CFP: Special Issue on Business Strategy: Applications and Advancing Tools (Management Decision)

[entrepreneurship-phd at lists.uni-due.de]

From: João Ferreira [jjmf at ubi.pt]
Date: Thu 9 Feb 2012 01:03

Special issue call for papers from Management Decision
Call for Papers
Special Issue Editors:
João J. Ferreira (University of Beira Interior, Portugal), José Enrique Vila (University of Valencia - ERI-CES, Spain), and Anastasia Mariussen (Oxford Brookes University, UK).

The Context
Today's managers face a large number of complex challenges in the global marketplace and seek to design strategies, capable of providing their companies with competitive advantages that can be sustained over time. Existent literature on what has come to be described as 'business strategy' (e.g. Mintzberg, 1990; Porter, 1996; Bowman and Ambrosini, 2007; Sheehan and Foss, 2007; etc.) has extensively analyzed the application of tools that may help managers in designing such strategies. However, there exist exciting opportunities for further development in the theories, applications and advancing tools, surrounding business strategy, with several questions yet to be explored. In particular, increasingly many studies, discussing business tools and techniques, seem to provide only incremental variations of existing models; or choose to concentrate on highly focused research questions or dilemmas, encountered in provoking strategy debates (Faulkner and Campbell, 2003). Meanwhile, the role of theorists as drivers of general business strategy research continues to be seen as major and critical.
Strategy prepares businesses for the future. In this preparation, organizations, operating in vibrant competitive environments, are potentially faced with several paths to follow. So what is the future for business strategy? Given the increasing dynamics of the current business ecosystems, the position of this call is that future is agnostic. The contributors are, therefore, invited to draw their original points of view on the subject of business strategy. While contributions, expressing diverse visions and using various tools, techniques and schools of thought are welcome; the decision on the appropriate view of the future is left to the readers.
Purpose
The purpose of this special issue is to provide an opportunity to advance our understanding of the specific features of business strategy. To achieve this aim, the special issue invites conceptual and empirical papers, presenting cutting edge research on business strategy. More specifically, the special issue welcomes novel and creative ideas, such as new theoretical perspectives, emerging methodologies and new techniques from a strategic perspective, and encourages examining their impact on firms. Different tools, approaches and levels of analysis can be adopted to explore and analyse the complexity of business strategy involved in different contexts.
Research Questions
Accordingly, we call for papers that seek answers to one or more of the following research questions:
1. What new theoretical constructs and methodological approaches can capture competitive advantage in business strategy and competition?
2. What role does business strategy have on organizational and other contexts? 
3. What factors impact firms' strategy formulation and subsequent performance? 
4. What are the underlying organizational mechanisms that enable or inhibit strategy formulation, and how might individual, organizational, institutional factors affect these mechanisms?
5. Given that innovations are becoming increasingly complex, how do firms' strategies affect their growth and investments under uncertainty?
6. How can organizations create sustainable competitive advantages in the marketplace? 
7. How can organizations create competitive advantages that are not only unique and valuable but also difficult for competitors to copy?
To fulfil the purpose of the special issue and answer the outlined questions, the topics of potential contributions may include, but are not limited to, the following subject areas:
. Theories and thoughts about strategy or strategic management
. Corporate strategy in a multibusiness context
. Conceptualization and operationalization of strategic analysis models
. Reviews of existing literature about business strategy
. Business strategy models for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs)
. Processes of strategic analysis and strategic modelling
. Dynamic capabilities and organizational learning
. Strategy innovation
. Strategies for multinational enterprises (MNEs)
. Emergent strategy models
. Corporate-level and sector-level strategies
. Role of business and competitive strategy
. Enterprise strategy practices across industries
. Business strategy and firm performance
. Approaches to competition assessment and strategy definition and execution
. Identification of sources of competitive advantage through global strategy
. Indicators for measuring business strategy
. Strategic change management
. Entrepreneurial strategic orientation
. Strategic management process
. Firms' strategic environment
. Blue ocean strategy versus red ocean strategy
Papers that aim to develop theoretical frameworks, able of synthesising the existing body of knowledge in the field, and contributions, presenting strategic problem-solving applications in business context, based on accurate methodology, are welcome to the special issue. Interdisciplinary research is also encouraged.
Submissions Instructions:
The deadline for submissions is May 31, 2012. 
All manuscripts will be subject to the double-blind peer review process of Management Decision. Submissions should be prepared in accordance to the Management Decision's Author Guidelines:
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/products/journals/author_guidelines.htm?id=md.

After registering on ScholarOne Manuscripts on http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/md follow the instructions to submit your manuscript. Please make sure you submit the paper under Special Issue on "Business Strategy: Applications and Advancing Tools", when submitting your manuscript.
Please direct any questions to the editors of the Special Issue:
João J. Ferreira (jjmf at ubi.pt); José Enrique Vila (jose.e.vila at uv.es); and Anastasia Mariussen (amariussen at brookes.ac.uk). Please clearly identify in the email subject line "Management Decision (Special Issue)".

References
Bowman, C. and Ambrosini, V. (2007), "Firm value creation and levels of strategy", Management Decision, Vol. 45 No. 3, pp. 360-371.
Faulker, D. O. and Campbell, A. (2003), The Oxford Handbook of Strategy: A Strategy Overview and Competitive Strategy, Volume I, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Mintzberg, H. (1990), "The design school: Reconsidering the basic premises of strategic management", Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 11 No. 3, pp. 171-195.
Porter, M. E. (1996), "What is strategy?", Harvard Business Review, Vol. 74 No. 6, pp. 61-78.
Sheehan, N.T. and Foss, N.J. (2007), "Enhancing the prescriptiveness of the resource-based view through Porterian activity analysis", Management Decision, Vol. 45 No. 3, pp. 450-461.