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THE STATE OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT RESEARCH AND A VISION OF THE FUTURE
Michael A. Hitt, Brian K. Boyd and Dan Li
INTRODUCTION
The field of strategic management has advanced substantially in both theory and empirical research over the last 25 years. However, there are “cracks” beginning to occur in the methodology “dam.” To grow as a discipline, strategic management research must meet and deal effectively with methodological challenges in several areas. We address these challenges in each of the following areas: research questions, data collection, construct measurement, analysis of endogenous relationships, and applications. We present a concise view of the future suggesting ways in which these challenges can be overcome and explain the benefits to the field. Derivation of the field of strategic management can be traced to several different dates. Possible starting dates include 1980, 1978, 1962, and 320BC, for example. 1980 was a seminal year because it marked the publication of Porter’s Competitive Strategy, as well as the inception of the Strategic Management Society. In 1978, the first textbook for the field – Hofer and Schendel’s Strategy Formulation was published. 1962 marked Alfred Chandler’s pioneering work on strategy. Finally, the field’s roots in military strategy were sown around 320BC, by Sun Tsu. While acknowledging the discipline’s ancestry in tactics, the field is still very young. Kuhn (1996) suggests that new disciplines have low levels
Research Methodology in Strategy and Management Research Methodology in Strategy and Management, Volume 1, 1–31 Copyright © 2004 by Elsevier Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-8387/doi:10.1016/S1479-8387(04)01101-4
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of paradigm development....