AWARD CRITERIA
In 1993, approximately 13 years after the Strategic Management Journal was launched, an annual best paper prize was established by co-sponsors Wiley and the Strategic Management Society to honor substantial work published in the SMJ. 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 until other work is published.
The award committee consists of the Editorial Board of the Strategic Management Journal.
Authors of the winning paper receive a monetary award of US $5,000. The award is given and the author(s) are recognized at the SMS Annual Conference.”
The Dan and Mary Lou Schendel Best Paper Prize 2025 Recipient:
“Modularity, flexibility, and knowledge management in product and organization design”
By Ron Sanchez and Joseph T. Mahoney
Sanchez, R., & Mahoney, J. T. (1996). Modularity, flexibility, and knowledge management in product and organization design. Strategic Management Journal, 17(S2), 63–76. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.4250171107
The article “Modularity, Flexibility, and Knowledge Management in Product and Organization Design“ by Ron Sanchez and Joseph Mahoney deserves the SMJ Best Paper Award because it introduced a powerful idea that examines how companies may design both products and the organizations that build them. The paper showed that by using modular designs—where parts are built to connect through standardized interfaces—companies can speed up innovation, adapt more easily to change, and work with teams across different locations. This concept has become especially important in today’s world of digital platforms and AI, where tech companies build flexible systems by mixing and matching software components and AI tools. With over 4000 Google Scholar citations, the paper has had broad influence across management, engineering, and innovation research. Its ideas have been extended in areas like platform governance (where modularity supports third-party innovation while preserving system control), open innovation (highlighting how modular interfaces enable external contributors to plug in solutions), and AI system design (where modular architecture separates data, model training, and deployment for rapid learning and reuse). Even after decades, the article remains a go-to reference for understanding how to manage complex systems in a way that encourages learning, adaptability, and long-term innovation.
About the Recipients:
Joseph T. Mahoney (Ph.D., Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania) is Caterpillar Chair of Business, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has published over 90 journal articles (cited over 30,000 times, Google Scholar). His 2005 book, Economic Foundations of Strategy has been adopted by over 45 doctoral programs. He served as Associate Editor of SMJ (2016-2015), AMR (2018-2020), and SMR (2020-present). He served as Chair of the BPS/STR Division of the AOM in 2009. In 2011, he received the Irwin Outstanding Educator Award from the BPS/STR Division of the AOM. In 2012, he was elected as an AOM Fellow, and in 2013 as a Fellow of SMS. Joe has served on 96 completed doctoral dissertation committees. In 2017, he received the Campus Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring. In 2022, he was selected by Poets and Quants as one of the top 50 undergraduate Professors of Business in the US.
https://josephmahoney.web.illinois.edu/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-mahoney-360a09a2/
Professor Ron Sanchez has four degrees from MIT including his PhD in Technology and Strategy, as well as an MBA (with Honors) from St, Mary’s College of California. His 1991 PhD dissertation applied financial options theory to the valuation of strategic flexibilities enabled by modular product architectures – a theoretical perspective he continues to develop today. He has authored a strategic management textbook (with Prof. Aimé Heene), 43 journal papers (and counting), 32 book chapters, and 16 cases, as well as co-editing 23 volumes of research papers. Prof. Sanchez began his academic career at University of Illinois in 1991. He has been Professor of Management at Copenhagen Business School since 2004, becoming Professor Emeritus in 2016. Prof. Sanchez has consulted widely on transformational modularity strategies with Philips, Daimler-Benz, Agilent, and many other firms large and small. He always has new modularity papers in process, while also tending to his Domaine Verdant pinot noir vineyard in Oregon.