Call for Papers for a Special Issue

Strategy Processes and Practices: Dialogues and Intersections

Submission Deadline: August 3, 2015

Guest Editors
Robert Burgelman, Stanford University
Steven Floyd, University of Massachusetts
Tomi Laamanen, University of St.Gallen
Saku Mantere, McGill University
Eero Vaara, Hanken School of Economics
Richard Whittington, Oxford University

SMJ Advising Editor

Constance Helfat

Background
What characterizes successful strategy processes? What does strategizing involve
for people in different roles in the organization? Since Mintzberg and Burgelman started
to question the seemingly innocent division between strategy formulation and implementation, many scholars have sought to understand strategy processes and practices in
organizations. The Winter and Summer Special Issues on Strategy Processes in Strategic Management Journal in 1992 represented a major milestone in this regard. Since
then major progress has taken place on several fronts. Research streams focusing on
strategic issue management, organizational evolution, strategic change, managerial
cognition, learning, knowledge, and middle management have been firmly established
within the strategic management research agenda.
Recently scholars have also increasingly focused their attention on the practices
of strategizing with an emphasis on the micro-level social and discursive activities
through which strategic ideas and conceptions of strategy emerge and are socially constructed. As the interest in understanding strategy processes and practices has gained
momentum, the field has also seen fruitful interactions with theoretical and methodological traditions novel to the study of strategy, including ideas from sociology, social
psychology, and political science.

The theories of practice and activities have opened new perspectives on strategy
processes and practices. Similarly, the so called linguistic turn in social studies has affected the ways in which strategy scholars usually conceptualize strategy processes. For
instance, discursive and narrative analyses have helped us to better understand the role
of language and communication in strategic decision-making. Scholars interested in the
micro-level foundations of strategic management have also begun to apply methods that
are rarely used in conventional strategy research, such as participant observation, ethnography, and various forms of discourse analysis.
Aims and Scope
The objective of this Special Issue is to bring together the state of the art of strategy process and practice research and to call for exemplary contributions to extend and
bridge the existing streams of research on strategy as it happens in organizations. We
see major potential, for example, in the recent research on organizational cognition,
evolutionary perspectives, historical analysis, as well as narrative and discursive approaches in contributing to an improved understanding of strategy processes and practices.
This call is an attempt to link contemporary strategy research to theories and
methods that advance our understanding of processes, practices and activities of strategy and strategizing. This special issue is also linked with new ways of engaging and
collaborating with practitioners. While calls have been made on behalf of collaborative
research between academics and strategy practitioners before, there have been few successful examples of empirical work, fueled by a practical interest. Although there are
well-known examples of successful practitioner-academic collaborations, such collaboration tends to be relatively uncommon. We believe the topics associated with this
special issue are particularly relevant to strategists working in organizations, and as a
result, we intend that research in the special issue will foster stronger ties between academics and business professionals.
We are open to a wide range of paradigms within strategic management. In particular, we invite innovative research that enhances theorizing on strategic management
through cross-fertilization of ideas across different perspectives. We would consider
papers that are conceptual, qualitative, or quantitative. Topic areas could include, for
example:
Intersections
-

Expansions of the boundaries of strategy process and practice research

Analyses of the intersections of strategy process and practice research

Analyses of the interactions of processes, practices and content

Analyses of practices embedded in processes in different contexts

Evolution
-

Analyses of the contextual determinants of processes and practices

Analyses of the co-evolution of a firms strategy and strategy practices

Analyses of individual and shared of cognition in strategy processes and practices

Analyses of the interactions of managers in different strategic roles

Analyses of strategic sensemaking and sensegiving over time

Analyses of the role of language and communication in strategy processes

Analysis of institutional entrepreneurship in strategy work

Analysis of the interaction of formal planning and emergent strategy making

Implications
-

Analyses of the performance consequences of strategy processes and practices

Analyses of other micro and macro-level consequences of strategy processes and

practices (e.g., learning, participation, institutional change)

Submission Process
Submitted papers should adhere to the format requirements of the Strategic Management Journal. Publication of the special issue is tentatively planned for the Fall of 2017. Original submissions are due by August 3, 2015, and must be submitted using the SMJ Submission system at
http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/smj. Earlier submissions are encouraged. Authors should indicate that they would like their submission to be considered for the special issue Strategy
Processes and Practices: Dialogues and Intersections. Authors of papers invited to be revised
and resubmitted will be expected to work within a tight timeframe to meet the special issues
publication deadline. A special issue conference is planned at the University of St.Gallen in the
Spring 2016 to facilitate the revision and development of the papers for the special issue.

Further Information
For questions regarding the content of this special issue, please contact the guest editors:
Robert Burgelman, Stanford University: Burgelman_Robert@GSB.Stanford.Edu
Steven Floyd, University of Massachusetts: sfloyd@isenberg.umass.edu
Tomi Laamanen, University of St.Gallen: Tomi.Laamanen@unisg.ch
Saku Mantere, McGill University: saku.mantere@mcgill.ca
Eero Vaara, Hanken School of Economics: Eero.Vaara@hanken.fi
Richard Whittington, Oxford University: Richard.Whittington@sbs.ox.ac.uk

For questions about submitting to the special issue contact the SMJ Managing Editor
Sara DiBari, smjeditorial@wiley.com, or visit http://smj.strategicmanagement.net