Editorial
MOVIN’ ON UP
In 1975, a disgruntled Archie Bunker and his tearful wife
Edith, bid farewell to their All in the
Family sitcom neighbours, George and Louise Jefferson, whose success in the
dry cleaning business enabled them to move from the Bronx to a luxury apartment
in Manhattan, launching The Jeffersons
sitcom. Like the Jefferson family, SO! too is
about to ‘move on up’ – though neither to ‘the east side’ nor ‘a deluxe
apartment in the sky,’ as the show’s theme song so proudly proclaimed.
Rather, we are poised
to join ISI’s impact factor based ranking of management journals. Although the ISI’s Web of Knowledge began covering SO!
in 2007, SO!’s first impact factor – for 2009 – will be issued later this
year. The 2009 impact factor will be
based on citations in 2009 to articles published in 2007 and 2008. We anticipate a good showing, but whatever
our ranking, our aspirations for the future are higher.
In our first seven years we have built a solid
foundation for the journal:
·
We have assembled and continue to develop an
outstanding international editorial board whose members have cemented SO!’s reputation
for timely, informed and
developmental reviews of the highest quality – and for accepting only the very best work.
·
We continue to attract increasing numbers of article
and essay submissions focused on the intersection of strategy and organization
theory from scholars in Asia and Australia (13%, 15%), Continental Europe (33%, 30%),
United Kingdom (10%, 13%), the Middle
East (6%, 3%), South America (4%, 2%) and North America (33%, 38%) (Percentages: 2009, 2008).
·
We have achieved worldwide accessibility through
institutional and individual subscriptions, and witnessed soaring article and
essay downloads from so.sagepub.com at SAGE Journals Online.
In a very short time, SO! has indeed established a
clear place for itself in the field. If you
agree that the fields of strategy and organizations need a top-tier journal in which to pursue their
further integration, and that SO! is that journal, then you can help assure that SO!’s impact factor ranks it among the leading journal in these fields by reading and citing the rigorous articles and
provocative essays appearing in SO!
New SO! Coeditor
We are excited that Ann Langley (HEC, Montreal) has
agreed to stay on as a Coeditor of SO! We originally asked Ann to serve as Guest
Coeditor for volume 7 (2009) to help with the review of manuscripts that would
normally have been assigned to Royston Greenwood, who was elected to serve as
OMT Program Chair for the 2009 Academy of Management meetings. As any of our contributors who have had Ann
as Editor on their submission will attest, Ann is simply a marvellous
editor. Her detailed and thoughtful
editorial letters have further consolidated SO!’s reputation for providing a timely, informed and
developmental review process of the highest quality.
Over the
coming year, we intend to add two more coeditors. Joel, Royston, and Dev will work with Ann and
the additional coeditors to put in place new initiatives and editorial policies
that will continue SO!’s development into its teen years. And, starting with SO! 10:1 (February, 2012) these three will take
over leadership of the journal.
SO!WHAT Award for Scholarly Contribution. Last year
we initiated the “SO!WHAT” awards for scholarly contribution
– one for the most outstanding article and one for the most outstanding essay
published in SO! five years earlier – to
recognize exceptional contributions to the field of strategic organization.
The award winners are selected by the coeditors, in
consultation with the journal’s editorial board, after considering citations in
the 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 receive a plaque commemorating the award and a five-year
subscription to SO!
This year’s winners, selected from in Volume 3 (2005), presented along with some of our editorial board members’ reactions to these
outstanding contributions, are:
Best Article:
Saku Mantere, SO! 3(2)
“Continuing
the tradition of excellent practice research in Strategic Organization, in this
paper Mantere pries open the black box of micro-practices that underlie
strategy making and implementation in organizations. Through his rich, process
study of “strategic champions”, Mantere gets under the skin of
strategy-as-practice and his findings provide fundamentally important insights
into some of the reasons why strategy implementation succeeds or fails. In
particular, he identifies enabling and disabling practices which support or
thwart championing and connects them back to previous work on recursive and
adaptive practices in the strategy-as-practice literature. Mantere’s impressive
study also highlights the tremendous potential of rigorous qualitative work to
contribute to our understanding of strategy and stands as an example of best
practice in qualitative research.” Nelson Phillips, Imperial College
“Mantere’s article is an outstanding example of the traction being
gained in the study of strategy using the practice lens. By focusing on the
work of strategy makers, this piece emphasizes that strategy is not so much
something that organizations have but rather something that people do.
Mantere’s analysis of a rich collection of more than 300 interviews shows that
strategy development can be shaped by strategic champions at all levels of the
organization, not just senior managers. What is so compelling about his paper
is his demonstration that the emergence of such champions across the hierarchy
is contingent on different strategy-formation, organizing and control practices
that either enable or constrain the champions’ actions.” Sarah
Kaplan, University of Toronto
Best Essay:
Strategic Organization: A Field in Search of
Micro-foundations
Teppo
Felin and Nicolai J. Foss, SO! 3(4)
“In their essay, Felin and Foss
appropriately direct our attention to individuals as the ultimate unit of
analysis in understanding sources of sustained competitive advantage.
While it may be convenient to sometimes theorize about and conduct empirical
tests of explanations of sustained competitive advantages at more aggregate
levels of analysis, this work must ultimately be grounded in a clear
understanding of the actions of people, and how those actions combine to
generate aggregate phenomena. In their call for micro foundations, Felin
and Foss remind us that of all sources of capital in the modern economy, human
capital – broadly understood – is most central. For without human
capital, machines are just paper weights, buildings just empty spaces, and
money, just stacks of paper. In this sense, human capital brings agency
to other forms of capital, and with it, the possibility of creating economic
value.” Jay B.
Barney, Ohio State University
“As always, Nicolai Foss, accompanied by saxophonist Teppo
Felin, blows a refined wind into his trumpet, which he deftly plays – even if
by disingenuous and ancient citation. Imagine a trading floor totally
empty, whose trades are orchestrated by algorithmic innovations of the CEO
quant who founded and ran as the sole employee the eponymous firm Teppofossics,
until his death the previous week, unbeknownst to the world and to external
traders, who continue to respond to the automated trades. In what sense
is there an individual? The power of the
algorithm, says Donald MacKenzie, is our modern Frankensteinian story, in which
creation supersedes the individual innovator… Perhaps this is cybernetics run
amok, but is not the point precisely how micro rules operating through
individuals and machines achieve unexpected macro outcomes not predicted by
individual choice – March was right, rules matter. Romantic
individualistic Kierkegaardians, despair no longer, dear friends, for a music
ensemble has the elements of individual choice, collective routine, capability,
and macro outcome that will be balm to self-doubt. Surely upon this, we can all
agree. SO WHAT, you say? SO!WHAT, I say.[1]” Bruce
Kogut, Columbia University
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.
·
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 developed sufficiently
for our one-revision editorial policy, receive a letter explaining the decision
from the coeditors within 10-14 days.
·
Manuscripts accepted for full review are sent (double-blind) to three
editorial board members who 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 receive reviewer
feedback and a decision letter from the coeditors within 60-90 days.
It is gratifying to receive so many positive
responses indicating that we are meeting these standards. We are indebted to our editorial board for
enabling us to provide our authors the highest possible quality feedback on
their work, and to continue to do so in less than 60 days, on average, despite
the increasing volume of submissions.
Between October 2008 and October 2009 (2007-08
figures in brackets):
·
45 (44) percent of papers were returned to their authors by the Editors
without being sent out for blind review;
·
26 (24) percent were rejected after blind editorial review;
·
19 (20) percent were invited to revise and resubmit their work for
further consideration after review;
·
10 (12) percent were accepted for publication.
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.
Because our publication decisions are made after no
more than one major revision, a policy we adopted to ensure a prompt review process, the quality and development stage of initial
submissions greatly affects their likelihood of being accepted for full editorial
review.
Also
notable is the continued high rejection rate relative to the rate at which
revisions were invited and papers accepted.
Clearly SO!’s
Editorial Board members are willing to accept only the very best work – we look
forward to receiving 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. We
do not accept for review literature reviews or propositional inventories.
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 are a forum for
thought-provoking informed opinion and reflection, forging interdisciplinary
bridges and new research directions, debating methodological traditions, and staking
out the field of strategic organization.
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.
A deluxe apartment in the sky?
In its first
season (1975) The Jeffersons ranked
fourth; its parent series, All in the Family, ranked first for the fifth
year in a row. Although SO! is unlikely
to fare so well in its first ISI ranking appearance, we continue to make progress toward our ambition of providing an
unparalleled forum reconnecting the fields of strategy and organization
theory. That integration remains core to
SO!’s identity
and contribution to the field. We have
achieved a great deal … but aspire to move on up. How quickly we are able
to achieve our goals depends upon you!
So keep submitting your submissions … and reading and citing
SO! articles
and essays!
Joel A. C. Baum, Royston Greenwood, P. Devereaux
Jennings, and Ann Langley
Coeditors
[1] View Miles Davis and John
Coltrane’s classic 1959 rendition of “SO WHAT” at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4TbrgIdm0E