
leadership-related themes.
After organising the first and second International Studying Leadership Conferences
(ISLC) at Oxford in 2002 and Lancaster in 2003, it was very evident to us both that there
was a nascent community of scholars interested in leadership issues whose critical work had
very few outlet opportunities. On the basis of the success of these early meetings, we decided
to try to support the development of this community of leadership researchers in two pri-
mary ways. First, the conference was established as an annual, multi-disciplinary and inter-
national meeting, encouraging the presentation of innovative theoretical and empirical
studies of leadership dynamics. Subsequent conferences have been held in the UK at
Exeter, Lancaster, Cranfield, Warwick, Birmingham and Bristol, and in New Zealand
(Auckland), Sweden (Lund), Australia (Curtin) and this year in Italy (Rome). Held in
December when there are few competing academic meetings, the ISLC has developed a
reputation for not only being rigorous and critical, but also supportive and constructive
(as well as constructivist!). Conference participants often comment favourably on the helpful
nature of discussions and debates at the ISLC.
Second, we started to consider the possibility of launching a new peer-reviewed academic
journal: one that could provide a platform for the kinds of creative and substantially dif-
ferent papers being presented at the ISLC. In 2003–2004, when discussions began with
colleagues at Sage, leadership research was still dominated by positivist, quantitative, func-
tionalist and US-centred approaches that tended to privilege and elevate the heroic leader,
whilst followers and contexts were largely taken-for-granted and/or ignored. Ten years later,
research on leadership has changed considerably, with many new perspectives and ideas
flourishing and we are delighted that the journal has been able to play its part in this exciting

Downloaded from lea.sagepub.com at DPB Danmarks on February 4, 2014

448 Leadership 9(4)

expansion of innovative leadership theories, research methodologies and agendas, processes

and practices. Thanks to everyone’s efforts, a sustainable and international community of
critical leadership researchers now exists, and the journal, in conjunction with the ISLC, has
become an important and respected platform and outlet for thought-provoking, multi-
disciplinary and critical leadership research.
In our original Editorial published in the first issue in February 2005 we stated that the
journal’s main aims were to: (1) facilitate new ways of thinking about leadership . . . ; (2)
stimulate interest in new methods and theories of leadership research . . . ; (3) develop a
reputation as a leading scholarly journal at the cutting-edge of the theory and practice of
leadership and organization . . . and (4) provide an international focus for the journal
(Collinson and Grint, 2005: 6–7). Whilst it is for others to decide how far these objectives
have so far been met, we were gratified in 2011 to receive and subsequently to publish Alan
Bryman’s (2005) paper (‘Mission Accomplished?’) which reviewed progress over the jour-
nal’s first five years. Focusing particularly on the journal’s goal of encouraging methodo-
logical eclecticism, Bryman’s (2005) content analysis of empirical papers published during
that period revealed how Leadership articles tend to employ qualitative rather than quanti-
tative approaches, and for qualitative interviewing and the qualitative analysis of documents
to be the predominant methods of data collection.
In addition to providing an outlet in these 36 issues for some path-breaking and innovative
standard articles, we are particularly pleased that the journal has been able to publish: the
‘Leading Questions’ section which encourages non-traditional papers, ‘think pieces’ and
debates; articles from parts of the world significantly under-represented in leadership studies
(a great deal more work is still needed here); papers informed by a variety of academic discip-
lines (e.g. organization theory/studies/behaviour; management studies; occupational psych-
ology; psychoanalysis; sociology; anthropology; education; political science; military studies;
health and social welfare; communication studies; history and philosophy); and a number of
innovative Special Issues that have attracted considerable attention. Equally, we were pleased
that in July 2010 Leadership was accepted into the Thomson ISI Social Science Citation Index –
a significant achievement for a journal at such an early stage of its development.
As in any organization, working alongside those in leadership positions are a number of
people who make a significant contribution, but who remain largely ‘backstage’. Over the
years we have benefitted considerably from the consistent support and encouragement of
Kerry Barner, Ed Mottram and Dave Phillips at Sage, as well as the excellent Sage produc-
tion teams, originally in London with Kate Leeming and her colleagues, and more recently
with Payal Bhatia and her colleagues in India. In its first seven years, the journal’s admin-
istration was based at Lancaster University Management School (before moving to Warwick
and then more recently into the virtual world of Scholar One Manuscript Central System).
During the ‘start-up’ period when it was housed at Lancaster, the journal benefited from the
administrative skills of Emilie Secker, Abi Balfour, Maureen Morrison and subsequently
Christopher Heron. Shirley Balshaw of the Department of Management Learning and
Leadership at Lancaster also assisted with the organization of the journal and the confer-
ence. When the journal first moved to Warwick University, Kris Grint developed an innova-
tive database and provided valuable technical support that continued in his role as editorial
assistant when it progressed to Scholar One. We would like to thank them all for their
valuable contributions.
With regard to the future, we intend to remain closely associated with the Journal,
moving into our new roles as Associate Founding Editors. The incoming editors, Brad

Downloaded from lea.sagepub.com at DPB Danmarks on February 4, 2014

Editorial 449

and Dennis, are already very familiar with the ethos, purpose and spirit of the Leadership
journal, having contributed significantly in various capacities, for example as authors, ano-
nymous reviewers, Associate Editors and Special Issue Editors (working together to co-edit a
Special Issue on ‘leadership and communication’ in 2008). Although they will formally take
over as the Editors of Leadership from the start of Volume 10 in January 2014, the editorial
transition process has already begun during 2013 with first Dennis and more recently Brad
becoming increasingly involved with editorial decision making and in the appointment of
new Associate Editors and Board Members.
A change of editors provides an opportunity to reflect on progress to date and to look
forward to new possibilities and opportunities. Brad and Dennis have initiated a conversa-
tion with the new Associate Editors and Editorial Board members regarding the journal’s
future trajectory, raising interesting questions and developing proposals for journal policy
and practice in an increasingly complex context that in some ways has changed quite mark-
edly from that of 2005 when the journal was launched. We are very confident that under
their leadership and working alongside a team of highly respected international Associate
Editors and Editorial Board members, Brad and Dennis will build on the legacy of the first
nine volumes to continue to encourage and provide an ongoing forum for innovative, cre-
ative and most importantly critical approaches to leadership studies. We would like to wish
them all the very best for an exciting future in advancing the field of leadership studies.
Once again, many thanks to everyone who has been involved with the journal, whether
in the capacity of associate editor, editorial board member, author, reviewer, reader, adminis-
trator, copy editor or proof reader. So many people have played a valuable part in developing
and establishing Leadership as an influential journal in the field. We have really enjoyed
working on this exciting and, at times, challenging project over the past 10 years.
From our perspective, the journal’s success is very much the result of a collective effort;
one that illustrates the value of shared and relational leadership and followership dynamics.

References
Bryman A (2005) Mission accomplished? Research methods in the first five years of Leadership.
Leadership 7(1): 73–83.
Collinson D and Grint K (2005) Editorial: the leadership agenda. Leadership 1(1): 5–9.

David Collinson is Professor of Leadership & Organisation at Lancaster University

Management School. He is the Founding Co-editor of the ‘Leadership’ journal and
Founding Co-organiser of The International Conference on Studying Leadership. David
has published extensively on critical approaches to leadership, organization and
management.

Keith Grint is Professor of Public Leadership at Warwick Business School. Previously he has
held chairs at Lancaster University and Cranfield University. Before that he was Director of
Research at the Saı̈d Business School and Fellow in Organisational Behaviour, Templeton
College, University of Oxford. He is a Visiting Research Professor at Lancaster University,
and a Visiting Professor at Leiden University.

Downloaded from lea.sagepub.com at DPB Danmarks on February 4, 2014