The last several years has witnessed a growing interaction between economists and sociologists engaged in the study of organizations' strategies. Economists and sociologists can gain real insight from these interactions. To date, however, these interactions have been to ad hoc and unfocused to bear any real fruit. This volume moves the discussion to the next level by focusing the discussion, and taking a step toward systematizing some of the relationships between economic and sociological approaches to strategic management. To accomplish this, the volume reprints four 'matched pairs' of influential articles on firms' strategies in economic sociology and strategic management and use these articles to frame a conversation between the articles' pioneering authors and other prominent researchers in strategic management and sociology working on closely-related research problems. Each pair of articles followed by provocative essays - inspired by the pairing - written by the articles' original authors. Two contextualizing commentaries penned by influential strategy and organizations researchers - one grounded in strategic management and one in economic sociology - extend each conversation. A reflective reply from the articles' authors concludes the conversation - for now. A framing introduction and concluding epilogue, written by volume editors Joel Baum and Frank Dobbin, set the stage both for the volume and for future conversations between the disciplines in strategic management.

During the past two decades, students of strategy have promiscuously borrowed ideas from the disciplines of economics, sociology, and psychology. The result has been an abundance of models ranging from the structure-conduct-performance model to evolutionary economics, from ecological models of strategy to network models of strategy, and cognitive perspectives on strategy to learning models of strategy. The contributions to Volume 15 are organized into five themes: Economics, Institutions, Networks, Technology, and Computation. Together, the contributions show how contemporary strategic management research draws upon root disciplines by interconnecting disciplines or fields within a particular discipline, or by focusing tightly on a particular subfield. All three approaches are essential to a vibrant strategic management - close attention to developments within subfields comprising root disciplines and integration of these developments within strategic management scholarship are essential.
Without the former, strategic management risks antiquation; without the latter it risks disintegration. Volume 15 inspires strategy researchers to be rigorous in both disciplinary grounding and integration as well as wary of new ideas speeding their way into the core of study.

Research at the intersection of social networks and strategic management identifies a range of performance-enhancing network position advantages - access to partners, information, innovation, and resources - that are distributed differentially across network positions. While research indicates how network positions can be used to advantage, it says little about how these positions are established, sustained, and destroyed, and so we know little about the role of actors' strategic goals and self-interests in shaping network structures."Volume 25 of Advances in Strategic Management" aims to inspire a shift from discussions of network effects to network processes. Each chapter contributes to the crafting of a more dynamic view that increases our understanding of the origins, evolution and decay of network structures, positions and their associated advantages.

Volume 23 of the "Advances in Strategic Management" series focuses on ecology and strategy, providing an excellent point of reference for scholars, students and practitioners of business. The nine-part volume addresses diverse fields such as the U.S. motion picture, British motorcycle, and optical disk drive industries. The authors included represent institutions of higher learning from around the world, giving this latest edition international appeal. There is international representation. It addresses the human ecology of organizations, the relationship between the employee and the company. It includes papers regarding the US Motion Picture, British Motorcycle, and Optical Disk Drive industries.

The field of Strategic Management has explored a range of new questions regarding technical change, firm capabilities, and executive decision-making, producing insights into the development of firms and unfolding of competition over time. These insights point to the importance of industry context and technical change, but little research deals systematically with the interaction between such contingencies and strategic choice.

This volume explores the relationship between business strategy and the industry lifecycle competitive interaction. The contributors to this volume ask, "What kinds of firm capabilities are required to compete effectively in the various stages of the industry lifecycle?." Rather than focusing on generalized principles of interaction, they ask, "How do firms build these capabilities, and where to they come from?." Their answers expand our understanding of the relationships between industry evolution, technical change, and business strategy, as well as industry life cycle itself.

As we move into the 21st century, the world seems a smaller place - transportation costs continue to fall, fiber optic networks speed information around the planet, and corporations operate on a global scale. One might reasonably ask whether location really matters anymore. Despite these trends - perhaps because of them - the last few years have witnessed a rapid rise in interest in "place" and "space" across the social sciences. While the importance of distance declines, strategic interest in location appears greater than ever. This volume draws together researchers from a variety of disciplines - economics, geography, marketing, organizational behavior, sociology, and urban planning - working at the forefront of this wave to explore some of the important ways in which location matters for firms in the 21st century.

This volume is part of a series which seeks to act as a vehicle for the communication of research in strategic management. It contains papers presenting theoretical and/or empirical analysis of strategic problems, comparative and analytical case studies of issues and application of concepts.

Any system for giving good advice has to maintain a tension between telling the truth and not being heard, on the one hand, and telling what can be heard but is not true, on the other. In such a system, the role of academic researchers is not so much to give advice as it is to generate knowledge and to provide critical commentary on advice that is given. Along the way, an academic tries to counteract the natural tendency of advice givers to become more attentive to the hearing of their clients than to the knowledge underlying what they say. This book is in that tradition. It honors the noble tradition of giving advice on strategic management and organizational learning by exploring some elements of fundamental knowledge that might inform such advice.

A conspicuous feature of the modern economy is the multitude of multiunit systems that operate in several markets - an organizational form that arguably rivals the "M-form" as the 20th century's most successful. Research traditions studying multiunit systems include the multimarket perspective, which has used commitment and mutual forbearance theory, and the multiunit perspective, which has used learning and knowledge transfer theory. These perspectives are interdisciplinary, but to date there has been little direct interaction among them. This text aims to bring these areas together, discussing such things as: examining how variation in firm capabilities affects the co-ordination of branches and thus their forbearance or transfer of routines; bridging theories of market conduct and internal behaviour to explore how knowledge about markets and competitor behaviour is transferred among organizational units; making a theory of contingent multiunit or single-unit competitive advantage that can account for the coexistence of these organizational forms in many markets; and examining the effects of firm contacts in alliances or technological fields on their competitive behaviours.

The last several years has witnessed a growing interaction between economists and sociologists engaged in the study of organizations' strategies. Economists and sociologists can gain real insight from these interactions. To date, however, these interactions have been to ad hoc and unfocused to bear any real fruit. This volume moves the discussion to the next level by focusing the discussion, and taking a step toward systematizing some of the relationships between economic and sociological approaches to strategic management. To accomplish this, the volume reprints four 'matched pairs' of influential articles on firms' strategies in economic sociology and strategic management and use these articles to frame a conversation between the articles' pioneering authors and other prominent researchers in strategic management and sociology working on closely-related research problems. Each pair of articles followed by provocative essays - inspired by the pairing - written by the articles' original authors. Two contextualizing commentaries penned by influential strategy and organizations researchers - one grounded in strategic management and one in economic sociology - extend each conversation. A reflective reply from the articles' authors concludes the conversation - for now. A framing introduction and concluding epilogue, written by volume editors Joel Baum and Frank Dobbin, set the stage both for the volume and for future conversations between the disciplines in strategic management.

"This volume brings together various emerging perspectives in strategy research for further interaction and debate. Contributions address a range of issues related to the globalization of strategy research. Some chapters present perspectives that challenge the historically dominant North American tradition in strategy research, from both outside as well as within North America. Others examine the historical development of strategy research, viewed either as a convergent normal science process, or as a divergent process destined to generate disparate perspectives. Specific chapters include: Globalization or Colonization?; Building a Business on Ethnic Ties; Rhetorical History as a Source of Competitive Advantage; and Organizational Selection in Context. The volume examines strategy theory, methods and research, and strategy as practice, discourse and reflexive design. By creating a forum for discussing issues at the interface of emerging perspectives and long-standing traditions, this volume provides a compendium that contributes to cross-fertilization among them, as well as a catalyst for future research countering the separatist logic that threatens to partition the field".