AWARD CRITERIA
In 2017, five years after the Global Strategy Journal was launched, an annual best paper award was established by co-sponsors Wiley and the Strategic Management Society to honor substantial work published in the GSJ. As with the Dan and Mary Lou Schendel Best Paper Prize, the award is for a paper published five or more years prior to the recognition. This delay allows time for the impact of papers to be assessed in terms of citations and influence of the paper on teaching, research, and/or practice. Once eligible, a paper remains eligible until selected as the best paper. Continued eligibility allows recognition to be made for those insights and findings that sometimes occur before their time and only become widely recognized as significant after other work is published.
The award committee consists of the Editorial Board of the Global Strategy Journal.
Authors of the winning paper receive a monetary award of US$ 5,000. The award is given and the authors are recognized at the SMS Annual Conference.
The GSJ Best Paper Prize 2025 Recipient:
By Maria Andrea De Villa , Tazeeb Rajwani, Thomas C. Lawton, and Kamel Mellahi
De Villa, M. A., Rajwani, T., Lawton, T. C., & Mellahi, K. (2018). To engage or not to engage with host governments: Corporate political activity and host country political risk. Global Strategy Journal, 9(2), 208–242. https://doi.org/10.1002/gsj.1205
The article by Maria Andrea De Villa , Tazeeb Rajwani, Thomas Lawton and Kamel Mellahi, “To Engage or Not to Engage with Host Governments: Corporate Political Activity and Host‑Country Political Risk” (2019), receives the 2025 GSJ Best Paper Award. Using rich historical case evidence and an inductive design, the article brings neo‑institutional theory into dialogue with Hirschman’s exit–voice–loyalty framework to shift attention away from engaged corporate political activity (CPA) and examine when and how a multinational’s senior management chooses and deploys a non-engaged approach to CPA. It suggests that perceived political risk — shaped both by host institutions and by the distance between home and host governments—can push managers toward a deliberate non‑engaged CPA approach. By identifying four active adaptation strategies—low visibility, rapid compliance, reconfiguration and anticipation—the authors overturn the prevailing view that non‑engaged CPA equals avoidance or passive conformity. De Villa and colleagues thus deepen our understanding of how firms protect operations in volatile settings and set a benchmark for research at the nexus of global strategy and non‑market behavior.
About the Recipients:
Maria Andrea De Villa is Professor of Strategy at EAFIT University and Visiting Professor at University of Michigan-Flint. She received her Ph.D. from Cranfield University (UK). Her research focuses on how firms manage sociopolitical risks and relations through nonmarket strategies, and how they strategize to address grand challenges such as climate change. She has a special interest in qualitative research methods, particularly in the use of case studies from process, practice, and variance perspectives, as well as in configurational thinking and qualitative comparative analysis. She serves as the Global Rep-at-Large for the Global Strategy Interest Group of the Strategic Management Society, Co-Editor of a Special Issue in Journal of International Business Studies, Communications Editor of Long Range Planning, and Editorial Review Board Member of Global Strategy Journal, Long Range Planning, Strategic Organization, and Multinational Business Review. Her work has been published in Global Strategy Journal, International Business Review, Journal of International Management, among others.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreadevilla/
Kamel Mellahi is a Professor in Business Administration at the University of Nottingham Ningbo, China. He previously held faculty positions as full professor of strategic management at Warwick Business School and the University of Sheffield. He has contributed to policy and business advisory work as Head of the Dubai Chamber of Commerce’s Centre for Responsible Business. Mellahi’s research focuses on international business strategy, nonmarket strategy, business sustainability, and HR practices in multinational enterprise. He has published over 100 papers and co-edited and authored 12 books and his research has been published in leading journals such as JIBS, JOM, SMJ, GSJ, JWB and JMS. He has been ranked in the top 2 percent of scientists in Stanford University’s global ranking. His work has been cited in media outlets including AP, Reuters, CNN, CNBC, BBC, Bloomberg, Forbes, FT, and the Wall Street Journal. He is an Associate Editor of HRMJ, and a former Senior Editor of JWB and co-editor in chief of IJMR.
https://research.nottingham.edu.cn/en/persons/kamel-mellahi
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kamel-mellahi-0493757a/
Thomas C. Lawton is Professor of Strategic Management at University College Cork and Brunel University of London, and Visiting Professor in the Strategy Group at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. He studies how firms proactively engage nonmarket challenges and political risk, and adapt business models amid institutional complexity. His work has appeared in journals including Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Management Studies, Global Strategy Journal, and Journal of World Business. He has authored eight books, including Breakout Strategy (McGraw-Hill) and Aligning for Advantage (Oxford), and is co-editor of the forthcoming Cambridge Handbook of Nonmarket Strategy in a Global Context. As Editor-in-Chief of Long Range Planning, he shapes global discourse on long-term strategic thinking and organizational resilience. Thomas lives in southwest Ireland with his wife, Katalin, and their children, Méabh Alyona and Ruaidhrí James, and they spend part of each year in White River Junction, Vermont.
Tazeeb Rajwani is Chaired Professor of International Business and Strategy in University of Surrey (UK). His current research examines how firms use nonmarket strategies to influence different stakeholders to improve firm-level performance. His work appears in Organization Science, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Global Strategy Journal, Academy of Management Perspectives, Journal of World Business, Strategic Organization, among others. His research has been covered in the media, such as the FT, The Times, Forbes, BBC and Al Jazeera. He is the Associate Editor at Academy of Management Perspectives, Consulting Editor at Journal of International Management, Co-Editor-in-Chief at Multinational Business Review, editorial board member of Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of World Business, British Journal of Management and Long-Range Planning. He received his Ph.D. in Strategic Management from Imperial College London. Prior to joining academia, Tazeeb Rajwani gained strategy consulting experience at KPMG in a wide variety of industries.