REMINDER: Submission Deadline: 31 January 2019
Special Issue at Journal of Management Studies
"Corporate Strategy and the Theory of the Firm in the Digital Age"
The emergence of the 'digital age' presents fundamental challenges to our understanding of the dynamics of firm boundaries and organization. In particular, the digital age underscores the importance of understanding firm-level dynamics as fundamentally intertwined with changes at higher levels, whether industries, ecosystems, nations or regions (Davis, 2016). The opportunities for firms to leverage their presence in one market into other areas; the emergence of broader ecosystems that include all players in the value net; the appeal of multi-sided "platform" business models that bring together disparate players; and the growing importance of data and analytics to competitive advantage across many industries; all of these trends put new demands on firms, in terms of their choice of market positions, their vertical and horizontal scope, and the management of their boundaries.
Against this backdrop, the rise of the digital age urges us to rethink corporate strategy, to challenge traditional units of analysis and taken-for-granted assumptions, and to explore new phenomena. A concerted effort holds the potential to open up alternative units of analysis beyond what Bettis (1998) called "the usual suspects" in existing corporate strategy research, to advance novel concepts, and new relationships to ultimately enhance our theoretical and managerial understanding of corporate strategy in the 21st century.
The purpose of this Journal of Management Studies Special Issue is thus to advance our theoretical and managerial understanding of corporate strategy in the digital age. This Special Issue seeks contributions that build on or substantially extend existing research streams on corporate strategy and market boundaries. We invite submissions that offer new concepts of competition, markets, and organizations, as well as submissions that develop key theoretical concepts, such as agency, transaction costs, information and technology, knowledge management and learning, and capability and resource development/deployment.
While this Special Issue is open-minded regarding phenomena, theories, and methodological approaches, contributions should relate to corporate strategy and theories of the firm with a particular emphasis on digitalization. We encourage submissions that build upon strategy, economic, financial, and organizational perspectives, and that are conceptual, quantitative, or qualitative. Specifically, we see potential for theory development and its application to advance key corporate strategy debates on the market/competition, firm/organization, and intra-firm levels. Exemplary research questions pertaining to key debates within the intended scope of this Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following:
The market level:
§ How does digitalization affect competition, markets, industry structures, and industry boundaries?
§ What explains the blurring of market boundaries, the rise of new industry sectors, and high-velocity industry change in the digital age?
§ Are there new ways to conceptualize the firm's portfolio of market units that go beyond traditional measures of diversification and relatedness?
§ What role does corporate strategy play in broader ecosystems where firms coexist with partners, competitors, and complementors?
§ How does digitalization change competition and corporate strategy in different contexts, for example emerging versus developed markets?
The firm level:
§ How does digitalization affect transaction costs, information costs, bureaucratic costs, and the boundaries of the firm?
§ What are the determinants and consequences of blurred firm boundaries (e.g., network organizations and the use of contractors in the "Gig Economy")?
§ How does the scale and scope of the firm change in the digital age? For example, does scale still matter? What explains the rise of new giant firms?
§ What is the raison d'etre of a multi-business corporation? What are the new ways such firms add value to their constituent businesses?
§ What are effective horizontal and vertical strategies in the digital age?
§ What are the micro-mechanisms through which corporate diversification adds or subtracts value in the digital age?
§ Which organization designs are suitable for the digital age?
The intra-firm level:
§ How do firms develop, deploy, and renew corporate capabilities, knowledge, and resources to cope with digital transformation?
§ How do corporate strategizing and the role of the corporate level differ in the digital age, or the network economy, in comparison to the industrial age?
§ How does the digitalization, such as the use of big data and new analytical tools, change corporate strategy activities, including strategic planning and resource allocation processes, as well as strategy execution?
§ How do firms manage corporate (digital) initiatives to transform the organization?
§ What explains the changing nature of headquarters, and how they relate to internal and external? What are effective headquarters design and location choices for the digital age?
§ What explains changes in corporate-level staff, including specific top management roles like chief digital officers and specialists in new central functions like corporate venturing? To what extent do such changes help firms cope with challenges in the digital age?
Special conference and manuscript development workshop:
· The guest editors of this Special Issue are planning to hold a special conference and manuscript development workshop at Harvard Business School, Boston, MA (USA), in August 2019.
· Authors who are invited to "revise and resubmit" (R&R) a manuscript will be invited to attend this workshop. Please note that participation in the workshop does not guarantee acceptance of the paper in the Special Issue. Furthermore, attendance is also not a prerequisite for publication.
For further questions regarding this Special Issue, please do not hesitate contacting the Guest Editors:
Julian Birkinshaw, London Business School, UK
David J. Collis, Harvard University, USA
Nicolai Foss, Bocconi University, Italy
Robert E. Hoskisson, Rice University, USA
Sven Kunisch, Aarhus University, Denmark
Markus Menz, University of Geneva, Switzerland
Best wishes