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Strategic Management Journal
Strat. Mgmt. J., 28: 935–955 (2007) Published online 22 March 2007 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/smj.615 Received 5 July 2005; Final revision received 23 October 2006
WHAT IS STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT, REALLY? INDUCTIVE DERIVATION OF A CONSENSUS DEFINITION OF THE FIELD
RAJIV NAG,1 * DONALD C. HAMBRICK2 and MING-JER CHEN3
1 Sam Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, U.S.A. 2 Smeal College of Business, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. 3 The Darden School, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S.A.
It is commonly asserted that the field of strategic management is fragmented and lacks a coherent identity. This skepticism, however, is paradoxically at odds with the great success that strategic management has enjoyed. How might one explain this paradox? We seek answers to this question by relying first on a large-scale survey of strategic management scholars from which we derive an implicit consensual definition of the field—as tacitly held by its members. We then supplement this implicit definition with an examination of the espoused definitions of the field obtained from a group of boundary-spanning scholars. Our findings suggest that strategic management’s success as a field emerges from an underlying consensus that enables it to attract multiple perspectives, while still maintaining its coherent distinctiveness. Copyright 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An academic field is a socially constructed entity (Hagstrom, 1965; Kuhn, 1962). In comparison to a formal organization, which can be identified and defined, for instance, by its web of legal contracts (Williamson, 1979), an academic field has socially negotiated boundaries and only exists if a critical mass of scholars believe it to exist and adopt a shared conception of its essential meaning (Astley, 1985; Cole, 1983). Such shared meaning is far from assured, however, since
Strat. Mgmt. J., 28: 935–955 (2007) Published online 22 March 2007 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/smj.615 Received 5 July 2005; Final revision received 23 October 2006
WHAT IS STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT, REALLY? INDUCTIVE DERIVATION OF A CONSENSUS DEFINITION OF THE FIELD
RAJIV NAG,1 * DONALD C. HAMBRICK2 and MING-JER CHEN3
1 Sam Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, U.S.A. 2 Smeal College of Business, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. 3 The Darden School, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S.A.
It is commonly asserted that the field of strategic management is fragmented and lacks a coherent identity. This skepticism, however, is paradoxically at odds with the great success that strategic management has enjoyed. How might one explain this paradox? We seek answers to this question by relying first on a large-scale survey of strategic management scholars from which we derive an implicit consensual definition of the field—as tacitly held by its members. We then supplement this implicit definition with an examination of the espoused definitions of the field obtained from a group of boundary-spanning scholars. Our findings suggest that strategic management’s success as a field emerges from an underlying consensus that enables it to attract multiple perspectives, while still maintaining its coherent distinctiveness. Copyright 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An academic field is a socially constructed entity (Hagstrom, 1965; Kuhn, 1962). In comparison to a formal organization, which can be identified and defined, for instance, by its web of legal contracts (Williamson, 1979), an academic field has socially negotiated boundaries and only exists if a critical mass of scholars believe it to exist and adopt a shared conception of its essential meaning (Astley, 1985; Cole, 1983). Such shared meaning is far from assured, however, since
References: Strat. Mgmt. J., 28: 935–955 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/smj 954 Schendel and Hofer (1979) Bracker (1980) Jemison (1981) Van Cauwenbergh and Cool (1982) Copyright 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Strat. Mgmt. J., 28: 935–955 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/smj What Is Strategic Management, Really? APPENDIX A: (Continued) Fredrickson (1990) Teece (1990) Rumelt, Schendel, and Teece (1994) Bowman, Singh, and Thomas (2002) Copyright 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Strat. Mgmt. J., 28: 935–955 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/smj