research articles in strategic management

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Strategic Management Journal

SMJ provides a communication forum for advancing the understanding of strategic management. This includes all topics that are relevant to the performance of firms and non-profit organizations.

The Strategic Management Journal (SMJ), founded in 1980, is the world’s leading mass impact journal for research in strategic management. SMJ publishes research that is designed to appeal to strategy scholars, with implications within and across papers that are relevant to practicing managers.

SUBMISSION INFORMATION

SMJ seeks to publish papers that ask and help to answer important and interesting questions in strategic management. Published articles can range in length from standard journal length to shorter papers that focus on a specific issue or question, as well as papers that describe and make available datasets that can be used by a wide community of researchers in strategy. These papers:

• Develop and/or test theory
• Replicate prior studies
• Explore interesting phenomena
• Review and synthesize existing research
• Evaluate the methodologies used in the field 

The Journal welcomes a diverse range of research methods and is open to papers that rely on statistical inference, qualitative data, verbal theory, computational models and mathematical models. Comments from readers on published papers and “prospectives” on new or emerging lines of research can also be found in the publication. Editorial comments and invited papers on practices and developments in strategic management appear from time to time as warranted by new developments.

Submissions are put through a double-blind review process and are published if the paper meets the journal’s standards.

Submission Information

All manuscripts considered for submission must be sent to SMJ's online submission site. For information as to the form of submission, including style and other submission guidelines, please review the Submissions Guidelines.

Special Issues

Special Issues are an important part of the Strategic Management Journal (SMJ). Special Issues primarily focus on a single topic of relevance to the entrepreneurship field and have the potential of opening new ground for further research. View SMJ's Special Issues here.

EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP

Rajshree Agarwal

University of Maryland

Mary Benner

University of Minnesota

Brian Silverman

University of Toronto

Four Co-Editors lead the Strategic Management Journal, guiding the direction and strategy of the publication. Among other duties, these editors: process all submissions and serve as action editors on many manuscripts; recruit, onboard, and engage in continuous development of Associate Editors and Editorial Review Board members; and create and communicate policies to authors, Associate Editors, and reviewers.

Leadership of the journals also includes Associate Editors and Editorial Review Board Members.

The Strategic Management Society and its journals are committed to the values of respect, civility and professionalism. Authors submitting to SMJ acknowledge their responsibility to adhere to these values in their interactions with editors, reviewers, and employees of the Strategic Management Society and our publisher, Wiley.

SMS Journals are published in partnership with Wiley, and articles can be found on the Wiley Online Library.

SMS Members receive complimentary access to all SMS Journal articles. Click “Login” at the top of the page to access full articles.

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A comprehensive guide to strategic management and its future

Strategy & Leadership

ISSN : 1087-8572

Article publication date: 16 March 2022

Issue publication date: 16 March 2022

Fahey, L. (2022), "A comprehensive guide to strategic management and its future", Strategy & Leadership , Vol. 50 No. 2, pp. 40-42. https://doi.org/10.1108/SL-01-2022-0006

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited

Strategic Management: State of the Field and Its Future , edited by Irene Duhaime, Michael Hitt and Marjorie Lyles (Oxford University Press, 2021), 784 pages.

In Strategic Management: State of the Field and its Future, editors Irene Duhaime, Michael Hitt and Marjorie Lyles have taken on a herculean task. This monumental tome is written by serious academics for serious academics. The editors are blunt and specific about the book’s scope and intent: “We address the major streams of research and major research approaches that have helped to develop the field to its current state.” But the editors also believe, “The highest potential value is the extensive and insightful discussion of promising future opportunities and research agendas.”

Without question, this ambitious book fills a glaring void in the strategic management literature. No other source comes close to achieving a comprehensive documentation of the state of academic research in the strategic management field. It also offers detailed guidance for what the research agenda should be going forward. Although they are not the target audience, both strategy consultants and practitioners will find several productive uses for the book.

The book’s structure reflects the scope of the strategic management field, at least as viewed within the halls of the academy. The book has eleven Parts and thirty-seven chapters. Each Part details the state of a major topic area: “Evolution of Strategic Management Research,” “Corporate Strategy,” “Strategic Entrepreneurship and Technology,” “Competitive and Cooperative Strategy,” “Global Strategy,” “Strategic Leadership,” “Governance and Boards of Directors,” “Knowledge and Innovation,” “Strategy Processes and Practices,” “Microfoundations and Behavioral Strategy” and “Critical Factors Affecting Strategy.”

Each Part consists of a lead chapter that provides an overview of the topic area, followed by several chapters, all written by academics, which burrow into the details of key sub-topic areas. For example, one topic area of particular interest to practitioners, “Strategic Leadership,” provides a chapter overview of recent research developments; it is followed by chapters on “Top Management Teams” and “CEO Succession.”

Each chapter provides the key sub-topics researchers have to date addressed, the key research findings they have generated, advances that have occurred in the relevant research methodologies, and frequently key gaps in the issues and questions addressed. The second section of each chapter then lays out the research agenda the authors believe is necessary to advance the state of knowledge on the topic. The chapters’ second section delivers on the promise of the book’s subtitle—the state of the field and its future.

Given the editors’ intent to proceed from an academic perspective, corporate executive could justly ask, where do practitioners fit in this picture? Regrettably, implications for the practice of strategic management are not explicitly addressed in most of the chapters. Rather, the editors assume that enhancement of research findings, resulting from posing more interesting research questions and ever more sophisticated research methodologies will be translated into useful guidance by the astute practicing strategist.

Yet we must not refrain from pressing the question – what is the relevance of this book’s depiction of the state of strategic management research and its future direction to executives and others practicing strategic management within organizations? The thoughtful and inquisitive strategist on the front line of strategy making will find multiple ways to extract value from this book. I propose three ways that a top management team, and indeed, middle managers who shape the details of a strategy, can benefit from reading and reflecting on the authors’ research analysis and proposals.

First, anyone who has been involved in shaping and executing strategy in a corporate setting has observed how commonly key concepts are imbued with different meaning by well-intentioned team members. The result: managers talk past each other; shared meaning is almost impossible to attain; and analysis bottlenecks become the norm. Thus, one valuable exercise for the practicing strategist: go to the index of this book, identify a key concept, and then read the material relevant to that concept in the pages indicated in the index. Here is my suggested list of initial key concepts that are often misinterpreted: alliances, assets, competitive advantage, competitive strategy, ecosystems, entrepreneurship, innovation and resources. For example, if you choose competitive advantage—surely one of the most ill-defined, misunderstood and misused terms in the entire strategic management lexicon—you will discover alternative definitions and their implications, the consequences of different business models, reasons why advantage dissipates, the role of resources in shaping and sustaining advantage and how advantage varies across different industry states. Armed with a more refined understanding of the notion of competitive advantage, you will be able to ask more penetrating questions and to guide strategy deliberations toward addressing and achieving real advantage.

Second, those of us familiar with the strategy research literature, and who also spend considerable time in strategy conversations inside real organizations, never cease to be amazed at the disconnect between the focus and output of academic researchers and the concerns and challenges faced by strategy practitioners. This need not be; this should not be. And culpability needs to be owned by both sides.

My suggestion for the intrepid practitioner: Given that strategic management continues to evolve, review the introductory chapter in each of the book’s Parts to learn what academic strategy scholars are or will be investigating that might inform their practice. As an example: The lead chapter, “Strategy in Nascent Markets and Entrepreneurial Firms,” in Part 3, “Strategic Entrepreneurship and Technology,” focuses on nascent markets, a critical context for executive strategists envisioning new business models. Nascent markets “are often new markets but can also be existing markets that are experiencing significant technical, regulatory or institutional shifts that fundamentally disrupt market order.” The chapter expands the scope of research in nascent markets to include extreme ambiguity, high velocity change, unpredictably of change in product evolution, rivals’ actions and customer responses. Strategists coping with the challenges inherent in strategizing in a market with these characteristics should find especially useful the chapter’s distinction between adapting strategies – learn about uncertainties and form strategies in response to generated insights – and shaping strategies – seek to exploit uncertainties and form strategy to organize uncertain and ambiguous markets. Again, the discerning strategist can reflect on whether they typically adopt an adapting or shaping orientation, the questions they should ask within each approach, when it is appropriate to adopt one approach or the other and how each approach affects the strategy choices they create and select.

Third, going beyond my first two suggestions, the strategist committed to keeping up with the latest academic thinking might be well advised to treat this book as an opportunity to undertake a self-designed MBA-like course in strategic management. At a minimum, this will familiarize the thoughtful reader with the dominant concepts and language of the advancing field. You will be better prepared when you need to assess whether the next highly touted shiny new concept is a fad or a truly transformational idea. You will be prepared to ask pertinent, penetrating and revealing questions that may stimulate a productive dialogue.

In sum, this is that rare volume that offers a formidable education for adventurous academics and practitioners willing to put in some extra effort.

Irene M. Duhaime is Professor Emerita of the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University, where she held the Robinson Distinguished Leadership Professorship. Michael A. Hitt is University Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Texas A&M University. Marjorie A. Lyles is International Business Distinguished Research Fellow at Florida International University's Department of International Business and Chancellor's Emeritus Professor at Indiana University.

Full disclosure: I was a Ph.D. candidate colleague of Irene and Marjorie at the University of Pittsburgh in the previous century.

About the author

Liam Fahey is a partner and a cofounder of Leadership Forum LLC, an executive leadership education company ( [email protected] ). He is the co-editor, with Robert M. Randall, of The Portable MBA in Strategy , 1st and 2nd editions (Wiley).

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12 Essential Strategy Insights

For decades, researchers have published findings in mit sloan management review about developing and executing strategy. this collection offers a dozen of our most popular strategy articles of all time..

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“Strategy, at its heart, is about choice,” write the authors of “Turning Strategy Into Results,” an article featured below, which takes a keen look at how leaders translate the complexity of strategy into guidelines that are simple and flexible enough to execute.

A winning strategy for an organization is not based on an individual choice but an expansive, countless number of decisions happening every day across all parts of a business — product, customers, technology capabilities, and more.

In this collection of a dozen of the most popular MIT Sloan Management Review articles on strategy, renowned researchers and academic voices examine the critical choices managers make in companies every day. From insights on goal setting and communicating strategic priorities effectively, to testing and scaling new business models, these articles will help leaders sharpen their strategic thinking to face new challenges.

1. With Goals, FAST Beats SMART

Donald sull and charles sull.

The conventional wisdom of goal setting is so deeply ingrained that managers rarely stop to ask if it works. The traditional approach to goals — the annual cycle, privately set and reviewed goals, and a strong linkage to incentives — can actually undermine the alignment, coordination, and agility that’s needed for a company to execute its strategy .

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2. A Structured Approach to Strategic Decisions

Daniel kahneman, dan lovallo, and olivier sibony.

Reducing errors in judgment requires a disciplined process. The authors provide leaders with a framework that is easy to learn, involves little additional work, and (within limits) leaves room for the leaders’ intuition .

3. The Shareholders vs. Stakeholders Debate

H. jeff smith.

An age-old question has never been more relevant than it is today: Should companies seek only to maximize shareholder value or strive to serve the often-conflicting interests of all stakeholders ?

4. Turning Strategy Into Results

Donald sull, stefano turconi, charles sull, and james yoder.

Businesses develop strategies to address complex, multilayered business environments and challenges — but to execute a strategy in a meaningful way, they must produce a set of specific priorities focused on achieving clear goals. Rather than trying to boil the strategy down to a pithy statement, it’s better to develop a small set of priorities that everyone gets behind to produce results .

About the Author

Ally MacDonald ( @allymacdonald ) is senior editor at MIT Sloan Management Review .

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Strategy-Making in Turbulent Times

• Michael Mankins
• Mark Gottfredson

In the traditional strategic-planning model, managers attempt to forecast how markets will evolve and competitors will respond, and then define a multiyear plan to position their company to win in this future state. That worked well when markets were more stable and the primary factors influencing future growth and profitability were easier to forecast. But the world is now changing so quickly that no business can plan for every eventuality. And fewer than a quarter of large organizations employ the most notable tools and frameworks for strategy development under uncertainty: scenario planning, Monte Carlo simulation, and real options analysis. Executives say that those tools require data that is impractical to gather and analysis that is too expensive to execute routinely and that their output can be counterintuitive and complicated to explain to senior leadership and the board.

In this article the authors offer a new approach and mindset for making strategic decisions, along with a new model for managing strategy development and performance monitoring. They describe what it takes to produce great results in uncertain times and propose a practical model for strategy development that they have seen succeed at several leading companies.

A dynamic new model

Idea in Brief

The problem.

Few companies use the strategic tool kit—scenario planning, Monte Carlo simulation, and real options—for strategy development under uncertainty. Most have stuck with conventional techniques for strategy-making, to the detriment of customers, shareholders, and other stakeholders.

Why It Happens

Executives complain that the tools require data that is impractical to gather and analysis that is too expensive to perform routinely. Moreover, the output can be counterintuitive and complicated to explain to senior leaders and a company’s board.

How to Fix It

Business leaders need to think of strategy-making as a continuous process that generates a living, dynamic plan. That demands a new approach and mindset for making decisions along with a new model, proposed here, for strategy development and performance monitoring.

In crafting strategy, companies often struggle to cope with volatility. Using the traditional strategic-planning model, managers attempt to forecast how markets will evolve and competitors will respond, and then define a multiyear plan for winning in that future state. The organization is then called upon to execute that plan. Performance is routinely monitored, ostensibly to keep everyone on track.

• Michael Mankins is a leader in Bain’s Organization and Strategy practices and is a partner based in Austin, Texas. He is a coauthor of Time, Talent, Energy: Overcome Organizational Drag and Unleash Your Team’s Productive Power (Harvard Business Review Press, 2017).
• MG Mark Gottfredson is a leader in Bain’s performance improvement and strategy practices and a partner in Dallas, Texas. He is a coauthor of The Breakthrough Imperative: How the Best Managers Get Outstanding Results (HarperBusiness, 2008).

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