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We look forward to seeing many of you at the annual Academy of Management conference in Boston in August! As always, the program is packed with great sessions—the depth and breadth of sessions represent the vibrant scholarship and teaching interests of our diverse membership. It is my pleasure and honor to chair our Division as the Academy comes back to Boston, always an exciting venue for the AoM conference. The Division is preparing more opportunities than ever to indulge intellectual curiosity, contribute to our field, meet new and old friends and colleagues, engage in lively discussions, and – yes –have some fun!

An Overview of the Annual Conference Program

The pre-conference program starts with the highly popular Professional Development Workshops (PDWs) and various consortia on Friday and Saturday (August 9 and 10). These events provide terrific opportunities for members to learn from panelists and from each other across various research areas, theories, methods, teaching tool and overall professional skills. Some PDWs, especially the paper development workshops that match authors with expert scholars, require pre-registration. Therefore, please be sure to identify and register for the sessions that interest you before they are fully subscribed, by perusing the program when it becomes available and by noting those PDWs that will be announced via our listserv and other social media. In addition, the STR Division continues to offer a strong line-up of consortia designed to bring scholars together at various stages of their career. Ranging from the “Managing your Dissertation workshop” led by finalists from last year’s Best Dissertation Award through to the Mid-Career Consortium, these activities provide focused conversations with peers and mentors on issues that are most relevant to you. In addition, thanks to our Teaching Committee’s hard work, in just two years the Teaching Consortium has proven to be very well attended and noted for how helpful it is to those who aim to develop their teaching skills. The Division also offers several teaching PDWs, including a walk-in “clinic” for those who have specific teaching questions for experts to answer. Make sure to consult the STR website (www.strdiv.org) as well as the various calls for participation throughout this newsletter to learn more about the objectives and target audiences of research and teaching PDWs. Many thanks to Assistant Program Chair Heather Berry and to all the PDW, consortia, and workshop organizers for their investment of time and energy and for creating an outstanding pre-conference program.

Our Program Chair Tim Folta has assembled an excellent conference program (Monday August 12 and Tuesday August 13, with a few featured events on Sunday August 11). The record number of submissions allowed the assembly of a selective program that is both large and high-quality. Once again, the program will mostly consist of competitive paper sessions, where the best individual paper submissions are assembled into tracks. There will also be some developmental Discussion Paper sessions, and structured symposia where multiple presentations are pre-assembled by organizers. Sessions will be organized around eight tracks (e.g., Cooperative Strategy or Strategic Entrepreneurship) to foster a “conference within a conference” feel and promote dialogue and community building around particular research domains. A huge thank you goes to the more than 1,300 reviewers who have given their time and provided developmental feedback on the many submissions in a short time frame, including emergency reviewers who worked overtime. Thanks also to the track chairs who have helped organize sessions.

Thank you for assembling such a great program for Boston, Tim and Heather!

To make the best of this program, plan to stay at or near the Boston Park Plaza, which will serve as “STR central” for the whole conference. In addition to being the place to be with STR in 2019, it is located very close to the beautiful Boston Common and Public Garden and near both the Charles River and Downtown Boston with its CBD and tourist attractions.

Highlights from the Program

As you plan your conference schedule, I’d like to draw your attention to the following activities—some of which represent mainstay favorites, while others represent recent efforts that respond to member feedback.

Irwin Award Ceremony in Honor of David Mowery (Sunday, 6:00-8:00 p.m., Boston Park Plaza Statler Room): See Honors and Awards below for more details!

STR Plenary Session (Monday 11:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m., Boston Park Plaza Room TBA) This year’s plenary is titled “The next 50 years of STR scholarship: Looking back to see forward”. A terrific panel including Jay Barney, Don Hambrick, Anita McGahan (and another guest to be announced) will reflect on the past, present and future of Strategic Management. We will consider the main accomplishments and lessons of the first 50 years of our Division – whose founding started with a planning meeting in 1969! – and how they inform us about the opportunities and priorities to make our discipline and field of practice even more vibrant and impactful for the future. The above-mentioned panelists, as scholars and as experienced leaders of the Division and other AoM institutions, will provide a memorable take on the issues close to their heart.

STR Dissertation Award Finalists (Monday 3:00-4:30 p.m., Boston Park Plaza Grand Ballroom B):  Listen and interact with this year’s finalists for the Wiley-Blackwell Outstanding Dissertation Award, as they present a synopsis of their dissertation research.

STR Business Meeting and Social (Monday 6:30-7:30 p.m., Boston Park Plaza Grand Ballroom AB, and 7:30-9:00 p.m. Boston Park Plaza Grand Ballroom AB): Join us as we discuss STR business, announce award winners, introduce new division leaders, and thank those who have held various positions of STR service. Then, connect with colleagues at the STR Social immediately following.

Updates on New/Continuing Initiatives

(Almost) new awards: This will be just the second year that the Division honors recipients of two biennial awards that were introduced in 2017. Thanks to the initiative of John Mezias and former students, colleagues and friends of the late Bill Guth, our service award has been endowed as the STR William D. Guth Distinguished Service Award. This is all the more appropriate as Bill Guth led the above-mentioned 1969 meeting where STR was conceived, and served as our Division’s first chair. Come to the business meeting to congratulate this year’s winner, Ed Zajac, for his multiple and generous service contributions to our field. We will also announce the winner of the Emerging Scholar Award, which rewards a highly successful recent scholar whose research represents the best of the present and future of the Division. Special thanks to the STR Awards Committee and to the past Division Chairs who helped select the awardees (see the end of this Newsletter for the committee names).

Membership engagement initiatives: To complement the many scholarly events – and indeed to facilitate and extend the academic as well as social conversation, the Division has been working for the last two years to provide a menu of social and cultural events during the conference. Last year, we offered our first New Member Breakfast, an opportunity for new members to meet each other and the Division leaders and friends. Look for future announcements of this year’s event. To formalize other efforts on behalf of members, the Division has named a new officer who will work year-round with the Executive Committee. Our first Membership Engagement Chair is Bilgehan Uzunca – for a while yet, a fellow Dutch resident. In addition to offering versions of the events of the last two years with past volunteers, Bil is looking to assemble a larger committee that will arrange a broader set of events at the conference. See his announcement elsewhere on the website.

And this is just the beginning. Although the annual conference is the main focus of the Division’s efforts and of this newsletter, many members do not get to attend it. Furthermore, among the AoM’s “moonshots”, its overarching ambitions, is “to provide to a diverse membership indispensable value characterized by extensive professional services, vibrant volunteerism, interactive communities, and re-imagined governance” – something that include but goes well beyond the annual conference. Thus, we have started a reflection about what activities and services members would like the Division to undertake and offer outside the conference. Our first goal is to come up with ideas whereby scholars – regardless of rank, location, research and/or teaching mandate, professional status etc. – benefit from their membership throughout the year. If you have ideas about such initiatives that will add value to being part of the STR Division and community year-round, contact me at STRdivision@tilburguniversity.edu. I look forward to hearing from you.

A heartfelt thank you!

I would like to take this opportunity to extend my special thanks to all the people who are engaged within the STR division in advancing all these exciting and important initiatives. I would especially like to thank Michael Holmes, our secretary, Paul Drnevich, our treasurer, and Paolo Aversa, our communications director, for their excellent service to the division – and again, welcome to the team Bilgehan (Uzunca)! I would also like to thank all members of the STR Executive Committee, Awards Committee, Global Representatives Committee, Research Committee and Teaching Committee. Each member has made special contributions to our strategic management community during the past year and towards the annual conference.

I also wish to acknowledge the less formal and yet invaluable contributions of many others. During my past four years of service as an officer of your Division, and before that as a member of its Research and Executive committee, I have been very fortunate to witness and work with deeply committed (and often unnamed) members, session and event organizers, and sundry volunteers who have generously contributed, year after year. Thank you all! It is a great pleasure to work with you all – your commitment, energy and willingness to contribute time to the division is truly an inspiration, and as mentioned above I look forward to hearing your ideas for other activities yet!

Last but not least, I would like to thank our Past Division Chair Mary Benner as her five years of service as an officer of the division near their end. Mary, you have provided wisdom, a structured and effective approach to the task – Mary gets things done! – and some invaluable patience and encouragement as I followed your steps during the last four years. To all of you who are reading this message: Please do stop and thank Mary for her superb effort when you see her in Boston.

I look forward to seeing many of you in Boston, and to hear from others!

Xavier Martin
STR Division Chair
Tilburg University
STRdivision@tilburguniversity.edu

Greetings! The 2019 AOM Annual Meeting is August 9-13 in Boston, MA USA. We have nearly finalized the STR conference program, and I am confident that you will find it exciting and interesting. Please note that STR sessions, meetings, and socials will all be in the Boston Park Plaza Hotel so consider booking your accommodations there for easy access to all of our events. Below is a table of key STR events not to be missed!

We have many excellent symposia and paper sessions for our conference in what is shaping up to be a great program. The STR division received 825 papers and 97 symposium submissions (a 2% increase from 2018) from authors representing 41 different countries (down from 51 last year), reflecting the global nature of our STR community.

50 percent of all paper submissions were accepted as either divisional (372) or discussion (36)  papers, consistent with the Academy of Management (AOM) target acceptance rate. Obviously, this means that many fine papers were left off the program.  So that we can accommodate as many papers as possible, we do not use discussants in the sessions.  This structure allows each of the sessions to have four papers presented. Therefore, as in the past few years, we ask Session Chairs to serve as moderators and take an active role in guiding discussions during Q&A.

We accepted 79 symposia (80% acceptance rate), of which 75 are jointly sponsored with other divisions. Accepting so many symposia requires close collaboration with Program Chairs of other divisions (especially TIM, OMT and ENT) to find co-sponsoring divisions. Nearly half of these jointly sponsored symposia will be scheduled by our division and will be in the Boston Park Plaza.

It requires a team effort to process the 922 conference submissions and 3065 reviews in a condensed time frame. A fundamental part of this process are the 1,320 reviewers from 60 different countries that registered to assist with this important work. We are deeply grateful to all of the new and continuing reviewers who gave their time and offered developmental and high-quality reviews, undertaking significant effort to serve our division in this important way. As a result of this collective effort, the vast majority of submissions received three reviews.

There are many other people to thank for their help on the program this year. Jenna Rodrigues, my doctoral student from University of Connecticut, served as Program Chair Assistant this year and did a fantastic job helping in a sundry of important tasks. Emily Cox Pahnke and Vikas Aggarwal served as Associate Editors, helping with accept/reject decisions, recruiting Track Chairs, and Dexter/Newman Award nominations. Eight scholars served as Division Track Chairs, helping to organize papers into cohesive sessions: Andrew Boysen (Corporate and International Strategy Track); Joon Mahn Lee (Strategic Leadership and Governance Track); Christiane Bode (Stakeholder Strategy Track); Dan Olson (Competitive Strategy Track); Douglas Hannah (Innovation Strategy and Industry Dynamics Track); Daniel Armanios (Cooperative Strategy Track); Beverly Tyler (Behavioral Strategy, Process, and Change Track); and Vera Rocha (Strategic Entrepreneurship Track). Thanks also to the AOM Staff, especially Gabe Bramson and Jel Erica Hampson, for all of their assistance during the past year. Finally, warm thanks to the other STR officers –Mary Benner, Xavier Martin, and Heather Berry, with particular thanks to Samina for enthusiastically fielding my many inquiries. 

So, what do we have to look forward to in Boston in August, 2019? Some highlights below:

Conference Track Information

The STR program is organized within tracks, to create opportunities for attendees to interact across related sessions, foster the development of research communities, and minimize time conflicts across sessions. For these reasons, we try to schedule track sessions within a particular room on Monday and Tuesday. The tracks and chairs for 2019 are noted above. Once the program schedule is finalized, we will also publish the conference tracks on the STR listserv and the STR webpage (www.STRdiv.org). These quick guides will help you search for sessions on a common theme within the larger conference program.

Plenary Session

The STR Plenary Session is scheduled on Monday from 11:30am-1pm (in Boston Park Plaza).  The idea behind the plenary session format is to give division members the possibility (with very few other divisional sessions scheduled in parallel) to gather and discuss an important theme. This year, STR features an exciting plenary session entitled “The Last 50 Years of STR Scholarship: Looking Back to See Forward.” The panel, will be moderated by Xavier Martin (Division Chair), and is composed of an extraordinary group of scholars having particular insight on this theme: Jay Barney, Donald Hambrick, and Anita McGahan.

Business Meeting & Social

We will recognize various conference best paper awards at our Monday (6:30-7:30 pm) STR Business Meeting. Recognition will also be given to outstanding reviewers (providing especially detailed, constructive, and timely feedback to authors) for the 2019 program. The social follows immediately afterward (7:30-9:00 pm).

Post slides

Finally, please note that AOM is inviting authors of accepted papers to post their slides to the online program. Authors will also have their full-length papers automatically posted (they can opt out of this choice if they wish). Materials posted will only be available to conference registrants during a given timeframe (likely May-September).

What an experience this has been for me to organize the program for STR! It has been humbling and gratifying to work with so many committed individuals. Having seen so many written words of authors and referees, I look forward to seeing presented in Boston the outstanding research of our members. I am counting on many constructive comments of engaged scholars. I eagerly anticipate meeting the faces that match the names.  I welcome the opportunity to thank all the contributors. Finally, I trust you will find AOM Boston 2019 as valuable and interesting as I do. See you in August!

Timothy B Folta
University of Connecticut
STR Division Program Chair
timothy.folta@uconn.edu

The 2019 Professional Development Workshop (PDW) program at the Academy of Management Meetings in Boston runs Friday, August 9 and Saturday, August 10, from 8 am – 8 pm each day.

This year’s STR sponsored PDWs provide sessions that develop and update knowledge of empirical methods, review, discuss and apply theories and phenomenon, and enhance and develop teaching skills. See the STR Pre-Conference Schedule at the end of this article for an overview of the sessions, times and places for the 2019 meeting. Members who are interested in sharpening and extending their methods knowledge have a broad portfolio of options this year.

Some highlights include “Methods to Study Organization design,” “Insider Econometrics and Unique Organizational Data,” “Designing and Running Strategy and Innovation Field Experiments,” “Formal Modeling,” “Computational Models in Behavioral Strategy Research,” “Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: New Methods and Topics,” and “Replication and Reliability Crisis and the Philosophy of Science Training.”

Members who are interested in deepening their understanding of theories and phenomenon will find many topics and formats … including “Frontiers in Nonmarket Strategy,” “Evolutionary Economics and Corporate Strategy,” “Psychological Perspectives on Strategy,” “Heuristics and Cognitive Biases of Decision Makers,” “Coopetition,” “Diversity in Corporate Boards,” and “Corporate Strategy in Healthcare,” among several others.

Members who are interested in enhancing their teaching skills will find a range of PDWs on offer again this year. One PDW will focus on hybrid and online-only formats and we will be offering for the second time the very popular “Walk-in” Strategy Teaching Clinic,” which will allow our members to seek feedback on specific issues from expert mentors. Our Junior Faculty Teaching Consortium will also be offered again this year.

Members who are interested in paper development, please consider submitting your applications to either the “Junior Faculty Paper Development Workshop” or the “Fostering Publications from Around the World.” The latter session targets scholars from regions historically under-represented within AOM to overcome obstacles related to publishing in leading journals. For members interested in attending our Consortia (i.e., Dissertation, Doctoral, New Faculty, Mid-Career Faculty, Junior Faculty Teaching), please look for application deadlines on the STR listserv.

Almost all of the STR lead-sponsored sessions will take place in the Boston Park Plaza. If you have questions about a PDW, please direct them to the PDW organizer, listed first among the participants in the AOM program.

On behalf of the officers, I want to convey gratitude to all contributing to these growth opportunities, including all the PDW and consortia organizers and all of the committed panelists.

Thank you.

Heather Berry
George Washington University 
STR Assistant Program Chair
aomstrheather@gmail.com

he STR Emerging Scholar Award recognizes a promising scholar who has established a research record of exceptional quality early in his/her career, has a notable publication record, and has already demonstrated an impact on the field of strategic management. Candidates are judged by the relevance, academic contribution, theoretical and methodological rigor, and practical implications of their work. The Award is bestowed upon a winner every other (i.e. odd numbered) year.

The Emerging Scholar Award recipient is selected by a committee of former STR Division Chairs. The Division would like to extend a big thank you to this year’s committee:

Alfonso Gambardella (Bocconi University)

Kathryn R. Harrigan (Columbia University)

Edward J. Zajac (Northwestern University)

The 2019 STR Emerging Scholar Award goes to Seth Carnahan!

Seth is an Associate Professor at Washington University’s Olin Business School. Prior to that, he was an Assistant Professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He received his PhD from the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland at College Park in 2013.

Seth’s interest is at the intersection of strategy, entrepreneurship and human capital; his research tries to understand how firms can improve performance by managing their people more effectively.  He has published several papers in the top journals in the field, including Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, and Management Science.

Seth’s supporters offered the following comments:

“Seth’s publication record displays his open-mindedness, intellectual range in both micro and macro disciplinary streams, and mastery of empirical methodologies.”

“Carnahan starts his career in strategic management auspiciously by contributing to the competitive strategy literature on salient topics concerning strategy implementation, particularly with a focus on astute use of human capital. His mainstream contributions anticipate the entrepreneurial challenge of growth through labor advantages and reflect the new economy issues ahead.”

The STR Division proudly congratulates Professor Seth Carnahan as the recipient of the 2019 STR Emerging Scholar Award. Please join us at the STR Business Meeting on Monday night (6:00 pm – 7:00 pm) to honor Seth!

Samina Karim
Northeastern University
STR Division Chair-Elect

The STR William D. Guth Distinguished Service Award recognizes an STR member with at least 15 years of service to the field, who has made significant contributions to activities within the STR Division, the Academy of Management, and/or to the broader field of strategic management. Award criteria included editorial contributions at journals or of edited volumes of strategy research, significant contributions to the Academy of Management, conference organizing, administrative roles, or textbook authorship.

The 2019 STR Guth Distinguished Service Award goes to Edward J. Zajac!

Ed is the James F. Beré Professor of Management and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management and a Professor of Sociology at the Weinberg College of Arts of Sciences, Northwestern University. He is an elected Fellow of both the Academy of Management and the Strategic Management Society, and the recipient of an honorary doctorate from the Free University of Berlin. Ed Zajac joined the faculty of the Kellogg School of Management after completing his Ph.D. in organization and strategy at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Cologne and a visiting scholar at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Free University of Berlin, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the National University of Singapore, and the University of Zurich.

The Awards Committee recognized Ed’s outstanding service to the field of strategic management. Ed has played prominent and visible service roles in the two primary organizations that support the field of strategy, the Strategic Management Division (STR, formerly BPS) of the Academy of Management and the Strategic Management Society. Among his many service contributions to the field, he has served as Co-Editor of the Strategic Management Journal from 2007 to 2013 and he currently is a Consulting Editor at the Strategic Management Journal, an Editorial Advisory Board member at the Asia Pacific Journal of Management, and a Review Board member at the Journal of Trust Research.

Ed has also made important contributions to the field through his research and was recognized as one of the “most highly cited researchers” worldwide in the Institute of Scientific Information’s yearly list of highly cited researchers from 2006 to 2012.

Ed has been tirelessly dedicated to all aspects of the Strategy field – our institutions, journals, faculty and students.  As one of his supporters highlighted: “Ed has made substantial contributions in co-editing SMJ for many years, working for many years in BPS/STR leadership, volunteering in PhD and junior faculty consortia, and mentoring his own PhD students. “ Another colleague remarked: “Ed has also been instrumental in fostering a more participative scholarly atmosphere by promoting greater participation by junior scholars on editorial boards and at academic conferences.” Ed’s kindness and approachability will not soon be forgotten by those he has touched. We are thankful for all that he has done to make the Strategy field as vibrant as it is today.

The STR Division proudly congratulates Professor Edward J. Zajac as the recipient of the 2019 STR William D. Guth Distinguished Service Award. Please join us at the STR Business Meeting on Monday night (6:00 pm – 7:00 pm) to honor Ed!

Samina Karim
Northeastern University
STR Division Chair-Elect