Editors’ Introduction: Welcome back to Strategic Organization – SO!

Our First Year

We founded STRATEGIC ORGANIZATION because we believed that the time had come for researchers in strategy and organization to join forces to advance strategic organization theory and practice.  We felt that a journal that explicitly removed topical, disciplinary, and methodological constraints while at the same time demanding strong disciplinary grounding and empirical rigor would create a forum in which those convergent insights would flourish. 

 

So far so good.   We set out with four key goals in mind:

 

  • To lead a reintegration of strategy and organization.
  • To provide an international research forum.
  • To promote different traditions, disciplines and methodologies.
  • To cultivate a new field of study: Strategic Organization.

 

We’ve made an excellent start on each.  Articles in the first volume took great advantage of the journal’s dual focus on strategy and organization, with many of the papers explicitly addressing their intersection both theoretically and empirically.  Contributors provided international perspective, with three of four issues including the work of one or more European scholars.  They also provided a good mix of disciplinary grounding, with contributions from sociologists, economists, and psychologists.  A range of empirical approaches and methods – qualitative, quantitative, and analytic – were applied expertly, and the critical challenge of endogeneity problems in quantitative analysis laid bare and cogent solutions provided.  Finally, the SO!APBOX editorial essays, which have proven enormously popular with authors and readers alike, offered provocative opinions and a feast for thoughtful reflection on future directions and research issues for the emerging field.

 

Editorial Review Process and Statistics

We have a firm commitment to providing timely, constructive and developmental feedback to our contributors.  Upon submission the coeditors read each manuscript to determine its appropriateness for the journal and its readiness for editorial review.  Authors whose work was not sent out for editorial review receive a letter within 7-10 days explaining our editorial decision and where appropriate encouraging resubmission after further work identified by the coeditors was undertaken.  Manuscripts accepted for editorial review were sent (double-blind) to three of the journal’s board members, and authors typically received reviewer feedback and a letter detailing our editorial decision within 60 to 90 days (our current average is 65 days).

 

We are strongly committed to a one-revision policy to ensure a prompt review process.  All publication decisions are made after one revision.  For this reason, all submissions are carefully screened before being sent out for editorial review, and editorial board members are asked to focus on the significance and rigor of the research, and to provide discipline and method neutral feedback that will challenge authors to strengthen their work.  The review process is aimed at amplifying the author’s voice, not the reviewer’s.

 

Between October 2001 and October 2003 the journal has received approximately 140 article submissions.  Among submissions for which an editorial decision has been made: 

 

·        25% were returned to their authors without editorial review.

·        36% were rejected after editorial review.

·        25% were invited to revise and resubmit their work for further consideration after review.

·        14% were accepted for publication.

The Year Ahead

 

Editorial Board Expansion

The journal’s editorial board members have been instrumental in bringing STRATEGIC ORGANIZATION to life.   It is our intention to provide a timely, constructive and developmental review process, and our editorial board members who, to ensure a high-quality review process, carry out all the reviewing, have made that happen.  To permit us to continue using only board members in the review process, we’ve expanded the editorial board to 100 members to accommodate the growing number of submissions.  The new members further expand the editorial board’s already great scope and breadth, enabling us to provide the highest possible quality review process.

 

Call for Submissions – Send us your best work!

STRATEGIC ORGANIZATION welcomes articles that have a strong interdisciplinary base and reflect a clear understanding of the related strategic and organizational literatures.  Empirical and theoretical articles published in STRATEGIC ORGANIZATION will be soundly designed and systematically executed.  The journal is method neutral, however, and so does not attach greater credence to one or another methodological style.  Preferred submissions identify a compelling strategic organization issue and a strong theoretical framework for addressing it. 

 

Submission and review processes for articles and editorial essays are described on the inside-back cover of journal, and in more detail on the journal’s website at www.rotman.utoronto.ca/~baum/so.html, or the publisher’s website at www.sagepub.co.uk.

 

On with the Show!

Our aspirations for STRATEGIC ORGANIZATION continue to pose myriad challenges (and a whole lot more work).  But, we are delighted with the results and your reactions thus far.  We find it hard to believe that you have a copy the first issue of the second volume of the journal in your hands – already!  Time flies.  But we’re very optimistic now that you’ll read on through this issue – make that volume – and the next…  And we are now convinced that with your help we will build a great journal and a great field.

 

Joel A.C. Baum, Royston Greenwood, and P. Devereaux Jennings

Coeditors, SO!

Acknowledgement

We are indebted to Journals Publisher Leo Walford, Commissioning Editor Kiren Shoman, Production Editor Caroline Lane, and Marketing Director Ian Eastment at SAGE for their tremendous support and enthusiasm.  They have each been instrumental to the successful launch of the journal.  We value and appreciate their professionalism and patience – as well as their sense of humor – deeply.