$$News and Reports$$

May. 29, 2014
 



 

Prof. David Brock of the Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management (GGFBM) recently put out the first issue of his new Journal of Professions and Organization, published by Oxford University Press after a two year process to establish the journal. The journal was launched in early 2013 and the first issue appeared in hard cover in March 2014.  Brock is Editor-in-Chief, with two fellow editors and an editorial board of 45 leading scholars from elite universities around the world. 

Brock explained the rationale for creating the new journal. “It is increasingly obvious that today’s business environment is dependent on experts from the traditional professions -- accountants, doctors, engineers, and lawyers – as well as contemporary knowledge workers like software programmers, biotech scientists, and technical writers. However, until recently there has been no scholarly journal for the study of the organizations in which these people work. I became concerned about this in 2012 while preparing a seminar on Professional Organizations to be presented at the University of Oxford. When surveying the literature, I noticed several promising research projects based in these professional settings (law firms, emergency clinics…) that contained promising data about these contexts, but failed to develop relevant conclusions. I contacted some of the authors to ask why the papers were written in such a way as to downplay the contextual issues, and received the reply that general journals were more interested in generalizable managerial and organization issues, and not specifically about professionals and the organizations in which they work,” he said.  

The Journal of Professions and Organization, therefore, stands to trace some trends in relevant scholarly research on this topic, starting by noting the dearth of recent publications in leading management and organization journals that address the field of professional organizations and include findings that may inform a better understanding of these contexts. 

This dedicated, specialist journal provides a home for research in these area that, in sum, will add to our understanding of professions, professionals, their work and organization.

Brock is an International Research Scholar at Oxford and he successfully reached out to them to publish the new journal.