The Strategic Management Special Interest Group (SIG) is devoted to promoting state of the art strategic thinking. We encourage 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. 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.
SIG Officers:
Tomi Laamanen (University of St.Gallen, Switzerland) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. SIG Chair
Henk Volberda, (Erasmus University, Netherlands) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Past Chair
Anabel Fernández-Mesa (University of Valencia, Spain) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. SIG Programme Co-Chair
Patrick Reinmoeller (Cranfield University. UK) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. SIG Programme Co-Chair
Ana Garcia-Granero (University of Valencia, Spain) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Communications Officer
Xavier Castañer (University of Lausanne / HEC, Switzerland) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. SIG Programme Co-Chair of kick off activities
Nuno Oliveira (Tilburg University, Netherlands) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. SIG Programme Co-Chair of kick off activities
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.
STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT SIG STANDING TRACKS
ST 13_01 Corporate Strategy: Managing knowledge within and across Mergers, Acquisitions and Alliances
Accessing knowledge detained by the acquired firm or the alliance partner is a major motive underlying M&A and/or alliances. We now have a sound understanding of such deal motives, however, the organizational processes leading to leveraging the value inherent to knowledge similarities and/or complementarities remain a fertile ground of investigation. In line with the track title, we welcome papers that examine inter-organizational encounters with regard to knowledge and competency transfer and combination. Strategic, organizational, cultural or human relations perspectives are welcome. For empirical studies, we welcome studies drawing from a variety of methods.
ST 13_02 Business Ecosystems: Structures, governances, strategies, evolutions and transformations
Academic and industrial publications on business ecosystems (BE) have not only increased the numbers but also diversified the scope in the last two years. The ecosystem research has been exploring the BE from various perspectives including innovation, entrepreneurial behaviour, technological platforms, regional economic development, and in relation to some specialise technologies e.g. 3D printing. However, our fundamental understanding about business ecosystems and their intrinsic properties and capabilities are still in a very early stage. The proposed track aims to understand the fundamentals of business ecosystems and seeks to explore the ecosystems from different perspectives and identify the BE’s intrinsic characteristics.
ST 13_03 Strategic Processes and Practices
In the SPP track we aim to bring together organizational and micro levels of analysis to advance our understanding of strategy in the making. We specifically intend this year to explore the relationships between strategic practices and routines. The Strategy as Practice opened avenue in studying strategy with a practice lens. This stream emphasized so far on the role of discursive practices, tools and socio-material practices at a micro level. Vaara and Whittington (2012) called for investigating the role of the macro into the practice of strategy. On the same token, there has been a focus on understanding routines (Feldman and Pentland, 2003) from within their immediate context. Lately Howard-Grenville and Rerup (forthcoming) suggested proximities between process, practices and routines and their role in change, emergence and performance of organizational action. Even though these themes are strategic in essence, few pieces associate strategic processes, practices and routines. We therefore invite contributions to better distinguish and articulate the role of practices and routines in relation to each other as well as to the broader strategy making processes in organizations.
ST 13_04 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.
This topic aims to investigate how the following approaches inhibit or contribute to firm competitive advantage or superior performance in general.
We encourage empirical and conceptual contributions focusing on these to be submitted to this track.
ST 13_05 Behavioural Strategy
Behavioural Strategy has developed into an important new sub domain of strategic management research. By combining psychological research with the strategy domain, Behavioural Strategy aims at grounding strategic management on more realistic assumptions regarding human judgment and interaction. It thus transfers psychological research to an organizational context asking questions like "How can an improved psychological architecture of the firm lead to competitive advantage?"
ST 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 can be accepted.
ST 13_07 Strategic Ambidexterity: The paradox of Exploitation and Exploration
Research on strategic ambidexterity should provide a starting point for practitioners to adapt to the disruptive change induced by the fourth industrial revolution. By studying the contradictions between exploitation and exploration researchers could help them prepare.
For example, Mom, van den Bosch, and Volberda (2007) found that top-down knowledge inflows are associated to exploitation; horizontal and bottom-up inflows are related to exploration. Others pointed out the trade-offs that are inherently present when organizations pursue both types of activities (Hortovanyi and Szabo, 2006).
We call for papers that address the organizational challenge of industry 4.0 into the debate on strategic ambidexterity.
ST 06_02 Strategy and Business Model Innovation co-sponsored by Innovation SIG, Entrepreneurship SIG and Strategic Management SIG
The business model topic attracts continued interest in business research and practice (Demil et al., 2015; Zott, Baden-Fuller and Mangematin; 2015 Amit and Massa, 2011). This confirmed interest for the business model, and the central question of how to innovate the business model, provide a range of avenues for further research in the field (Spieth, Schneckenberg & Ricart, 2014). However, despite ongoing research efforts to understand the business model and its role in firm performance, scholars face persistent questions about constituent components, sequences and contingencies for the process of business model innovation. Our track aims to pursue these important questions.
ST 02_01 Top Management Teams & Business Elites (Co-sponsored with the Corporate Governance SIG-02)
Business elites and top management teams (TMTs) are among the most influential actors at both firm and society level. Previous research on TMTs and business elites has consistently tried to establish relationships between corporate actors and corporate financial performance, or other firm-level outcomes such as corporate strategic choices. Scholars have focused their attention on corporate leaders at various levels, including individual executives (CEOs), top management teams (TMTs), and other business elites. Despite the large amount of existing research, its results are pronouncedly mixed in their conclusions, and upper echelons research is still plenty of opportunities for further development. Adding to our experience on previous EURAM Conferences, this standing track aims to build a platform for discussion of issues related to different aspects of upper echelons at micro and macro levels.
