To strengthen our COTRUGLI DBA and to further develop our commitment to practitioner education.
At COTRUGLI Business School, we do not pursue prestige for its own sake—we build platforms that serve a purpose, drive transformation, and have an enduring impact on leadership. Our decision to acquire the International Leadership Journal (ILJ), a respected publication with more than 15 years of intellectual legacy, was not incidental. It was a deliberate, strategic choice—one designed to deepen the academic infrastructure of the COTRUGLI DBA program and to amplify its global relevance and scholarly authority.
A 15-Year Legacy, Reimagined
The International Leadership Journal has established itself as a reputable, peer-reviewed forum for innovative leadership thought. It has fostered global dialogue, published bold research, and remained open-access, democratizing knowledge across sectors and borders.
However, today we find ourselves in an era that demands new answers to old questions—and to pose better questions for the future. That is where our vision intersects with ILJ’s foundation.
By acquiring a journal with a 15+-year pedigree, we are not merely inheriting history—we are repositioning it as a core strategic asset in the COTRUGLI academic and practitioner portfolio and the evolution of our DBA.
Strengthening the COTRUGLI DBA: Three Strategic Reasons
1. Cementing Academic Authority
The COTRUGLI DBA was designed to be more than a professional credential; it was designed as a laboratory to reinvent leadership. With the ILJ as our official journal, our DBA program gains:
- A direct publishing distribution outlet for the work of our DBA students and graduates, connecting doctoral research with global academic and practitioner audiences.
- An academic legitimacy engine that provides rigorous peer-reviewed validation of the findings and insights produced within our program.
- A magnet for world-class contributors, who see COTRUGLI not only as a business school, but as a decentralized leadership innovation hub.
2. Creating a Platform for Intellectual Quality Ownership
In an era of fleeting content and scattered thought leadership, the COTRUGLI DBA adopts a contrarian stance: we believe in thought leadership, excellent written permanence, and the academic and practitioner discipline of publication. The ILJ gives our DB program a sovereign platform to:
- Own the conversation on Vanguard leadership, cross-sector strategy, and transformative decision-making.
- Showcase COTRUGLI’s unique epistemology—a blend of rigorous academic discipline, strategic foresight, and interdisciplinary curiosity.
- Translate doctoral work into real-world influence by distributing research to leaders, educators, consultants, and policymakers around the world.
3. Bridging Practice and Theory at a Global Level
Our DBA candidates and MBAs are among the top senior business leaders, corporate strategists, senior military officers, policy architects, think tank pundits, and entrepreneurs. ILJ’s mission—to connect leadership theory, education, and practice—mirrors the hybrid practitioner-scholar identity of our program.
Acquisition of ILJ empowers us to:
- Publish research that is academically rigorous, highly credible, and strategically actionable.
- Promote integrative, interdisciplinary thinking across various sectors: business, nonprofit, military, and public leadership.
- Build a COTRUGLI global leadership dialogue that bridges borders, ideologies, and generations.
From Stewardship to Strategy
We did not acquire this journal to preserve it—we acquired it to elevate it to a new level of thought leadership. Under COTRUGLI’s stewardship, the International Leadership Journal will:
- Feature-themed issues co-curated by COTRUGLI faculty, DBA cohort members, as well as leading external researchers, scholars, and practitioners.
- Serve as an incubator for disruptive frameworks, cross-cultural insights, and leadership doctrine.
- Become an integral part of the COTRUGLI Vanguard Research Initiative, shaping how leadership is taught, developed, and applied now and in the future decades.
Final Word: Leading the Conversation
Leadership is no longer about simply occupying positions of power. It is about shaping narratives, redefining systems, asking better questions, and gaining new insights. By integrating a seasoned journal into our DBA program, we are staking our claim as both educators and architects of global leadership discourse. This acquisition marks a major turning point—not only for COTRUGLI, but also for how leadership will be studied, challenged, and reimagined.
