Editorial

Citation

Taylor, A. and Taylor, M. (2009), "Editorial", International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 29 No. 11. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijopm.2009.02429kaa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Volume 29, Issue 11

Rather than writing a regular editorial for this issue of the journal, we are pleased instead to devote the space to introducing our opening paper, which is a specially commissioned piece devoted to celebrating the 15th anniversary of the European Operations Management Association (EurOMA) and the 25th anniversary of its precursor, the UK Operations Management Association (OMA). International Journal of Operations & Production Management (IJOPM) is the official journal of EurOMA and for some years has enjoyed a mutually beneficial and fruitful relationship with what is the leading OMA in Europe. The IJOPM editors have co-opted membership of the EurOMA board, and three places on the journal’s editorial advisory board are specifically reserved for members of the board of EurOMA.

Against this backdrop of collaboration, we invited Professor Christer Karlsson, a founding member of EurOMA, to write our leading paper, which lays down the history and development of the association and records the contribution of those people most closely involved with its evolution. He, in turn, invited Professor Chris Voss – another EurOMA pioneer – to work with him in meeting this challenge. Together, they have combined extensive memory-searching and archival scrutiny with the solicitation of input from other current or previously active members of EurOMA to produce this fascinating record of how EurOMA emerged from the integration of the OMA in the UK and the International Production Management Conference which was initiated under the EIASM banner around the same time. The fact that they both feature heavily in the history is not surprising, and it is fitting that their role as “Fathers of EurOMA” was recently acknowledged by their appointment as the first (among four) EurOMA fellows, in June 2009 at the association’s annual conference in Gothenburg, Sweden. We are extremely grateful to Christer and Chris for undertaking this challenge so willingly.

Whilst this may appear to be a somewhat exclusive or even cosy relationship between journal and academic association, we stress that IJOPM remains a truly international journal, committed to serving the operations management community in all parts of the World. Just as EurOMA welcomes members from around the globe, and indeed enjoys an expanding and increasingly diverse membership, so IJOPM seeks to publish high quality work from all of our colleagues wherever they are located. In this regard, we give advance notification of a paper to be published in the final issue of the current volume which provides and discusses data on the global reach of papers published since our editorial tenure began in 2004. We believe that readers will find the results interesting and, in some respects, quite surprising. Watch this space!

Andrew Taylor, Margaret Taylor