Organizations and Markets

MDE Special Issue: Frontiers of Strategic Management Research

22 April 2008 at 4:06 am Nicolai Foss 1 comment

| Nicolai Foss |

Managerial and Decision Economics has become a favorite journal of mine. It has a strong econ orientation, to be sure, but the journal stresses econ that is relevant, readable, and right. In other words, there is lots of applied microeconomics, transaction cost economics, etc. Moreover, over the last few years MDE — presumably as a result of Margie Peteraf’s tenure as co-editor — has become very much of an econ-based strategic management journal, not like the Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, to be sure, but more economics-oriented than the Strategic Management Journal.

The most recent issue(s — issue 2 and 3 are bundled into one special issue) features a string of excellent papers under the heading “Frontiers of Strategic Management Research,” edited by Peteraf and Catherine Maritan. Several of the papers should be of interest to the O&M readership. For example, Kyle Mayer (with Janet Bercovitz) continues to work with his information technology service contracts dataset, this time looking at the influence of inertia on what contract clauses that are included in these kind of contracts. Maritan and Robert Florence engage in a nice modelling exercise, modelling strategic factor markets in a way that seems quite different from earlier attempts (e.g., by Rich Makadok). Michael Jacobides builds an interesting argument, linking foreign direct investment to the investing firm’s embeddedness in value chains in the home country and value chain conditions in the host country. And, of course, there is the usual handful of alliance articles. A great special issue. Highly recommended.

Entry filed under: - Foss -, Papers, Strategic Management.