EDITORIAL
Brooks, Mary
As Co-editors we wish to take this opportunity to write to you, our readers, and talk about the journal, its future, and a new initiative. Our vision continues unchanged; CJAS is an important venue for Canadian academics to share their research results with the public. As is, CJAS is a fine multidisciplinary business journal. We are delighted with the submissions we receive (we could always have more) and believe that the area editors and reviewers do a first class job in helping us maintain the journal’s quality and its academic credibility. We also believe that anything can be made better and want to share our view as to how CJAS can be improved.
In order to broaden CJAS” s scope and move it further in the direction of an interdisciplinary journal, we would like to introduce a new paper stream. Almost all the papers we receive are single-disciplinary empirical or theoretical papers. We see these papers as meeting our goal of publishing “empirical, theoretical, and conceptual papers.” We would like to encourage more conceptual, interdisciplinary manuscripts. In a recent issue of The Economist, Canada was the cover story. We have now been declared to be “cool,” at least as cool as a moose with red sunglasses. The Economist noted that Canada has gone from being the newest addition to the third world in the mid-1990s to a more liberal-minded society, one that focuses on the key policy issues of the day. Yet this Canadian coolness is not reflected in a larger number of conceptual articles dealing with the broader policy issues the country faces. The mix of articles we receive seems quite focused on their own discipline, with very few submissions of that interdisciplinary type we’d also like to see.
We are actively soliciting papers that address these broader issues from an administrative science perspective, and propose to consider them under the theme Canada at the Crossroads. We are looking for thoughtprovoking and stimulating papers, written in an academic style, but not limited to just reporting on empirical studies or presenting a theoretical model for solving a specific problem. Rather, the intention is to seek articles that address the critical issues Canada will face in the next decade, presented in a conceptual and interdisciplinary fashion. We aim to be able to publish at least one such paper an issue.
What are these critical issues? We instantly think of how Canada will meet its Kyoto obligations, what our future health care or education system should look like, how such a small population in such a large country will address its failing physical infrastructure, or the growing urbanization of the country. Most importantly, we think of what management and administrative research needs to be done to get us to economic and scientifically acceptable solutions to these challenges. We see the submitted articles under this theme answering some rather basic questions: What are the key decisions Canadians will have to make? Where does existing academic research fit? What is the new research agenda?
While you, the reader, may see these types of papers as unusual for an academic business journal, we see them as adding value. The intention is to complement the existing research papers, not replace them, and to provide direction for those seeking ideas. These manuscripts, self-identified as “Canada” papers, will be scrutinized through a blind review process and, in the end, contribute a piece to the larger puzzle of administrative science research in Canada. We hope you accept this challenge and, with your best thinking caps on, help define the research agenda for this and the next generation of researchers.
Mary Brooks and Iraj Fooladi
Copyright Administrative Sciences Association of Canada Dec 2003
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