SIG 13: Strategic Management (SM)

The Strategic Management Special Interest Group (SIG) is devoted to promoting state of the art strategic thinking by encouraging dialogue along several interrelated lines of inquiry crucial for increasing scholarly and managerial understanding regarding strategic choice, competitive advantage, adaptation, and long-term performance and survival. The SIG was launched at the EURAM 2010 conference in Rome. Since then the SIG has gone from strength to strength. We are committed to each year bring together scholars from all around the world to engage in the development and exchange of high-quality research ideas with the potential to fertilize and drive the future directions of scholarly and practitioner strategic thinking alike. Empirical, conceptual, and practitioner-oriented papers from a plurality of theoretical perspectives, units of analyses, contexts, and research designs are warmly welcomed. We in particular encourage papers integrating multiple theoretical lenses and/or methodological approaches. All submitted papers have been reviewed on a double-blind basis by at least two reviewers.

SIG Chairs and Program Co-Chairs :

Tomi Laamanen, SIG Chair (University of St.Gallen, Switzerland) Tomi LThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Henk Volberda, Past SIG Chair (Erasmus University, Netherlands)

Anabel Fernández, Programme Co-Chair (University of Valencia, Spain)

Patrick Reinmoeller, Programme Chair (Cranfield University, UK)

Xavier Castaner, Programme Chair of Kick Off activities (University of Lausanne / HEC, Switzerland)

Ana Garcia, Communications Officer (University of Valencia, Spain)

For more detail on each track, please download the related document. If you cannot see the whole text on any of the Excel pages, please double-click.

GT 13_00 Strategic Management General Track 

Strategic management is about setting the direction of a corporation and steering it through challenges in its environment. The discipline “deals with (a) major intended and emergent initiatives (b) taken by general managers on behalf of owners (c) that utilize resources (d) to enhance performance (e) of firms (f) in their external environments.” (Nag, Hambrick, Chen, 2007). The purpose of this Strategic Management General track is to foster research in areas not covered by the other more focused tracks. This Strategic Management General Track covers all topic areas of the strategic management research that are not covered by the more specific standing tracks or the 2016 emerging tracks.

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT STANDING TRACKS

ST 13_01 Corporate Strategy: Cooperative Dynamics in Mergers and Acquisitions, Diversification and Alliances

Our aim is to provide a forum for interdisciplinary discussion and engagement to further an enhanced analysis of the underlying dynamics shaping M&A and alliance activity (from implementation to maintenance and cessation) that contribute to performance. In line with the track title, we thus welcome papers that examine the dynamics and micro-foundations of inter-organizational encounters, be it from theoretical work or empirical research. Strategic, organizational, cultural or human relations perspectives are welcome, particularly when combined to shed light on some of the conundrums in this area of research. We encourage submissions, but not limited to, that provide a fresh look at mixed findings within existing research and identify new avenues of research in M&As and alliances. For empirical studies, we are interested in studies drawing from a variety of methods and developing a mixed methods approach. Longitudinal research designs that address research questions on dynamics and micro-processes of cooperation in inter-organizational encounters, especially case studies, are particularly welcome.

ST 13_02 Business Ecosystems: Innovation Ecosystem in the Shared Economy

This track will explore how the innovation ecosystems facilitate the shared economy development. Currently, the shared economy takes place across different sectors, which normally arises along with the traditional business models’ collapse, for example, such as Uber for Taxi industries, Airbnb for hotel industries and Youtube for online video industries. The new phenomenon builds a better business model by involving more ecosystem stakeholders’ contribution. 

(1) How are focal firms organizing their activities in the context of business ecosystems?

(2) How those e-platforms, such as Uber, Airbnb and Apps Store, create and capture value?

(3) What are the strategies adopted by SMEs in the shared economy and how do they contribute to it?

(4) How are firms and other actors able to successfully build up different levels of an ecosystem, including (a) industrial ecosystem, (b) city’s business ecosystem, and (c) political ecosystems?

ST 13_03 Strategic Processes and Practices 

Strategy process refers to the flow of actions and events by which firms’ strategy unfold. It comprises a set of organizational processes and practices related to the formation and implementation of business, corporate and geographical strategies, the ability to seize and deploy strategic initiatives (acquisitions, alliances, divestitures, internal ventures, etc.), and the management of strategic issues associated with such processes. In the Strategy Processes and Practices track, we aim at bringing together these organizational and people levels of analysis to advance our understanding of strategy in the making, in the midst of environmental dynamics. Indeed, organizational dynamic is endogenous per se, implying to focuses on what people do 'inside' such organizational processes and seeks to highlight the role of organizational actors in formulating and implementing strategy.

In particular, we are interested in extending and bridging the existing streams of research on strategy within and across organizations by considering organizations as dynamic equilibrium outcomes of such processes. This perspective invites us to rethink strategy as an ongoing organizational flow in which development and implementation are intertwined to achieve sustainable superior performance despite the fast-paced institutional and competitive dynamics. – Following the general topic of the Euram 2016 conference, aim at bringing together scholars who investigate new modes of value creation and strategy development.

 ST 13_04 Competitive Dynamics: The Challenge of Unusual Contexts

Competitive dynamics research has generated important insights about how companies create and capture value through series of competitive moves (Chen & Miller, 2012). Most empirical competitive dynamics research has been conducted in oligopolistic, fairly mature industries. Recent research has shown, however, that the phenomenon of competition can manifest in markedly different ways in other kinds of contexts—for example, nascent industries (e.g., Chen et al., 2010; Rindova et al., 2010), mature low-clock-speed industries (Lamberg & Ojala, 2006), highly regulated industries (Shaffer, Quasney, & Grimm, 2000), and highly unregulated industries (Humphrey, 2007). The study of competition in these “unusual contexts” can help elucidate previously unrecognized theoretical issues and mechanisms in competitive interaction. This EURAM track welcomes research on competitive dynamics in unusual contexts.

ST 13_05 Microfoundations of Strategy, Dynamic Capabilities and Knowledge Mechanisms

This track focuses on the microfoundations of strategy, dynamic capabilities, and knowledge with the special focus on: (1) How microfoundations of strategy shape, mediate between, and explain aggregate strategy phenomena such as strategic decision-making, strategic consensus seeking; (2) Dynamic capabilities promoting entrepreneurship, change, innovation, and organizational learning; (3) Balancing between internal knowledge accumulation and external knowledge absorption. We welcome particularly submissions that explore the interconnections between levels of analysis and the topics in depth. We encourage both empirical and conceptual contributions.

ST 06_02 Business Model Innovation (BMI) (Co-Sponsored with the Innovation SIG-06 innovation)

Following the acknowledgement of their importance for successful innovations, business models themselves became subject to innovation. Companies started to realize that in response to changes in their environment, even a successful business model is never a permanent given. Rather, firms are required to reconsider their established models. Business model innovation thereby goes far beyond isolated product, service or technology innovation. It captures the innovation of at least one of its constituting elements including its value proposition, its value chain, or revenue model and thereby provides a firm with potentials like the activation of overlooked value sources within the company or the creation of novel systems that are difficult to imitate. Consequently, we welcome contributions that provide new theoretical perspectives on and/or empirical insights into business model innovation and its underlying processes, thus enhancing the study and understanding of the subject.

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT 2016 EMERGING TRACKS

T 13_06 Collaborative Strategies: Coopetition, Networks and Alliances

Firms adopt collaborative strategies, Alliances or Coopetition strategies in multiple contexts such as Networks or Clusters to innovate, to deal with uncertainty or to expect higher levels of performance. The management of these collaborative strategies became a critical issue for management scholars and practitioners. This issue can be explored through different levels of analysis – inter-organizational level, firm-level, intra-organizational level or inter-individual level. Researches could investigate collaboration in high-tech industries but also on more traditional ones. Studies of multinational companies, associations, public companies, SMEs etc. are also welcome. Both theoretical and empirical contributions are be accepted.

T 13_ 07 The Paradox of Exploitation and Exploration: Social Network Theory Explanada

The strategic decisions made early in a firm’s history generally affect its strategy for years afterward. We contend that organizational inflexibility is often reinforced by organization inertia rooting in disappointment in previous change attempts whereby the firm is likely to end up in loss of ‘cultural glue’. The negative relationships between organizational members inhibit change also induce counterproductive behaviors and adversely affect their ability to cooperate. Our aim is to explain this conceptual argument through empirically testing the following question: How can established firms—dominated by routine procedures—transform into ambidextrous organizations taking into consideration the social network theory of the firm?

T 13_ 08 Dynamics of Strategic Multi-Partner Network Management in Different Contexts

Strategic multi-partner networks involve multiple, independent firms which voluntary and interactively engage in such activities as R&D, manufacturing, and marketing. The distinctive features characterizing these networks, e.g. lack of a hub firm and a distributed power structure among their members, pose many challenges to their management which is widely recognized as one of the determinants of their success. Transportation represents one interesting context to study strategic multi-partner network management. Today’s world trade expansion requires, among others, profound reconfigurations of transport supply chains and the development of large-scale infras./pastconferencesinnovative strategies for creating shared value in unique sectors such as ports and shipping, air transport, road and rail transport as well as multi-modal logistics infrastructures. Several mutually related research topics to address issues as such include but are not limited to horizontal and vertical forms of international cooperation, innovative business strategies international networks and the strategic management of Public-Private-Partnerships../pastconferences

T 13_ 09 Behavioral Strategy