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Deepak Somaya, Program Chair STR

(dsomayaaom@gmail.com)

I am delighted to present to you some of the highlights of the STR program for the annual conference in Boston. This year we are back to a fully in-person program and are looking forward to interacting with each other in a socially and intellectually vibrant format. Our program has also largely gone back to a structure that will look familiar to many from the pre-2020 time period.

Some of our colleagues may still face challenges in physically attending the conference, some who indicated a virtual session preference might not have the option to participate virtually in real time, and some might also find themselves with session conflicts in the program. Strategies suggested by the Academy for dealing with these types of situations entail collaborating with your coauthors and session participants to: (1) potentially split time (and/or coauthor teams) across sessions, (2) pre-record presentations and upload them to the Annual Meeting Program Platform (to be played in your absence during the session), and (3) coordinate with all session participants to possibly move a session to another time and sending an email (cc'd to all those presenting in the session) to program@aom.org.

Regardless, I trust that you will find the STR program sessions contain exciting and relevant content related to research and teaching in the strategic management field. As in prior years, the STR program is organized by eight topical tracks: Corporate and International Strategy; Organization Structure, Networks and Relational Strategies; Resources, Capabilities, and Strategic Factor Markets; Nonmarket Strategy; Knowledge, Learning and Innovation Strategy; Industry, Competition, and Strategic Entrepreneurship; Strategic Leadership, TMT, and Corporate Governance; and Behavioral Strategy. These tracks have also guided the program development and in general make the process much more manageable for the program team. Each of the tracks have a number of exciting paper and symposia sessions, and at the end of this newsletter I will highlight a few sessions. 

Before I get into the highlights of the program, let me start by thanking the amazing volunteers that have helped me put together the program this year. It is safe to say that without them it would not have been possible. First, let me thank the three outstanding scholars and STR executive committee members that were part of the program team this year: Joanna Campbell (University of Cincinnati), Donal Crilly (London Business School), and Exequiel (Zeke) Hernandez (University of Pennsylvania). They helped me develop the program by evaluating the 949 proposals that were submitted this year (835 papers and 114 symposia), making recommendations on specific paper proposals, and identifying proposals as candidates for our various paper awards under severe time pressures. I am immensely grateful to Joanna, Donal, and Zeke, and if you see them in Boston take a moment to thank them for their tremendous efforts in building the STR program. 

Second, I want to thank two scholars from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign-Minjung Kim and Yusaku Takeda-for their support to the program team in organizing paper sessions within some of our topical tracks. 

Third, I wish to thank all the reviewers who signed up to review for the STR division. This year, nearly 1,300 individuals from 66 countries volunteered to review for the STR division.  Of the reviews that we assigned, 91.6% were completed in time to provide feedback to STR authors. The number of reviewers went up by 5% from last year, and reviews completed increased by 1.8%, which shows the continued commitment of STR members to contribute to our division.  I am 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. I am also thankful to Membership Engagement Committee members Aldona Kapacinskaite (Bocconi University) and Lisa Tang (National University of Singapore) for organizing and hosting a reviewing workshop where Catherine Maritan (Syracuse University) offered very helpful tips on reviewing in general, and reviewing for a conference like AOM in particular. 

Fourth, I want to express my deep thanks to a select group of "trusted reviewers" who stepped up and provided emergency reviews with a short turnaround. The helpful reviews from these scholars meant we could make good on-time decisions on all submissions.  My sincere thanks go to Aaron Hill, Aseem Kaul, Britta Glennon, Craig Crossland, Daniel H Wilde, Francisco Brahm, Giada DiStefano, Hart Posen, Heather Berry, Jaeho Kim, Luke Rhee, Marie Louise Mors, Markus Taussig, Martin Ganco, Nan Jia, Ram Ranganathan, Saerom Lee, Samina Karim, Sarath Balachandran, Tim Quigley, and Tomasz Obloj for serving as our trusted reviewers.

I will close this portion of my letter thanking Jingya You for her a fantastic job as my assistant on the program. I am also thankful to the AOM Staff, especially Brianna Giampia and Gabe Bramson, for all of their assistance during the past year. And warm thanks to the other STR officers – Heather Berry, Michael Leiblein, Louise Mors and Brian Wu for their help and support throughout the year.

STR Submission Stats:

The STR division received 835 papers and 114 symposium submissions in 2023. This is up 20% from the prior year, and essentially back to pre-pandemic submission rates for STR. Continuing a trend from recent years, even more of these submissions (72%) originated from outside of the United States than last year (63%). 1,299 reviewers from 66 countries signed up to review. Reviewers from the US accounted for 39% of the reviewers.

STR Program Socials, Meetings, and Plenary

Below are the main STR events. In addition to the in-person business meeting, we will also feature a pre-recorded business meeting that highlights the main statistics of our program, extends our thanks to all of our volunteers, and highlights the STR activities of the past year. The award winners will be announced at the in-person business meeting on Monday and we will update the pre-recorded business meeting and post it on the STR website (https://str.aom.org/home) after the in-person meeting.   

All times listed are local time in Boston (Eastern Time zone).

Thursday

Pre-recorded Business Meeting

Sunday:

8:00-9:00AM: STR Irwin Award Light Breakfast. Boston Marriott Copley Place in Tremont.

9:00-10:00AM: STR Irwin Outstanding Educator Award in honor of Aks Zaheer. Boston Marriott Copley Place in Tremont.

Monday:

7:30-8:30AM: Pre-Plenary Social (Coffee and light breakfast). Boston Marriott Copley Place in Salon E

8:30-10:00AM: STR Plenary: The Distinctive Contributions of Strategic Management Research. Boston Marriott Copley Place in Salon E

4:00-5:45PM: Best Dissertation Finalists' Presentations, Boston Marriott Copley Place in Wellesley

6:00-7:00PM: STR Business Meeting, Boston Marriott Copley Place in Wellesley

7:00-8:00PM: STR Social, Boston Marriott Copley Place in Salon F

STR Program Paper and Symposium Session Highlights by Track

The STR program features many exciting sessions across the three different formats. To show you the variety of sessions across the eight different STR tracks, I have chosen to highlight two sessions within each track. All times listed are local time in Boston (Eastern zone).

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Deepak Somaya
Dianne and Steven N. Miller Professor
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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