Please find below a call for papers. Our apologies for cross-posting.
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EURAM 2013 June 26-29, 2013 in Istanbul
Strategic Management SIG!
Track: Management & Technological Innovation at a Crossroads: New Processes, Practices, And Structures
SUBTRACK – C
Rethinking Strategy in Times of Technological Change
Track chairs : Francesca Cabiddu (fcabiddu@unica.it), Maria Chiara Di Guardo (cdguardo@unica.it), University of Cagliari, Italy
For more information on the conference, please visit the official website:
http://www.euram2013.com
How firms achieve competitive advantage is the fundamental question of strategic management. However, the traditional sources of advantage seem to no longer provide long-term security. The last decades have witnessed an impressive rise in competition (D'Aveni, 1994) as well as an increased pace of technological change and shorter product life-cycles (Iansiti, 1995). As suggested by Brown and Eisenhardt (1995: 344), "[innovation] is among the essential processes for success, survival and renewal of organizations, particularly for firms in either fast-paced or competitive markets". Yet how to build and sustain a competitive advantage in times of technological change keeps being a partially unsolved puzzle, nor it has been thoroughly analyzed which theoretical framework of strategy best suits the needs of firms when technological change is the name of the game.
In the past twenty years, several theories have been proposed about the sources of competitive advantage. Williamson (1991) has grouped them under two different headings: 'strategizing' and 'economizing'. The first perspective underlines a market power imperative and competitive interactions between rival firms, and in doing so it highlights the importance of the external environment. This perspective utilizes the tool of game theory to analyze the nature of competitive interactions (Shapiro, 1989) and examines how to seek monopoly rents (Porter, 1980; 1985). The role of firms' strategic conduct in influencing performance, together with industry structure, is explicitly recognized and valued. However, it has been argued that this approach is useful only if the competitive forces are relatively stable and independent (Chakravarthy, 1997), and thus not in times of technological change. The second perspective is fundamentally concerned with efficiency, and maintains that the sources of competitive advantage mainly reside inside the firm. In particular, efficiency analysis encompasses governance costs as well as production costs. Transaction costs economics (Williamson, 1975; 1985) focuses on governance design, while theories that conceive the firm as a bundle of unique, valuable and hard to transfer resources (e.g. Barney, 1991; Peteraf, 1993) zero in on differential production costs. Therefore, it is argued that private wealth creation in regimes of rapid technological change depends in large measure on honing internal technological, organizational, and managerial processes inside the firm, i.e. on owning dynamic capabilities ("the firm's ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external competences to address rapidly changing environments", Teece et al., 1997: 516), and on the efficient organization of R&D transactions (Pisano, 1990). Which of these two perspectives may better help managers to cope with technological change?
According to this insight, this track wants to move ahead along this path, proposing a discussion on the prospects and challenges of strategy and innovation management.
Possible papers suitable for this track address for instance (but are not limited to) the subsequent topics:
· Organizational behavior of technology oriented firms.
· Resource-based strategies approach to adapt to technological change.
· Transaction Cost Economics as a theoretical lens to study innovation sourcing decisions.
· Methods of aligning exploitative and explorative tasks in technology oriented firms (ambidextrous management)
· Strategic alliances in explaining organizational growth in time of technological change.
· Open innovation strategy and open collaborative innovation
· Strategy processes in technology oriented ventures
· Measurement Model for IT capabilities
· Relationship between capability reconfiguration and technological change
Keywords: Transaction cost economics, Resource Based View, Dynamic Capabilities, Innovation.
References
Cabiddu F., M.C. Di Guardo, (2012), "Does Strategy have a Say in Times of Technological Change?", (Ed.) Bing Ran, Contemporary Perspectives on Technological Innovation, Management and Policy, Information Age Publishing
Gottschalg, O., & Zollo, M. 2007. Interest alignment and competitive advantage. Academy of Management Review, 32: 418–437.
Grant, R. M. (1991). The Resource-based Theory of Competitive Advantage: Implications for Strategy Formulation. California Management Review, 33(3), 114-135.
Grant, R. M. (1996). Prospering in Dynamically Competitive Environments: Organizational Capability as Knowledge Integration. Organization Science, 7(4), 375-387.
Romanelli, E., & Tushman, M.L. (1994). Organizational transformation as punctuated equilibrium: An empirical test. Academy of Management Journal; 37(5), 1141-1167.
Rothwell, R., & Dodgson M. (1991). External Linkages and Innovation in Small and Medium-Sized. R&D Management, 21(2),125-138.
Rumelt, R. P. (1984). Toward a strategic theory of the firm. In R. Lamb (ed.), Competitive Strategic Management, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Rumelt, R. P. (1987). Theory, strategy, and entrepreneurship. In D. Teece, (ed.), The Competitive Challenge. Ballinger ,Cambridge, MA.
Shapiro, C. (1989). The Theory of Business Strategy. RAND Journal of Economics, 20, 25-137.
Williamson, O. E. (1991). Strategizing, economizing, and economic organization, Strategic Management Journal, Winter Special Issue 12, 75-94.
Winter, S. G. (2003). Understanding dynamic capabilities. Strategic Management Journal 24(10), 991-999.
Important Deadlines
Deadline for paper submission 15 January 2013 2 pm Belgian time
Notification of acceptance as of 26 March 2013
Early bird/authors registration 23 April 2013
If you need further information, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Best regards
Francesca Cabiddu
Maria Chiara Di Guardo