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Apologies for cross listings...

Call for PDW Participants:

'What is quality in strategy research?'

Academy of Management Meetings

Montreal, Canada

Saturday, August 7^th

Part 1 (open to all): 1:30pm-3pm

Part 2 (requires pre-registration): 3pm-6pm

Le Palais Des Congres, 516A

Sponsored by the BPS Division

The strategy field encompasses a diverse set of research perspectives and topic areas. This diversity is a strength of the field, but it also poses a challenge to scholars in strategy: It is often unclear how various literatures relate and why certain papers are considered exemplars of high-quality strategy research. The upcoming article in Strategic Organization, "Recognizing and Encouraging High Quality Research in Strategy," puts forth a framework for thinking about and evaluating the quality of strategy research. Motivated by this call to action, this PDW has three central goals: (1) to consider the question of what is quality in strategy research; (2) apply the framework to current working papers as a means to provide feedback on junior faculty work; and (3) critique and refine this framework.

This two-part, highly interactive PDW will bring together a group of junior faculty and doctoral students with mid-career and senior strategy scholars to both discuss and apply quality benchmarks. The first part of the PDW will begin with a panel involving senior scholars in strategy to discuss and debate the question of what is quality in strategy research and the value of quality 'metrics' in evaluating research. (This panel is open to all Academy attendees and requires no pre-registration. Confirmed panelists include Witold Henisz, Anita McGahan, Hayagreeva Rao, and Jan Rivkin.) Following the panel, registered participants will meet in "roundtable" format to apply the framework to their respective working papers. Each roundtable discussion will be led by two of the PDW workshop facilitators, listed below. We will conclude with a discussion of the framework and the value of such criteria in moving the field forward. Our focal audience for the paper workshop is junior faculty with working papers close to journal submission. We also welcome doctoral students who wish to participate in the discussion on the quality criteria and gain experience in the review process.

We are now soliciting submissions for the paper development workshop. This workshop will provide an opportunity to both receive high quality feedback on working papers and to discuss and debate the merits of a framework to think about quality in strategy research.  Hands-on experience applying quality criteria will both add structure to the paper discussions as well as facilitate a richer discussion of the quality criteria, allowing greater refinement. At the end of the session, participants will have not only a set of comments and discussion on their working papers, but also exposure to a set of tools that can be applied in both reviewing and writing future work.

In order to ensure high quality feedback and discussion, the paper workshop component (3pm-6pm) will be limited to 30 participants. Submissions should be sent via email to Brian Silverman (Silverman@rotman.utoronto.ca), by July 1^st, 2010. Papers should be full working papers, but need not be under review. We encourage submissions from a diversity of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives as well as both empirical and theoretical contributions.

We look forward to your submissions and participation!

Rachelle Sampson & Brian Silverman

Part 1: PDW Panel (1:30pm-3pm)

Panelists:

-Witold Henisz, U Pennsylvania, Wharton

-Anita McGahan, U Toronto, Rotman

-Hayagreeva (Huggy) Rao, Stanford U, GSB

-Jan Rivkin, Harvard Business School

Part 2: PDW paper workshop (3pm-6pm)

Facilitators:

-Juan Alcacer, HBS

-Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, HBS

-Witold Henisz, Wharton

-Anne Marie Knott, Washington U

-Joanne Oxley, U Toronto

-Jan Rivkin, HBS

-Peter Roberts, Emory

-Michael Ryall, U Toronto

-Rachelle Sampson, U Maryland

-Brian Silverman, U Toronto