SMS 46th Annual Conference

Track Chair: Elisa Operti, ESSEC Business School

Competitive strategy has long examined how firms position within industries, shape rivalry, and build capabilities for sustained advantage, typically assuming integrated markets and relatively coherent institutions. In today’s fragmented geo-economic landscape, these premises are strained: geopolitical blocs, divergent regulatory regimes, and competing technological standards mean that rivalry increasingly unfolds across ecosystems, platforms, and innovation networks shaped by political and institutional fault lines.
We invite research that examines how geo-economic fragmentation and technological change reshape industry structure and barriers to entry; how firms compete within and across ecosystems and platforms; and how collaboration networks, pre-competitive arrangements, and shared infrastructures affect competitive advantage and performance in a fragmented landscape. We also welcome microfoundational perspectives that trace how boundary-spanning managers, founders, scientists, or technical leaders forge cross-divide ties, reposition firms within polarized environments, and modify classic mechanisms of commitment, signaling, and multimarket contact. Finally, we invite contributions that integrate competitive strategy with nonmarket behavior and institutional theory to explain how firms’ political, regulatory, and standard-setting activities shape their positions and competitive outcomes in a fragmented geo-economic order.

Track Chair: Daniel Keum, Columbia

The Corporate Strategy Interest Group invites submissions that examine how firms formulate and execute strategy in a world shaped by geopolitical fragmentation, technological shifts, and institutional divergence. As cross-border interdependencies become politicized and innovation systems splinter, firms must reassess how they allocate resources, define organizational boundaries, and compete across markets. We are interested in submissions that sheds light on core corporate-level choices – diversification, vertical (dis)integration, global footprint, alliances, M&A, restructuring, and technology investment – under rising political uncertainty and uneven access to talent, data, and critical infrastructure, such as energy.
We especially welcome research that helps explain how firms bridge divides across markets and institutions. How do multinationals maintain coherence amid local pressures? How do smaller firms navigate fragmentation with fewer buffers? How do corporate leaders balance long-term positioning with short-term geoeconomic shocks? We encourage submissions that bring diverse theoretical perspectives and empirical approaches to these questions.

Track Chair: Stephanie Wang, Indiana University

The Global Strategy Interest Group invites inspiring and transformative research that reimagines how firms strategize in a world of simultaneous global connectedness and fragmentation. Worldwide grand challenges—spanning peace and security, climate change, global health, technological disruption, migration, and supply chain resilience—demand unprecedented global coordination, yet geopolitical tensions, institutional divergence, and technological decoupling complicate this imperative. We encourage work that revisits classic global strategy questions—internationalization, cross-border collaboration, global offshoring, and divestment—while exploring emerging paradigms that redefine what “global” means in contested spaces. How do firms orchestrate global networks when mobility of people, labor, capital, and knowledge is increasingly constrained or reconfigured? What does place mean when digital infrastructures blur geographical boundaries, yet local institutions and cultural contexts remain powerful? How do firms navigate ecosystems where integration and localization collide with demands for resilience and sovereignty? We also welcome research that examines the role of global stakeholders—governments, NGOs, multinationals—in shaping strategic choices under uncertainty. We especially welcome submissions that illuminate novel mechanisms, challenge conventional wisdom, and push the conceptual boundaries of global strategy in a fractured and fast-evolving world.

Track Chair: Laura Poppo, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

The Strategy Process Interest Group invites bold, boundary-pushing research that reimagines strategizing and strategic sensemaking in a world where geopolitics, institutions, and technologies increasingly diverge. Fragmentation is not merely an external constraint—it has become a generative condition for how organizations envision the future, coordinate action, and construct coherence. We encourage work that challenges settled assumptions about how top management teams interpret geopolitical shifts, imagine alternative futures, and decide whether to shape emerging regimes or adapt to them. Equally important are the multilevel dynamics through which middle managers, experts, and frontline employees make sense of these forces, translating, contesting, or reinforcing strategic intentions. Such dynamics raise fundamental questions about how coherence is forged when organizations face conflicting rules, data regimes, and ecosystem partners. We also welcome research that uncovers novel routines, organizing principles, and forms of coordination that emerge as firms navigate fragmented technological infrastructures and politically contested markets. We invite contributions that not only explain strategy processes in this new global order but also push the field toward its next conceptual frontier.

Track Chair: Victoria Sevcenko, INSEAD

The Knowledge and Innovation IG invites submissions that explore how managers can build, maintain and deploy their organizations’ knowledge assets to achieve competitive advantage. These questions are becoming particularly critical in today’s fragmented geo-political and economic environment, where organizations need to increasingly react to and manage rapid changes in technologies, industrial and trade policies, and data and standards regimes. We are especially interested in work that explores organizational learning, knowledge transfer, innovation, artificial intelligence capabilities, constraints on talent mobility, and organizational resilience to technology shocks, among others. Potential questions might include: How do organizations learn and adapt when they face persistent discontinuities across regulatory, political, and/or technological environments? How do firms balance protecting knowledge with benefiting from openness, collaboration, and ecosystem participation? What is the relationship between organizational learning and innovation when environments are fragmented rather than integrated? We welcome quantitative, qualitative, and conceptual papers that advance our understanding of organizational knowledge and innovation strategy and practice.

Track Chair: Anna Plotnikova, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

The Strategy Practice IG invites submissions that explore strategy as a socially situated, practice-based phenomenon. Rather than viewing strategy as a static asset, we focus on the actors, activities, and practices through which strategy is continuously enacted in diverse contexts. In today’s fragmented geo-economic landscape, we are interested in who participates in strategizing across fragmented systems; what practices—activities, tools, discourses, technologies—enable coordination and resilience; and how these practices are enacted in everyday work, across roles, and within varied geographic and institutional settings. This year, we especially encourage research on bridging divides through practitioners, practices, and praxis. Illustrative questions include: How do actors navigate fragmented markets and institutional logics to create strategic coherence? How do practices enable coordination and knowledge sharing across digital and data divides? Which forms of praxis support decision-making in contexts where divides—technological, cultural, or institutional—are most pronounced? In what ways do AI-driven tools and sociomaterial practices reshape participation, power, and inclusion in strategizing? We welcome empirical, theoretical, and methodological contributions that advance understanding of strategy as lived practice.

Track Chair: Luca Berchicci, Erasmus University

The Entrepreneurship & Strategy Interest Group invites research that pushes the boundaries of how we understand opportunity, innovation, and strategic action in an era of geopolitical tension, institutional divergence, and technological fragmentation. Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial strategists within established firms increasingly operate across fault lines where regulatory regimes differ, digital infrastructures are contested, and collaboration networks are disrupted. These forces reshape how opportunities are sensed, formed, and pursued. We encourage submissions that revisit core questions of entrepreneurial strategy: How does entrepreneurial action generate competitive advantage when uncertainty stems not only from markets but from fractured institutions and politicized technologies? How do ventures craft strategic coherence when facing conflicting rules, data regimes, or ecosystem partners? We welcome conceptual and empirical contributions that strengthen theory on entrepreneurial behavior and reveal how new and established ventures forge paths through fragmented systems. Research that advances our collective understanding of entrepreneurial strategy in this evolving global order is especially encouraged.

Track Chair: JR Keller, Cornell University

The Strategic Human Capital Interest Group welcomes submissions on the relationship between human capital and organizational strategy and performance. Particular questions of interest include the ways that firms can derive competitive advantage from their employees, how firms compete successfully with one another in the labor market, and the barriers to and consequences of increasing workforce diversity. In keeping with the conference theme, we are particularly interested in submissions that address the role of human capital as organizations navigate an increasingly fragmented geo-economic landscape. Does the shifting landscape change how firms can or should manage and deploy human capital for competitive advantage? How will geopolitical dynamics and technological advances reshape recruitment, selection, and internal labor markets? How might firms collaborate with (or will they replace?) educational institutions in terms of educating, training, and developing current and future employees? Submissions that address these and other relevant topics are particularly welcome.

Track Chair: Arzi Adbi, National University of Singapore

The Stakeholder Strategy Interest Group invites submissions that advance understanding of when, why, and how firms engage with their stakeholders, and their implications. These interactions may be direct or indirect, initiated by firms, stakeholders, or external events. Stakeholder-related topics are explored across stable and volatile political, economic, and social environments, raising crucial questions for managers about strategy, governance, and resource allocation. Such environments create opportunities and challenges for firms, policy issues for governments and nonprofits, and ethical considerations for relationships between organizations and activists. We welcome theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions that examine how stakeholder strategies create value and how macro trends shape their formulation and outcomes. In line with this year’s conference theme, we encourage submissions that explore stakeholder management and governance in a fragmented geo-economic landscape where geopolitical tensions, institutional divergence, and technological divides influence how firms build and navigate relationships with diverse stakeholders.

Track Chair: Libby Weber, Michigan State University

In a world of rapid geopolitical and technological change, cooperative strategies have never been more important. While participation in platforms and ecosystems have allowed firms to co-innovate in a more cohesive economic environment, political and institutional divergence have increased the uncertainty of value capture and cooperation for individual firms in these domains. Further, alliances provide greater flexibility for managers facing this more complicated world but face unique issues from this divergent environment. Thus, the cooperative strategies interest group welcomes submissions examining the need, structure, governance and development of alliances, ecosystems and platforms in a politically divided, technologically driven world. We also welcome microfoundational perspectives on trust and cooperation in these domains in this turbulent environment. Finally, we welcome contributions that explore how cooperative strategies can help build connective tissue across fragmented systems to foster collaboration despite growing geopolitical blocs, regulatory divergence, and economic nationalism.

Track Chair: Ann Mooney Murphy, Stevens Institute of Technology

The Strategic Leadership and Governance Interest Group invites submissions that provide novel and impactful examinations of how strategic leaders and governance mechanisms (e.g., CEOs, top management teams, boards) shape strategic direction, organizational outcomes, and value creation. Topics of interest include but are not limited to strategic decision making processes and dynamics of top executives and boards, the influence of stakeholders (e.g., media, activist investors), social evaluations of top leaders, the impact of advanced technologies such as AI, and executive career outcomes (e.g., compensation, promotion, turnover). Related to this year’s conference theme, we encourage research that considers how strategic leadership and governance mechanisms affect or are affected by a fragmented geo-economic landscape. As geopolitical, technological, and institutional divides deepen, it would be especially interesting for scholars to examine how top executives and boards rethink how they coordinate across borders, manage interdependencies, and sustain value creation with shifting rules and constraints.

Track Chair: Gerard P. Hodgkinson, University of Manchester

The Behavioral Strategy Interest Group invites contributions that improve micro-foundational understanding of how individuals and collectives are variously addressing and failing to address the significant psychological challenges posed by the plethora of technological, economic, political, legal, social, and ecological uncertainties presently afflicting the world.  In the wake of major technological and geopolitical shifts, mental models of the strategic landscape that once informed decision makers how to compete are no longer fit for purpose. Causal belief systems and cognitive heuristics that previously enabled firms to adapt with alacrity have become significant sources of inertia, as have established routines that previously enabled effective coordination within and between organizations.  To what extent and in what ways are strategic decision makers equipped cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally to cope with these existential challenges?  Why are some decision makers able to cope more effectively than others?  How can psychological insights improve matters?  How is AI transforming fundamental behavioral processes in strategic decision-making? Can AI complement or overcome human cognitive limitations? Conceptual, empirical, and methodological contributions that advance the science and practice of strategic management by bringing more realistic assumptions about human cognition, emotions, and social behavior to bear on the analysis of organizational decision-making and adaptation are equally welcome.