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Call for Papers for a Special Issue
Microfoundations of
Global Strategy:
Submission
Deadline: May
31, 2016
Guest
Editors:
Farok
Contractor, Rutgers Business School
Nicolai
J. Foss, Copenhagen Business School
Sumit
Kundu, Florida International University
Somnath
Lahiri, Illinois State University
Purpose
Recent trends in
much macro-management
research, notably microfoundations (Foss & Lindenberg, 2013)
and behavioral
strategy (Gavetti, 2012), emphasize the role of heterogeneous
individuals, top
management and their interaction in driving firm-level outcomes. These approaches stress the
interaction
between individuals, decisions makers and top management within
a firm in
understanding its performance and outcomes.
By contrast, in much of the global strategy literature
the unit of
analysis in studying competitiveness has primarily been the firm
or industry.
Researchers traditionally have explained firm-level outcomes
mainly using
firm-level variables, such as capabilities, or industry
structure.
Thus, a
relatively unexplored research
area has been to examine the behavioral and individual-level
characteristics of
corporate leadership and managers. Important decisions,
especially those
related to global operations, are made by top managers/the Top
Management Team,
and endorsed and spearheaded by firm’s leadership/upper
echelons. These
decisions are taken by individuals who,
depending on the multinational firm involved, may sometimes
differ substantially
in terms of cultural and educational background, age, education,
and so on. The
roles of leadership and
individual
manager characteristics as they relate to intention,
choice, action, and
interaction (Foss & Pedersen, 2014) have
been under-researched.
This special
issue seeks papers that will unpack and enrich
the global strategy literature by focusing on its
microfoundations (individuals
and their interactions) as they relate to the firm’s
internationalization
process, knowledge transfer across boundaries, HQ-subsidiary
relationships,
global innovation and so on (Griffith, Cavusgil, & Xu,
2008). Papers may
also use a behavioral strategy
perspective (Gavetti, 2012) relating to leadership and
top managers as
explanations for the competitiveness and international expansion
paths of
firms.
Background
Microfoundations
research aims at
decomposing macro-level constructs (e.g., organizational
routines, dynamic
capabilities, strategic problem formulation) in terms of actions
and
interactions of members at various levels in an organization
(Baer et al.,
2013; Foss & Pedersen, 2014). It suggests that since any
macro phenomenon
is caused by micro-level mechanisms, it makes sense to focus at
the micro level
to identify the microfoundations or roots of the phenomenon.
Felin and Foss
(2005: 452) observed that “[I]ndividuals after all provide the
nested
antecedent to numerous collective phenomena and thus deserve
careful
theoretical and empirical consideration in our theorizing.” The
same theme
echoes in Barney and Felin (2013: 145) who note that “[T]hus,
organizational
analysis should be fundamentally concerned with how individual
level factors
aggregate to the collective level”.
The behavioral
strategy perspective calls
for scholarship that is grounded in cognitive psychology.
Behavioral signifies
“being about mental processes” (Gavetti, 2012). Executive
judgments can be
complex owing to self-confirming beliefs, competitive blind
spots,
self-interested causal attributions, perceptual filtering etc.
(Powell et al.,
2011: 1377).
Emerging country
markets are culturally,
institutionally and economically dissimilar or distant from
developed country
markets (Cuervo- Cazurra, 2012; Khanna & Palepu, 2013) and
have a greater
likelihood of having family-controlled businesses (Arregle et
al., 2012). A
subordinate research question is how the microfoundations of
emerging market
firms influence their international expansion and adaptation in
distant
markets? How do their mental processes affect collective
leadership behavior?
The role of leadership and manager characteristics become even
more interesting
for emerging market firms as they are generally less
resource-endowed and often
lack world-class managerial and leadership expertise
(Contractor, 2013).
Gavetti (2012) avers that “when markets are efficient,
opportunities for
superior …courses of action or strategic opportunities” are more
limited than
say in emerging markets where “…the behavioral roots of superior
opportunities”
can have greater play.
Suggested
Research Questions
The
special issue seeks theoretical or empirical papers that are
ideally
multidisciplinary in scope and interdisciplinary in content and
methodology,
and represent cutting-edge research. New or emerging
methodologies for
empirical studies are particularly welcome. Research questions
(illustrative
but not exhaustive) are shown below:
References
Arregle, J.L.,
Naldi,
L., Nordqvist, M., & Hitt, M.A. (2012). Internationalization of family-controlled firms:
A study of the effects of
external involvement in governance. Entrepreneurship Theory and
Practice, 36(6): 1115-1143.
Baer,
M., Dirks, K.T., &
Nickerson, J.A. (2013). Microfoundations
of strategic problem
formulation. Strategic
Management Journal, 34(2):
197-214.
Barney,
J., & Felin, T.
(2013). What are microfoundations? Academy
of Management Perspectives, 27(2): 138-155.
Contractor, F. J. (2013).
“Punching above their
weight”: The sources of competitive advantage for emerging
market
multinationals. International Journal of Emerging Markets,
8(4), 304-328.
Cuervo-Cazurra, A. (2012). Extending theory by analyzing
developing country
multinational companies: Solving the Goldilocks debate. Global Strategy Journal, 2(3): 153-167.
Foss, N. J., & Lindenberg, S. (2013).
Microfoundations for strategy: A
goal-framing perspective on the drivers of value creation. Academy of Management Perspectives, 27(2):
85-102.
Foss, N.J., & Pedersen, T. (2014).
Microfoundations in strategy
research. Strategic
Management Journal,
DOI: 10.1002/smj.2362 (accepted
article).
Felin, T., & Foss, N.J.
(2005). Strategic
organization: A field in search of micro-foundations. Strategic
Organization,
3(4): 441-455.
Gavetti,
G. (2012). Toward a
behavioral theory of strategy. Organization
Science, 23(1): 267 – 285.
Griffith,
D.A., Cavusgil,
S.T., & Xu, S. (2008). Emerging themes in international
business research. Journal of International
Business Studies, 39: 1220-1235.
Khanna, T., &
Palepu, K. (2013). Winning in emerging markets: A road map
for strategy and
execution. Harvard Business Press.
Powell, T.C., Lovallo, D.,
& Fox, C.R. (2011).
Behavioral strategy. Strategic
Management
Journal, 32(13): 1369-1386.
Submission
Instructions
The
deadline for submission of papers is May
31, 2016. All manuscripts will be reviewed as a cohort for
this special
issue and will go through the GSJ regular double-blind review
process following
procedures established by the journal (see gsj.strategicmanagement.net).
More
information:
To
obtain additional information, please contact the special issue
editors:
·
Farok
Contractor, Rutgers Business School: [log in to unmask]
·
Nicolai
J. Foss, Copenhagen Business School: [log in to unmask]
·
Sumit
Kundu, Florida International University: [log in to unmask]
·
Somnath
Lahiri, Illinois State University: [log in to unmask]
For questions
about submitting to the
special issue please contact the GSJ Managing Editor, Sara
DiBari ([log in to unmask]).
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