Dear colleagues, please note that due to the clash with Easter, the GSJ Special Issue deadline on Global Strategy and Organizational Learning has been extended from April 1 to April 15.
Reminder: call for Papers for a Global Strategy Journal Special Issue on
The Mutual Impact of Global Strategy and Organizational Learning
Extended submission Deadline: April 15, 2013
Guest Editors:
Jasper J. Hotho, Copenhagen Business School
Mark Easterby-Smith, Lancaster University
Marjorie A. Lyles, Indiana University
A significant part of research on global strategy, international business (IB) and international management focuses explicitly on issues of knowledge, innovations and learning. These issues cover a range of topics such as how internationalizing firms gain knowledge about foreign market environments and learn to operate across nations, to the challenges associated with transferring knowledge across borders and the learning processes surrounding international joint ventures. Indeed, both the raison d’être of the multinational enterprise and its (geographical) boundaries are commonly presented as functions of knowledge and learning processes.
In theorizing about such issues, global strategy scholars often turn to the literatures on organizational learning, knowledge, and innovation. These streams of literature infuse our theories on multinational organizations by providing core concepts and definitions for organizational learning. In addition, advances in the learning literature also impact the global strategy research agenda. Developments in organizational learning and innovative approaches to knowledge research, such as on organizational ambidexterity, absorptive capacity or the social facets of knowledge integration, spur new research efforts that enrich our insights into the complex workings of multinational organizations.
Despite extensive work on issues of knowing and learning in the global strategy field, the impact of global strategy research on the organizational learning literature has been limited. This is surprising, as research on multinational organizations has considerable potential to advance learning research. For instance, not only are multinational organizations excellent sites for studying some of the more complex learning and knowledge processes, but the variability in the contexts in which multinationals operate also provides opportunities for the identification of relevant contingency factors, or for reflection on the universality of organizational learning processes. Thus, global strategy research offers distinct advantages to validate and extend existing learning theories, as well as to develop new, contextualized perspectives on the creation, retention and dispersion of knowledge.
With this special issue we set out to change the view of global strategy research as passively ‘borrowing’ advances made in organizational learning research. We intend to highlight that global strategy research can, in distinctive ways, actively enrich and contribute to our understanding of organizational knowing and learning. With this GSJ issue, we therefore aim to provide a venue for exemplary studies on global strategy that impact and advance the broader fields of organizational learning and knowledge management. The envisioned contributions in this special issue may, for instance, highlight new antecedents and important contingency factors, explore relations between learning at different levels, or critically assess and examine the universality of theories of learning and knowledge.
Research Questions
We seek studies that contribute to the literatures on organizational learning and knowledge management through effective and innovative use of global strategy research contexts. However we recognize as well that research on organizational learning, knowledge and innovation also significantly affects global strategy theory. We want to include those articles as well that address organizational learning and its contribution to the theory of MNCs, global strategy, and internationalization.
We explicitly invite contributions on a wide range of topics related to organizational knowing and learning, including, but certainly not limited to, knowledge creation and knowledge transfer, valuing knowledge assets, absorptive capacity and knowledge integration, situated and practice-based learning, organizational unlearning and forgetting, and the development of dynamic capabilities.
In line with GSJ’s editorial policy, we welcome contributions that draw on a wide variety of approaches, whether quantitative or qualitative. We also encourage submissions that address and cross different levels of analysis, such as the individual, team, organizational, or institutional contexts. Finally, we equally welcome conceptual contributions that make constructive use of insights from IB and global strategy theory to inform organizational learning.
The following are illustrative, rather than exhaustive, of the types of research questions what would fit well within the scope of this special issue:
1. How are dynamic capabilities and their impact on competitiveness and performance affected by wider societal structures?
2. Are there links between the practices of global strategy and the processes of learning?
3. What are the effects of culture on knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer, and what is the relative influence of different formal and informal integration mechanisms on these relationships?
4. What is the relative importance of organizational unlearning and forgetting versus knowledge accumulation for the internationalization process of firms?
5. What internal and external factors shape the interactions within and across communities of practice, and how does this affect situated learning within organizational units?
6. How do organizational and institutional structures interact to affect knowledge transfer and adoption?
Submission Instructions
The deadline for submissions is April 1, 2013. All submissions will be subject to the regular double-blind peer review process at GSJ. To learn more about Global Strategy Journal, including additional information on the submission process, please visit the Global Strategy Journal website at: http://gsj.strategicmanagement.net/
More Information
To obtain additional information or volunteer to review, please contact the special issue editors:
· Jasper Hotho, Copenhagen Business School ([log in to unmask])
· Marjorie A. Lyles, Indiana University ([log in to unmask])
· Mark Easterby-Smith, Lancaster University ([log in to unmask])
Or contact the Managing Editor of the GSJ, Lois Gast ([log in to unmask]).
Jasper Hotho
Assistant Professor
Department of Strategic Management and Globalization
Copenhagen Business School | Kilevej 14, 2. | DK-2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Please note the call for papers for a Global Strategy Journal special issue on The Mutual Impact of Global Strategy and Organizational Learning, co-edited with Marjorie Lyles and Mark Easterby-Smith. The extended submission deadline is April 15, 2013.