Editorial Statement—Business Strategy

BUSINESS STRATEGY

Alfonso Gambardella, Bocconi University

Joshua Gans, University of Toronto

The Business Strategy department seeks papers with research questions that deepen our understanding of business performance. The department is interested in rigorous analyses that show how strategic choices impact performance, broadly construed, with special attention paid to persistent differences amongst competitors. The department will eschew papers that focus primarily on internal functions (e.g., finance or marketing), but welcome studies that deal with important strategic choices, such as choices about firm organization, governance, location, purpose, sustainability, nonmarket strategies, culture, employees, and human capital.

The primary criterion for consideration for publication in Management Science is the potential for impact on future study. This means that the researchmust conform to rigorous standards of quality in both theory development and empirical methodology and execution. We are agnostic as to the disciplinary origins of analysis. Given our primary criterion, this means that significant contributions may very well raise more questions than they answer and generate challenging and controversial findings with respect to the existing literature. The department also expects that published studies inform managers about the nature, characteristics, and implications of strategic choices that they can actually make.