Strategy and organization research in operations management

• Author: Gopesh Anand,John V. Gray
• Date: 01 November 2017
• Published date: 01 November 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jom.2017.09.001

Strategy and organization research in operations management

Gopesh Anand

a

,

*

, John V. Gray

b

a

College of Business, University of Illinois, United States

b

Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University, United States

article info

Article history:

Available online 28 September 2017

Handling Editor: Mikko Ketokivi

abstract

In a September 2015 editorial (Guide and Ketokivi, 2015), the co-editors-in-chief of the Journal of Op-

erations Management restructured the management of submissions into departme nts by substantive

domain. This essay expands upon their brief description of the Strategy and Organization Department.

While chiefly seeking to clarify what we see as the department's content domain, we also offer insights

on how to maximize the contribution of operations management research to the strategy and organi-

zation literature.

©2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

The co-editors of the journal describe the Strategy and Organi-

zation Department as follows

1

:

The Strategy and Organization Department focuses on two

inter-related topics. One is strategy, which covers all research

related to how firms seek to compete in the marketplace. More

specific topics include operations strategy (although we prefer

Wickham Skinner's term “operations in the corporate strategy”),

competitive advantage (rents), market positioning, barriers to

entry, and other topics that link directly to how firms compete

with their operations. We encourage authors to address

competition explicitly in their manuscripts. The second topic is

organization, which in this context means the internal organi-

zation of the firm. Research within this topic includes classic

themes of organization design, organizational differentiation

and integration, organization and management of geographi-

cally dispersed operations, as well as general organizing prin-

ciples such as coordination and control.

We are honored to serve as the first co-editors of the Strategy

and Organization Department and to contribute this essay,which is

organized as follows: In Section 2, we provide our perspective of

what “strategy and organization”means (and does not mean) in the

context of operations management (OM). In Section 3, we identify

OM topics that have utilized strategy and organization perspectives

and attempt to clarify this department's domain in hopes of

motivating further research on listed and new topics. In Section 4,

we briefly articulate what we will be looking for in submissions,

touching on methodology and rigor and discussing how to increase

contributions to theory and practice. Section 5presents our

conclusions.

2. The domain of strategy and organization in the context of

operations management

Although strategy and organization can be differentiated from

each other, both domains are closely related, especially in opera-

tions management (Guide and Ketokivi, 2015). Indeed, operations

strategy could be described as the interplay between the firm's

strategic direction (while we use “firm,”the unit of analysis could

be a business unit, not-for-profit, etc.) and the organization of its

resources for developing, producing, and delivering goods and

services. As further evidence of this close linkage, consider that the

domain statement of Organization Science includes “the fields of

strategy, management, and organization theory.”

2

Likewise, the

aims and scope of Strategic Management Journal

3

include “major

topics such as strategic resource allocation, organization structure

…”Clearly, management journals in organization consider strategy

a key part of their domain, and vice-versa.

Given the distinction, we first describe and trace the roots of the

strategy and organization OM research domains in sections 2.1and

*Corresponding author.

E-mail addresses: gopesh@Illinois.edu (G. Anand), gray.402@osu.edu (J.V. Gray).

1

https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-operations-management/

strategy-and-organization.

2

http://pubsonline.informs.org/journal/orsc#.

3

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1097-0266/homepage/

ProductInformation.html.

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Operations Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jom

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jom.2017.09.001

0272-6963/©2017Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Journal of Operations Management 53-56 (2017) 1e8