Editorial

UP, UP AND AWAY?

By the fifth year, an entrepreneurial venture has typically overcome its liability of newness and begun to turn its attention to longer-term success. Strategic Organization is no different. Our fifth year at SO! has been one of consolidation, growth and milestone achievement.

We have attracted strong submissions in both article and essay categories, retained an outstanding editorial board, built up an enthusiastic readership, and received strong backing from Sage Publications.

We continue to focus on the intersection of strategy and organization theory, and to ensure the timeliness of our review process. Our 100-member international editorial board remains the source for all our reviews, and their enthusiasm has established the journal’s reputation for providing rapid editorial feedback of the highest quality. Timely, constructive feedback from informed reviewers is the norm at SO!

Subscriptions, particularly institutional, which now stand at over 750, continue to grow. This wider availability has resulted in an extraordinary 1,500% rise in the number of article and essay downloads from so.sagepub.com at SAGE Journals Online.

While the details of our progress and accomplishments are highlighted and discussed in our annual report below, two milestone events stood out this year as more exciting than usual.

ISI Web of Knowledge Coverage

SO! first became eligible for inclusion in the ISI Web of Knowledge after completing publication of its third volume in November 2005, and we applied for coverage in February 2006 as SO! 4(1) went to press. In July 2007, we finally learned that SO! had been accepted for inclusion.

Coverage will begin, retroactively, with volume 5 (2007). As a result, ISI will publish SO!’s first ‘official’ impact factor in 2009. Although that seems a distant time, because the 2009 impact factor will be based on citations in 2009 to articles published in 2007 and 2008 during, we need to ensure that the excellent articles published in these two volumes are being well-cited.

If SO! had been accepted to the Web of Knowledge in 2004, its 2006 impact factor (50 citations in 2006 to 34 articles and essays published in 2004 and 2005), would be 1.47, which would place SO! 24^th among the 78 management journals currently covered. This strikes us as outstanding for such a young journal (the impact factor is based on volumes 2 and 3). But, by 2009, we anticipate a higher ranking. [Note: Because SO! was not covered in the ISI during this period, citation counts do not include references to SO! articles published in SO! Consequently, the impact factor is underestimated relative to journals covered in the index.]

Others agree with us. Don Hambrick observed that “in a very short time, SO! has become a highly regarded journal in the fields of strategic management and organization theory …” Kathy Eisenhardt told us that “SO! is an important, increasingly referenced journal.” And, Dan Levinthal commented that “SO! has quickly risen to offering some of the most interesting research in the strategy and organizations areas … [and] has established a clear place for itself in the management domain.”

These kudos notwithstanding, we hope that SO!’s initial ‘official’ impact factor is commensurate with its standing as a leading journal in the fields of strategy and organization. You can help assure that by getting into the habit – now – of citing SO! articles.

Celebrating SO!’s 5th Anniversary

SO!APBOX Special Issue and Rountable Symposium. To celebrate our fifth year, we created a special SO!APBOX essay issue on the state of the strategic organization field. The aim of SO!APBOX essays is to provide “a platform used by a self-appointed, spontaneous, or informal orator, or, more broadly, an outlet for delivering informed opinions.” Because these essays have been enormously popular with readers and influential in cultivating the strategic organization research agenda, it seemed obvious to build a special anniversary issue around them.

The anniversary issue contained eleven editorial essays authored by one or more members of SO!’s editorial board. Continuing the tradition established over the past five years, the essays offered thoughtful, informed reflection on interdisciplinary bridges, research topics and directions, and methodological issues critical to the further development of Strategic Organization – the journal and the field. The essays underscored themes including the need to balance tension between creativity and rigor, novelty and replication, between content and process, between temporary and sustainable, between micro and macro, and between separation and integration. Several essays also pointed to the need to introduce policy and other normative tools more explicitly into research objects and techniques, not simply its application.

That forum, published in our August issue [SO! 5(3)], was accompanied by a sold-out preconference roundtable symposium at the 2007 Academy of Management meeting in Philadelphia. The discussions surrounding these stimulating and often provocative essays during the roundtable were as diverse as they were enthusiastic. Conversations ranged from how entrepreneurial bricolage and opportunity recognition might work in the current Turkish economy, to learning from unsuccessful replications, to debating the claim that competitive advantage concepts currently taught in business schools undermine national competitiveness. The session wrapped up with a toast to SO!'s anniversary, the champagne courtesy of Sage Publications. Cheers!

Of course, if you have your own idea for your own SO!APBOX editorial essay, please contact any (or all) of the editors directly after reviewing the essay submission guidelines on the coeditors’ website maintained at www.rotman.utoronto.ca/~baum/so.html, or SAGE Journals Online at so.sagepub.com.

SO!WHAT Award for Scholarly Contribution. Five years after publication, the impact of articles and essays appearing in our inaugural 2003 volume is clearly being felt. To begin celebrating the most influential work appearing in SO!, we have therefore established the “SO!WHAT Award for Scholarly Contribution” to recognize SO! authors who have made exceptional contributions to the field of strategic organization. Starting this year, two awards will be given annually, one for the most outstanding article and one for the most outstanding essay published in SO! five years earlier.

The coeditors, in consultation with the journal’s editorial board, select the article and essay to receive the award, after considering citations in the ISI Web of Knowledge and Google Scholar, downloads from so.sagepub.com, as well as qualitative evidence of the publication’s impact on subsequent research. Recipients will receive a plaque commemorating the award and a five-year subscription to SO!

We are pleased to announce the inaugural award winners selected from volume one (2003), along with reactions from some of our board members to these outstanding contributions:

Best Article:

The Small World of the American Corporate Elite, 1982-2001

Gerald F. Davis, Mina Yoo and Wayne E. Baker, SO! 1(3)

“Davis, Yoo, and Baker’s study reaffirms the possibility that the directors of the largest U.S. corporations function as an “executive committee” of the business community, at the same time that it suggests that individual directors need not seek or even be aware of this possibility for it to eventuate. It thus eliminates the necessity to invoke arguments that smack of conspiracy when theorizing about the causes and consequences of the structure of power in the American corporate network.”

“Davis et al. are among the first to bring small world analysis to board of director interlock research.  Their innovative and careful methods document the surprising stability of the interlock network in the face of remarkable global instability during 20-year period they examine.”

“Davis et al.’s article takes advantage of recent developments in the analysis of Small World networks to update some critical assumptions in the classic literature on corporate elite networks. The study is distinguished by the elegance of its conception, historical perspective, and clarity of narrative. It has already stimulated significant follow-on research, and should inspire future SO!WHAT award contenders.”

Best Essay:

The Work of Strategizing and Organizing: For a Practice Perspective

Richard Whittington, SO! 1(1)

“Whittington presents us with a disarmingly simple but powerful message: despite decades of research and bold prescription, we do not really know all that much about how strategizing and organizing gets done by real people in the day to day of real organizations. The essay is a clear, sharp and much-needed appeal to bring strategic organization back down to earth. At the same time it specifies clear research questions and sketches some promising angles of attack. The essay has already contributed to opening up the research area of ‘strategy as a practice.’ It remains an inspiring read today.”

“Whittington directly addresses one of the most important questions in strategic organization: 'for whom do we write and why?' In this, it has been guided by perhaps one of the strongest motivators of the human emotions, embarrassment. Because of this, the essay raises the important question of the relationship between an embodied response to a situation and the nature of theorizing. Thus, in addition to its substantive argument, which has already stimulated much research, the essay raises broader issues of which we should all be cognizant.”

Whittington's essay unearths an inconvenient truth about our profession: as strategy and organization scholars, while we know much about strategy content, we know less about the organization-level strategy process, and less still when it comes to the micro-foundations of strategic work behaviors within organizations. As researchers, we should respond to his call by taking on the undoubtedly messy task of studying strategic work behaviors not only in official settings like the boardroom, but also around the proverbial executive espresso machine. As educators, we should respond by teaching strategy in a 'naturalistic' way, reserving abstract analytic models for after-class discussion. We should be thankful to Richard for pointing out the elephant in our midst.

Editorial Review Process

To ensure a high-quality and timely review process for our authors, we maintain a working, international editorial board of 100 leading scholars and researchers with sufficiently broad in expertise to carry out all the journal’s reviewing; SO! uses no ad hoc reviewers. Each year, we refresh the Board, creating opportunities for 10-15 new top-notch scholars to contribute to SO!’s further advance, and thank our past board members by releasing them from further duty!

Our authors deserve timely feedback and expect that editorial feedback and decisions will be constructive, informed, and challenge them to improve their work. To that end, we promise that authors whose work is not sent out for editorial review, either because it does not fit the journal’s aims and scope or because it is not sufficiently well developed for our one-revision editorial policy, will receive a letter from the coeditors within 10-14 days. Manuscripts accepted for full review will be sent (double-blind) to three editorial board members who will focus on the substance and rigor of submissions, providing discipline and method neutral feedback that challenges authors to strengthen their work while maintaining their voice. Authors will receive reviewer feedback and a letter from the coeditors detailing our editorial decision within 60-90 days.

It is gratifying to receive so many positive responses indicating that we are meeting these standards. The reviewing at SO! has quickly established the journal’s editorial process as one of the most constructive, developmental and timely in the field. The statistics bear out these points. Between October 2006 and October 2007 (October 2005 to October 2006 figures in brackets):

· 40 (43) percent of papers were returned to their authors by the Editors without being sent out for blind review;

· 32 (31) percent were rejected after blind editorial review;

· 18 (14) percent were invited to revise and resubmit their work for further consideration after review;

· 12 (12) percent were accepted for publication.

Between October 2006 and October 2007, all article submissions were again handled within our stated targets, and our average turnaround time for articles accepted for editorial remained fewer than 60 days. We remain indebted to our editorial board for enabling us to provide our authors the highest possible quality feedback on their work in such a prompt manner.

Notable among these figures is the continued high rate at which submissions are returned to authors by the coeditors without being sent out for blind review. All submissions are carefully screened by the coeditors before being sent out for review. We do this because we remain strongly committed to a one-revision policy in order to ensure a prompt review process. Because our publication decisions are made after no more than one major revision, the quality and development of initial submissions greatly affects their likelihood of being accepted for full review.

Also notable is the continued high rejection rate relative to the rate at which revisions were invited and papers accepted. Clearly SO!’s Board members are willing to accept only the very best work – so send us yours!

Open Call for Article and Essay Submissions

SO! welcomes article submissions that have a strong interdisciplinary base and reflect a clear understanding of the related strategic and organizational literatures. Empirical and theoretical articles published in SO! are conducted soundly and rigorously within their genre and discipline. Preferred submissions identify a compelling strategic organization topic and a strong conceptual framework for tackling it.

In addition to regular refereed articles, we also welcome proposals for SO!APBOX editorial essays. A soapbox is a platform used by a self-appointed, spontaneous, or informal orator, or, more broadly an outlet for delivering opinions. These editorial essays provide a forum for thought-provoking informed opinion and reflection upon which interdisciplinary bridges can be forged, research directions and methodological traditions discussed, and the field of strategic organization staked out.

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

Our Beautiful Balloon …

Our fifth-year milestones and growing attention and citations to work published in SO!, along with the consolidation and growth already noted, all point to solid progress toward our goal of providing researchers working at the intersection of strategy and organization with a leading, multidisciplinary, multimethod journal as an outlet for their work. SO! is making strong progress in its commitment to provide an unparalleled forum reconnecting the fields of strategy and organization theory. That integration remains core to what we are trying to achieve and central to our aspired identity. We have achieved lift off … but we remain impatient! How quickly we are able to complete our mission, however, ultimately depends upon you! So send us your submissions … and read on!

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

Coeditors