Established in 2010, the Organizational Design Community (ODC) is an international community of scholars, practitioners, and organizations dedicated to advancing the theory and practice of organization design. Organization design is an applied field—it takes what we know about forming and managing organizations and applies that knowledge to practice. Well-designed organizations are critical to the efficient and effective functioning of the global economy, and how an organization is designed and managed can have a large impact on the well-being of its members. ODC is committed to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners by creating a forum for them to exchange ideas.

ODC started the Journal of Organization Design in 2012. JOD is an open access journal, meaning that the knowledge and information it publishes is freely available to anyone who wants to learn about organization design. Moreover, JOD is the only journal that focuses solely on this topic. The founding editors of JOD are Børge Obel and Charles Snow. They envisioned a journal that would be future-oriented, scientifically rigorous, and relevant to practice. JOD tries to give voice to different types of authors by offering multiple paper formats: research articles, research primers, point of view articles, translational articles, and case studies. There is also a regular feature called the Organization Zoo where new or unusual species of organizations are described and analyzed. Lastly, JOD publishes special issues on timely and important topics, and these become special collections over time as related articles are added.

In January 2016, JOD’s publishing operations were moved to Springer Open Access. This allowed JOD to use Springer’s editorial management system and to benefit from Springer’s vast publishing resources. Today, JOD publishes a variety of useful articles, supported by Springer’s marketing and indexing services, while publishing decisions continue to be made by an editorial team of prominent individuals in the area of organization design. Through Springer’s open access system, JOD’s articles also may include video abstracts, supplementary videos, and other resources.

Beginning in January 2018, JOD’s new chief editors are John Joseph (University of California-Irvine, USA) and Metin Sengul (Boston College, USA). The new co-editors are charting a course for the journal that builds on its current strengths, increases its impact, and attracts new contributors and readers. They have provided their goals for JOD over the next few years:

  • Continue JOD’s tradition of offering a variety of formats reflecting diversity of disciplines, theories, and methodologies in the field of organization design.

  • Expand the editorial team by appointing new Associate Editors and Editorial Board members, with a continued effort to give voice to scholarship from a variety of fields and ensure high quality and timely feedback.

  • Grow JOD’s efforts to produce special issues (collections) on fundamental theories and emerging phenomena.

  • Increase JOD’s impact, aiming to get approval for an impact factor from one of the major third-party institutions.

  • Increase social media presence to provide better visibility to JOD articles and authors.

In all, the new editors plan to continue the innovativeness and quality established by Børge Obel and Charles Snow. JOD was founded and will continue to be a journal that not only contributes to the current conversation in organization design but also shapes, in both academe and practice, the future of the field.