I had several IJCO roles. I managed art design, production and distribution, as well as subscription sales. Bill and I were co-executive editors and identified the theme for each issue. I also did the final copy editing of articles. I had a tremendous opportunity for the quarterly issues to work with the article authors. In the process, we took their article idea and turned into a finished product that was, in my view, really stunning.
Observing Institutional Impact: Professional Legacies
Bill Carrier: Would you mind talking about the impact of the journal and maybe of ICCO? Could you talk a little bit more about how those affected individual practitioners or the profession itself?
John Lazar: I can offer a point of view but want to be careful not to overstate what I think the impact was. Okay?
Bill Carrier: Of course.
John Lazar: From my view, the impact that we had was a two-fold. The journal, as Bill and I conceptualized it, was meant to be a bridge between theory and research, on the one hand, and application on the other. It wasn’t a fully evidence-based journal that had classic research design–you had a proposition and null hypothesis; you were trying to sort things out.
We required our authors to take a theory or to take a piece of research and then to build on it. What we intended to do and succeeded at, I think, was to encourage authors to expand on those models, theories and research in ways that would be relevant to practitioners as well as fellow researchers.
I think that has proven to be very effective. I think it was also effective in enabling people who chose to write articles for us. Bill and I were accountable for identifying the people who we would invite to write articles for us. We had the opportunity to work with them to help take their initial thoughts and form them into something really well-written, something that really had a story to tell, something that was, in fact, a contribution to our profession.
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Rey Carr
March 12, 2016 at 10:11 am
Finally, I understand what happened to that excellent journal, The International Journal of Coaching in Organizations. John is to be congratulated on establishing a publication that lifted coaching into both the world of empirical science and friendly dialogue. I’m grateful for your pioneering efforts.
Vicki Foley
February 7, 2017 at 7:57 pm
Bill and John, thank you for this interview. I enjoyed the historical perspective, a bit of reminiscing about IJCO and ICCO, and the suggestions of ways to associate within the profession. John, you are a revered master.