At the Strategic Management Society, members are organized in interest groups. There, strategy scholars also engage in a “Strategy Practice” Interest Group, which operates on equal terms with more established groups such as “Competitve Strategy”, “Corporate Strategy”, or “Strategy Process”.

The Strategy Practice Interest Group is seeking submissions of proposals for presentation at the SMS 2019 in Minneapolis, MN, which will take place on October 19-22. As the CfP states:

Our Strategy Practice Interest Group focuses on the doing of strategy. It is interested in opening the ‘black box’ of strategy work by examining the actors, activities and practices that are involved in formulating, implementing, and changing strategies. It also aims at linking the strategy work to important outcomes across different levels and various contexts in which strategy actors operate. Our interest in opening the ‘black box’ of strategy making resonates particularly well with the 2019 SMS conference theme, Out of the Spotlight “Strategies”. While welcoming all contributions that are aligned with our general interest, we particularly seek those that reveal what strategy making looks like in the industries, countries, or other contexts that have received little public and scholarly attention, and that focus on the strategy actors, activities, and practices that have largely been neglected by existing research.

Deadline: February 20, 2019

Format: 5-7 pages

Thus, the Strategy Practice Interest Group shares the key interests of scholars who explore the process and practice of strategy-making.

Is it worth participating? Yes, it is. SMS is the conference at which strategy scholars with different disciplinary training—management, economics, and so forth—stake out the state of the field and in which direction it is moving. As practice scholars know, such debates are not just mere “rhetoric”: They are consequential, at least in part, for the types of approaches and ways of thinking that editors (many of which will be there) will consider “strategy” in the years to come. Thus, if practice scholars—with their background in the broader social sciences—want to have a say in debates about what “strategy” is, they might consider submitting their work to the Strategy Practice Track at SMS 2019.

Proposals may be submitted here.