Strategy Research Foundation�s 2011 Research Support Program
�The Strategy Research Foundation (SRF) is pleased to announce that it will begin its research funding activity during calendar year 2011.� Preparation for this very first step in meeting its fundamental purpose of supporting research in the Strategic Management field has filled the past year with a number of activities, which are still ongoing and growing.�� One of the important next steps will be the release of a Call for Proposals to be published on the SRF website.� This Call for Proposals can be expected sometime during the March-April timeframe.� This step is of significance in bringing awareness to everyone in the field as to what it will mean to have the presence of a new, supporting foundation.� Please be on the lookout for the initial announcement at �the SRF website:� srf.strategicmanagement.net.
The preparations necessary to the release of the Call, and the work that will follow in making and monitoring financial awards, have revealed the singular importance of volunteers in making the SRF viable.� �Some volunteers have been identified, and are at work, as you will learn in what follows, but many more are needed.� In some respects this announcement is as much a call for volunteers yet needed as it is a report for what the SRF has been doing over the past year and more of its work.
The SRF is related to the Strategic Management Society in purpose, but not in scope.� Both the SMS and SRF support the field and its work, with the SRF doing so in financial support terms, the SMS in many other ways.� While the SMS has a much wider scope, in general it does not directly support research financially, a task that forms the major purpose of the SRF.��
Specifically, the SRF is devoted to fostering research needed in the field, supporting it financially, especially research needed that would not otherwise be undertaken for reasons such as longitudinal barriers, barriers in scope, or for any other reason that such needed research is or has not been undertaken by conventional means.� For more on this please refer to the various statements of purpose and vision already published on the SRF and SMS websites: srf.strategicmanagement.net.
The SRF has adopted the broad view that the field of strategic management is applied in its orientation, meaning that fostering better practice of management, especially that deemed strategic in nature, is as important as the formation of concepts, theories and notions of strategy and its management in organizations of all types.� The basic disciplines important to strategic management are not singular and exclusive, but are multiple and inclusive, and range widely, as has been shown over the years of the existence of the field.� These basic research sources and their applications remain important motivators of new management ideas, but so does further research in solving the practical, contemporary problems facing managers, and those current and continuing problems best solved through public policy formation involving the varied institutions, public and private, of modern societies.
But what research is needed, and why wouldn�t it otherwise be done, and what funds exist to support that work, and what will it take to make the SRF viable in the longer term?� These, and many other important questions, were left to the SRF and its Board of Trustees to answer.� During the past year, answering these questions, indeed, the very formation of the questions themselves, has been the work of the SRF and its Board, highlighted in what follows below.
At its first formal meeting in June 2010, the SRF Board agreed to form taskforces in two areas in which work important to establishing the SRF was considered significant.� The first of these was a taskforce charged with determining topics of research that would help meet the objectives of the SRF and speak to its purposes and the culture and image it wished to establish.� The second taskforce was asked to address unique ways of supporting the most significant source of future research and leadership of the academic side of the field: viz., that research emanating from doctoral training.
Heading the Research Topic Taskforce was Donald Hambrick, of Pennsylvania State University, and Jay Barney, of Ohio State University, both SRF trustees, who invited Mason Carpenter, University of Wisconsin, Joseph Mahoney, University of Illinois, Anita McGahan, University of Toronto, and Todd Zenger, Washington University (St. Louis), to join them in meeting the charge given them.� Their work developed five basic themes that they recommended be further developed and defined and then used as the basis for inviting relevant research proposals, the particulars of which they left to the organization simultaneously being formed to operate the SRF.� These five themes were characterized under these headings:
1.����� 1. Value Creation through Collaborative Public-Private Interaction
2.�� 2.� The Strategy Process and Analytics
3.���� 3. Strategic Management Research and Poverty Alleviation
4.�� 4. Firm Risk, Growth and Survival in the Face of Rapid Environmental Change
5.����� 5. Strategic Leadership and Contemporary Financial Markets
�Marjorie Lyles, Indiana University, and Michael Hitt, Texas A&M University, both also SRF Trustees, headed the Doctoral Support Taskforce and invited Africa Arino, IESE,� Justin Jansen, Erasmus University, and Ken Smith , University of Rhode Island to join with them.� This taskforce recommended the primary focus should be to support dissertation research itself.� Their report made a number of suggestions, among them that such dissertation research that had already been vetted by a local dissertation committee would be a unique way for the SRF to foster the training of research workers in the field, and through this mechanism support research themes and programs of interest to the SRF.
�Meanwhile, other work has been underway to staff the organization structure believed by the Board of Trustees at these initial stages of the SRF�s development to be necessary to conduct the operating work of the foundation.� The nominal organization structure defined is detailed in the Vision Statement to be found on the SRF website, srf.strategicmanagement.net.� Under this structure, the CEO in effect is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees as well as the Executive Committee of the SRF.� Along with the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the BoT, three other officers serve as an Executive Committee of five persons, which through the Chairman, reports to the Board of Trustees and makes recommendations to the Board concerning policy matters that intersect with operating issues.�
�The next level of responsibility below the Board level contemplated in the organization design involves five major task areas, each of which is headed by a chief officer charged with leading that task.� The five task areas are: Administrative, Grants, Technical, Financial, and Development.� As mentioned, the Executive Committee is composed of three of these officers along with the Chair and Vice Chair.� The three are Grants, Technical and Development officers.� Of the five task officers, four have been appointed: the Chief Administrative Officer is Niko Pelka (SMS Executive Office), whose services are reimbursed; the Chief Grants Officer, Jeffrey Reuer (Purdue University); the Chief Technical Officer, Joseph Mahoney (University of Illinois); and the Chief Investment Officer/Treasurer, William Bogner (Georgia State University), all of whom are volunteers.� The fifth, the Chief Development Officer, is yet to be appointed by the Board of Trustees.
�All of the task areas have committees invited and formed by the respective Chief Task Officer and are composed of volunteers.� These committees and the sub-committees, in addition to specific task responsibilities, serve in an advisory capacity to the Chief Task Officer of their area.� Of the five task areas, it is the Grants and Technical areas that have taken on the responsibility of developing the Call for Proposals and for the routines, involving widely the committee members and other volunteers from the field, necessary to conduct the evaluation, award and monitoring of the research to be funded.� Clearly, all of the officers will be involved in one way or another in the overall processes necessary to defining, funding, awarding, and monitoring the research programs developed and supported by the SRF.� Overall, counting the expected membership of the advisory committees, upwards to 75 volunteers are expected to be needed to help with the initial work of the SRF, and still more will be needed on an on-going basis.
�As part of this organization build-out, volunteers have been identified and appointed as �Theme Chairs� for each of the five technical themes listed above.� These Theme Chairs will help identify and lead committees of volunteers who will be involved in the evaluation and award of support to proposals that have emerged from the competition to be detailed in the forthcoming Call for Proposals.� The five theme chairs, listed in connection with their assigned themes are: Frank Rothaermel, Georgia Institute of Technology, �Value Creation through Collaborative Public-Private Interaction;� Africa Arino, IESE, �The Strategy Process and Analytics;� Anita McGahan, University of Toronto, �Strategic Management Research and Poverty Alleviation;� Michael Lenox, University of Virginia, �Firm Risk, Growth and Survival in the Face of Rapid Environmental Change;� and Todd Zenger, Washington University (St. Louis), �Strategic Leadership and Contemporary Financial Markets.�� A sixth theme chair will be appointed and charged with overseeing awards to go to doctoral candidates who submit proposals containing dissertation themes related to one or more of the five technical themes.� The forthcoming Call for Proposals will also detail just how this aspect of the SRF�s 2011 Research Awards program will be conducted.
While these initial appointments do not reveal it, it is the intent of the SRF to involve intimately, the perspective, views and experience of those interested in our field from the practitioner side of strategic management, whether involved in public or private organization, business or consulting, large and small, government or not-for-profit.�� All of these perspectives are needed so we especially welcome the help of those persons who are involved in practice, and we recognize the contributions that only they can make. ��Suggestions of or from persons engaged in application of strategic management research from the field are needed and are very welcome.
This statement is meant to alert you to the work already done or underway, with still more needed to complete the 2011 Call for Proposals forthcoming in the March/April timeframe.� Beyond that, however, it should also serve to alert you to the requests that will be coming forward asking you to volunteer for some aspect or another of the work and responsibilities contemplated by the SRF as a whole.�� And, at some point you may also hear from our Development Officer asking you to volunteer financial support to the work and future of the SRF.
�2011 is the year, SRF is the mechanism, and all of you are invited to be involved in one way or another with this important initiative in our field, one we hope will add to the role, growth and significance of strategic management in the overall society of which we are a part.� As the Board concerned with establishing the SRF as a viable entity, we are acutely aware of how much help we need to make all of this happen, and happen again and again, as we try to become an integral part of the field of Strategic Management and its ongoing growth and role in society.� We look forward to your continuing support.
�Sincerely,
The Board of Trustees
Strategy Research Foundation
Dan Schendel, Chairman
Jay Barney, Vice Chairman
Carlos Cavalle
Bala Chakravarthy
Donald Hambrick
Dieter Heuskel
John Keane
Marjorie Lyle
Joan E. Ricart
David Teece
Howard Thomas
�
SRF Executive Office
Rice Building � Suite 215 815 W Van Buren
Chicago, Illinois 60607-3567
USA
Tel: 312-492-6224
Fax: 312-492-6223
Email:srf@strategicmanagement.net
Web site: srf.strategicmanagement.net
-- SMS Executive Office Rice Building � Suite 215 815 W Van Buren Chicago, Illinois 60607-3567 USA Tel: 312-492-6224 Fax: 312-492-6223 Email:sms@strategicmanagement.net Web site: strategicmanagement.net 2011 Miami: miami.strategicmanagement.net