Introduction

Abstract

More than five decades after the inception of strategic management as a research discipline, strategy researchers are still asking themselves whether strategy is an academic field and what the specific role of strategy research is within the management disciplines (see, e.g., Hafsi & Thomas, 2005; Hambrick, 2004; Meyer, 1991; Nag, Hambrick, & Chen, 2007; various authors in the European Management Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2004). In his survey on the distinctive competences of strategy research, Meyer (1991) identified eight major contributions of strategy research in the area of management research:

• Linking internal characteristics and a firm’s long-term performance.

• Bringing the concept of industry to the domain of organizational analysis.

• Capturing intra-industry variations in a firm’s competitive positioning and performance.

• Providing theoretical rationales and empirical evidence for linkages between a firm’s strategic posture and its internal structures and processes.

• Demonstrating more clearly the importance of cross-level, cross-functional, and cross-theoretical effects.

• Enhancing the conceptualization and measurement of firm performance.

• Introducing new empirical techniques.

• Bringing together the practical and the theoretical worlds.