Trudging Toward Dodoville: Conceptual Approaches and Case Studies in Executive Coaching

This article introduces the 3rd Consulting Psychology Journal special issue on executive coaching and briefly examines the current status of the scientific knowledge base in the field. It compares the emergence of the empirical literature on coaching to the historical pathway created by psychotherapy and hypothesizes that research on executive coaching may be lead in the future to the examination of "empirically validated models and methods" of coaching leaders in organizations. S. Rosenzweig's (1936) Dodoville conjecture in which he hypothesized that the major positive impacts of various psychotherapies were due to various nonspecific common factors forms the metaphoric foundation of the analysis. The article explores this controversy briefly within Jerome Bruner's (1986) concept of 2 modes of cognition-the paradigmatic and the narrative-and suggests that case studies as a narrative way of knowing and creating meaning are an extremely useful way of examining the practice and efficacy of executive coaching. The articles in the issue are briefly introduced.