Abstract
Today, the International Association for Contract and Commercial Management (IACCM) has well over 42,000 members and spans the globe. It is one of the most respected authorities on contracting, commercial management, negotiation, and the governance of organizational relationships in a global environment. For symbolic and developmental reasons, a professional association of this size and force needs its own scholarly journal.
It is hard to believe that three years ago the Journal of Strategic Contracting and Negotiation was nothing more than an idea: an idea spawned in a casual discussion between Tim Cummins and myself. At the time, I was the Chair of the Practice Theme Committee (PTC) of the Academy of Management (AOM), and I explained how part of our remit at the PTC was to engage ‘practitioners’ with the AOM and with our scholarly community, and the wonderful research many of our members are doing. A glance at the membership of the AOM at the time will have shown that of our 20,000 plus members, the majority (over half) were scholars, and about 25% of the membership were research students, with the remainder made up of practitioners, especially management consultants. We discussed how this was a contrasting image of IACCM membership, which at the time comprised over 30,000 members, most of whom were practitioners from industry and government. Relatively speaking the academic community was very small and attracting more scholars to IACCM made a lot of sense. Engaging practitioners into academic research and scholarship was also seen as a very good idea.
Out of the above discussion emerged the importance of starting an academic journal. This was not a new idea for IACCM, and had always been floating around as a possibility. Of course, starting a new journal is something easier said than done, but when we also approached Sage Publications, their positive reception to the idea was encouraging. So off we set to write a proposal, put together an editorial team, and solicit articles and reviewers. That seems like a long time ago and while starting and managing a new journal is not for the faint hearted, here we are entering our third year of operation. On that journey, we have had bumps and bruises but I was so fortunate to have two great co-editors in David Van Slyke and Usha Haley. Both David and Usha are now on to grander challenges, but remain a critical part of this journal and our journey: still reviewing and advising.
Thanks to David, joining us in September 2017 as a new Editor-in-Chief is Amanda Girth (Ohio State University), whose research pedigree, engagement with government and industry, drive and passion will ensure we continue on our growth trajectory. Importantly, we have also now employed a managing editor, and so we will welcome Mari Campuzano (George Washington University) who also joins us in September 2017, coming to us with some great experience in helping to grow a new journal. We were fortunate enough to have some of the highest quality applicants for this role and while making a decision was very difficult, we believe that Mari comes with a great track record in soliciting manuscripts, has great experience with social media and in understanding the challenges of growing a new journal not yet even three years old. I believe, along with some governance changes and editorial board renewal, we will take the journal forward in exciting ways.
Since starting our first issue in 2015, we have been fortunate to publish some wonderful papers and receive some excellent submissions. There have been some successes as well: some minor wins but positive baby steps forward. For example, we are now a tier one journal in the Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, which means people in Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, etc.) publishing papers in JSCAN have their research recognized in research quality evaluations and performance-based funding systems (i.e. their institution receive funding).
Being included in performance evaluation systems is absolutely critical for our future growth. As such, ensuring that we grow our esteem and recognition within the main bodies and systems that judge journal quality and impact is one of our core strategic aims if we are to continue growing as a respected scholarly outlet and attract a high volume of quality submissions. This aim will be driving us forward for the next three or so years, and will include exploring where our journal is listed (e.g. Social Science Research Network, etc.), how we build up quality submissions, and commission cutting edge special issues, how we attract more academics to IACCM as members, and promote practitioner/scholar collaboration, by providing advice on more high-quality collaborative publications.
Over the next 12 months, we will be working on our short-, medium- and long-term strategy. This will include changes to board structure, reinforcement and renewal of our editorial board, an active social media and conference presence, targeted calls for papers, greater activity in IACCM academic events and initiatives, and greater presence of our authors engaging with IACCM members.
In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the latest issue of JSCAN. Each paper offers insights into various service delivery challenges ranging from exploring the managerial and relational dynamics in governance of public–nonprofit human service contracting (McBeath, Carnochan, Stuart and Austin); the impact on efficiency through alternative governance arrangements of water service delivery (Rodrigues and Tavares); and an essay from a practitioner perspective on delivering value for money from change management in PPPs (McCann).