Volume 25, Issue 2 of the Journal of Organizational Behavior marks this journal's transition to its third Editor-in-Chief in its 28-year history. Cary P. Cooper was the journal's founder and served as Editorin-Chief for 18 years, from 1979 to 1997, followed by Denise M. Rousseau, who officially stepped down with Issue 28, Issue 1, after 9 years in office. It is with some trepidation, therefore, that I venture to step into such august boots.
First, for readers who are not familiar with me, a brief biographical sketch: I was born in Melbourne, Australia and was originally educated in civil engineering at Monash University and the University of New South Wales. I practiced as a water resources engineer for 18 years prior to entering my current career as a scholar of organizational behavior. My PhD was in the social psychology program at the University of Queensland, which is where I have been employed now for 20 years. My research interests are in leadership, ethical behavior, and organizational culture, with a special interest in the role played by emotions in organizational settings. In my present job, I am a professor of Management in the UQ Business School; and Director of Research in the Faculty of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Queensland. For more about me, please visit my website: http://www.business.uq. edu.au/staff/academic/nashkanasy.phtml.
Under my predecessors, JOB has come to be recognized as one of the top-10 journals in the field of applied psychology and management. In the 2005 Journal Citation Reports, for example, JOB is listed in 9th place in the Applied Psychology list (Impact Factor ΒΌ 1.388). In a review of journals in industrial and organizational psychology, reported that JOB ranked 8th out of a list of 23 journals in the field. This is not only impressive, especially for an unaffiliated journal, but also suggests there is room for improvement. According to Lyman Porter ( ), organizational behavior as a distinct field has been around now for over 30 years now, and the OB Division is the largest in the Academy of Management. This suggests the field is now mature enough for OB scholars to support a journal they can truly call their own. In this instance, I would like to see our OB colleagues begin to consider JOB to be their journal of first choice, rather than just another good journal in the field.
JOB's competitive edge is that this is a journal that focuses exclusively on OB. This is in contrast to the other leading journals in the applied psychology field, which combine OB with other topics in applied psychology, including I-O psychology, personnel management, decision-making, human resource management, and general management. But JOB is the only journal that is situated squarely in mainstream OB. The question remains, however, as to whether JOB to date has capitalized on the