2017 News and Announcements from the Coeditors

Editorial team

Teppo Felin’s term as coeditor of SO! ends this year with the publication in May 2017 of a superb special issue coedited with guest editors Karim Lakhani and Mike Tushman on “Organizing Crowds and Innovation.” Many thanks to Teppo for his great service to the journal. We wish him all the best for the future. Given the volume of manuscripts received at the journal, we plan to add one or two more coeditors in the next year. Please contact Ann Langley if you are interested in this challenge. We are seeking versatile and dedicated coeditors with recognized academic standing and complementary skills and interests to the current team of Robert David (organization theory and strategic entrepreneurship), Ann Langley (strategy process research, practice theory), Tim Rowley (alliances and networks), and Gianmario Verona (technology and innovation management, dynamic capabilities, resource-based view).

We would also like to thank editorial board members Olav Sorensen and Raymond-Alain Thietart who have stepped down in 2016 after several years of service. We welcome new editorial board members: Anne Bowers, Markus Höllerer, Aseem Kaul and Christian Stadler. We look forward to working with you.

The 2017 SO!WHAT Awards for Scholarly Contribution

We are pleased to announce this year’s SO!WHAT awards for scholarly contribution. The awards were launched in 2008 to recognize the most outstanding article and the most outstanding essay published in SO! five years earlier. Award winners are selected by the coeditors, after considering citations in the Web of Science and Google Scholar, downloads from http://journals.sagepub.com/home/soq, as well as qualitative evidence of the publication’s importance and impact on subsequent research. Recipients receive a certificate commemorating the award and a five-year subscription to the journal. SO!WHAT Award-winning papers back to 2008 are posted in a separate section of the journal website, and are available free to download and enjoy.

This year’s winners, selected from Volume 10 (2012) are:

Special Issues

Strategic Organization’s first thematic special issue on “Strategic Responses to Institutional Complexity,” guest edited by Patrick Vermeulen, Charlene Zietsma, Royston Greenwood and Ann Langley appeared in the November 2016 issue. As mentioned above, a second special issue on the topic “Organizing Crowds and Innovation,” guest edited by Teppo Felin, Karim Lakhani and Michael Tushman is forthcoming in May 2017. A third special issue on “Strategic Management Theory and Universities” guest edited by Donald Siegel and David Teece will appear in 2018.

We are also announcing a new Call for Papers for a special issue on “Exploring the Strategy-Identity Nexus” to be guest edited by Davide Ravasi, Mary Tripsas and Ann Langley with a deadline of October 31^st 2017. Organizational identity and strategy are notions that are clearly strongly related, and yet the field has not explored this relationship in the depth that might be expected. We are particularly pleased to be launching this call for a topic area that fits perfectly with Strategic Organization’s mission at the interface between strategic management and organization theory.

Journal statistics

For new submissions to Strategic Organization between October 2015 and September 2016, 49% of papers were desk-rejected (i.e., returned to their authors without being sent out for blind review); 28% were rejected after blind review; and 19% were invited to revise and resubmit their work for further consideration after review. Our historical acceptance rate for manuscripts is around 8%. We adopt a strict “single major revision” review policy in an effort to avoid overly drawn-out review processes and ensure rapid publication of strong manuscripts. We believe that this policy is fairer and better for authors. Note that for articles accepted for publication in 2016, the average time from initial submission to final acceptance was 378 days (including special issue articles that tend to take longer to process). This includes both time with the reviewers as well as time with the authors working on revisions.