A welcome from the new Editorial Team

Citation

Hinterhuber, A. and Lewis, A.O. (2008), "A welcome from the new Editorial Team", Business Strategy Series, Vol. 9 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/bss.2008.33009aaa.001

A welcome from the new Editorial Team

A welcome from the new Editorial Team

It is with a sense of excitement that we, the new Editorial Team, welcome you, our readers, to this special issue on strategic management. In this introduction, we would like to address two issues: a look into the future and a stock-take of our achievements so far. The Business Strategy Series (formerly: Handbook of Business Strategy) is a unique journal. Its distinctive feature is a focus on short articles which have a direct relevance for senior executives and which are rigorous and innovative in their theoretical approach.

Looking into the future, our aim for the Business Strategy Series is to make the journal one of the prime bridges between leading edge thinking and practical application. Relevance lost, an increasing isolation from practical applicability in favor of rigorous – but frequently not relevant – research, high citation factors without examples of (past and future) applicability of concepts into practical actions are issues which the most prominent, the most well-known and the most respected journals in strategy, marketing, finance, and other disciplines are in dire need to address today.

We see one way to regain relevance lost: in our hunt for innovative, rigorous, and relevant ideas we will be prepared to relax our high standards on one dimension – rigor – in order to identify and develop ideas which have or will have high practical impact (relevance, innovation) and sound theoretical foundations (rigor). This does not mean that we are prepared to sacrifice rigor for relevance. But we recognize that the early development of ideas, the shaping and description of future practices (as opposed to current best practices) are not always compatible with rigorous and fully specified theoretical models. We thus strive to combine the highest standards of relevance, rigor, and innovation, while being prepared to occasionally relax the standards on rigor in deciding upon which articles to publish.

Our aim for the Business Strategy Series is to make the journal a top 10 strategy journal for practicing managers over the next five years; over this time horizon we want to achieve class B or class C status for the Business Strategy Series in international journal rankings. This, in short words, is our future.

This journal has a distinguished past. We are especially proud of one achievement. In its July 2007 online edition The Economist featured the article “The eight most frequent mistakes people make in front of an audience” by Suzanne Bates (Business Strategy Series, Vol. 4, No. 8, 2007) in the “What’s in the Journals Section” of noteworthy articles from business journals, along articles from distinguished publications such as the Harvard Business Review, Journal of Marketing, and MIT Sloan Management Review. We are thus starting to see strong signals of global recognition by opinion leaders such as The Economist. This gives us the confidence and optimism to state that the goals which we have set for this journal – top 10 strategy journal for practicing managers; B or C class in international rankings – are in our own hands.

These goals are in our own hands, if “we” stands for the extended community of constituencies this journal has, if “we” stands for the “3R’s” of the Business Strategy Series, i.e. for its readers, its writers/authors, and its reviewers. For each of our constituencies we have a special message.

To our readers we want to signal that we value feedback. We thus encourage you to send us your thoughts on articles, methods, topics you like and others you want to see covered more. We are interested in expanding our readership, especially among those practicing executives who currently do not read any journals regularly or who scroll just 1-2 journals on a sporadic basis. Growth in readership is thus one immediate sub-goal, which the Editorial Team will aim to reach.

To our authors we want to signal that – as we move up the ranks to top tier practitioner and B/C academic journal – we will ask for more. We are never, never, satisfied in our hunt, in our global quest for leading edge ideas with impact. We are proud of our achievements so far: but we are equally convinced that there are literally thousands of ideas being talked about in the Executive Suite, being talked about in the corridors of Business Schools, which should be printed in these pages first. We are strong about this. We will thus be even more selective in the future and we are especially interested in expanding our authorship among practicing C-level executives, general managers, marketing managers, and other reflective practitioners. Publishing in the Business Strategy Series will thus be more difficult in the future, but also the rewards (impact, recognition, idea spread) will be much higher.

We critically depend on our reviewers – our 3rd “R” – to achieve these goals. Providing constructive, positive but demanding feedback in time is vital. Without our reviewers – executives, consultants, academics working behind the scenes of a double blind reviewing process – this journal could not exist. Also on this front we need to expand and welcome applications especially from practicing executives willing to provide feedback to prospective authors. We are not able – like any other journal – to offer much in terms of rewards. But, as reviewers for a number of leading journals ourselves, we always find that reviewing good and less good articles allows us to glimpse into the future of research and it may allow you to find-tune your own writing skills, which is useful.

We, the Editorial Team, feel that a “Welcome!” is not real unless you get to know us, at least to the extent possible in this occasion. We will thus introduce each other in turn. Andreas Hinterhuber, the Associate Editor, is partner of Hinterhuber & Partners, a consultancy specialized in Strategy Pricing and Leadership, headquartered in Innsbruck (Austria). At the same time he is a visiting professor at both Bocconi University (Milan), Italy, and at Tsinghua University (Beijing, China) where he teaches courses in Strategic Marketing and Strategic Pricing. He has over 10 years of management experience working in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries in the USA, Germany, Japan, and China, most recently as Global Marketing Manager in the agrochemical industry in Germany. He has published widely on pricing, marketing strategy, joint ventures and alliances, and M&A. Alfred Lewis, the Editor, is a Professor of Strategic Management & Finance at Alliant International University and Professor of Strategy in the University of California-San Diego Strategic Management Certificate Program. He has published a number of books in the area of International Banking, Strategic Management, and Privatization & Entrepreneurship. In addition he has also published numerous academic and practitioner articles on Strategic Management, International Banking, Law, Not-for-Profits and Political Economy issues. He serves on the Editorial Board of some leading journals and is a reviewer for a number of a number of management journals.

With this we are now ready to introduce you to the current edition of the Business Strategy Series. Brady and Walsh from Dublin City University and Ernst and Young, respectively, examine the question whether strategic direction setting is a top down or a bottom up process. Gebauer and her colleagues from the University of St. Gallen examine how manufacturing companies can embark on the challenging but profitable route of increasing revenues through service offerings. Raynor of Deloitte Consulting examines how the creation and management of strategic options helps companies to deal with uncertainty. Yeo from King Fahd University examines the role of leaders and leadership in fostering organizational learning within organizations. Allen and his colleagues from the University of Tennessee examine to which extent Porter’s generic business strategies are being adopted in Japan. All of these articles are well worth reading. But, unsurprisingly, you, the reader, are the ultimate judge of the impact of the articles we publish.

With kind regards,

Andreas HinterhuberAssociate Editor

Alfred O. LewisEditor-in-Chief