Editor's letter

Citation

Randall, R.M. (2005), "Editor's letter", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 33 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/sl.2005.26133eaa.001

Editor's letter

For 33 years Strategy & Leadership has operated as a co-op where leaders and thinkers share their ideas and experiences and get feedback from their peers. S&L’s contributing editors – a mix of corporate reviewers and senior academics– pick the articles and make substantive editing suggestions. Though their feedback can be tough and candid, authors respect the opinions of these veteran strategists. Our mantra is that our readers deserve a publication that is both “interesting and useful”. That is, we should not become purveyors of fads and untested theories just to be interesting. To prevent this, the reviewers keep prodding authors to provide specifics about results and best practices. The reviewers continually push S&L to hew to the “useful” part of our publishing philosophy.

What kind of articles is S&L looking for?

We work with authors to produce articles that conform to a specific editorial formula. Our articles should insightfully define a strategic management problem, dilemma, or opportunity from the perspective of senior management; propose a creative solution to the problem or a way to take advantage of the opportunity; describe the model, tool, technique or concept that enables the solution; show examples or offer evidence that the proposed solution has worked or will work; provide a mini-case of the process in action; show results; list the how-to steps; note the pitfalls; and lay out next steps managers should take. We appreciate it when authors also consider and evaluate alternative approaches.

We also search avidly for case studies of best practice strategic management. We want these cases to candidly explore problems, strategic choices, tools used, the implementation process and results. In addition, we publish research that is relevant to management decision-making, as well as interviews with innovative organization leaders and academics.

Why should an academic publish in a journal aimed at practitioners?

Academics often tell us they benefit from their interactions with our community of reviewers and from the process of writing for corporate managers. But to get published in S&L their articles must conform to our model.

We hope to attract more academics who want to write about their observations of strategy and leadership in action. Some academics assume we just want to publish well-known authors. Not so. We are eager to find articles by up-and-coming academics about big and small companies that are experimenting, innovating, analyzing, and learning. But the articles have to present the findings in a way that can be easily absorbed by senior managers.

Why should a busy executive undertake the time consuming business of writing for publication?

After being interviewed by S&L one CEO said, “It’s nice to be talking to a fellow giraffe.” The CEO meant that he and our interviewer were both the same rare breed – strategic management executives. Such leaders believe that every organization must simultaneously lay the foundation for tomorrow’s success while it strives to out maneuver its rivals in today’s competitive arena. And they believe that a secret of that success is using the tools, models, and techniques of strategic management to gain competitive advantage now and in the future. Such leaders find S&L an excellent forum for sharing their insights.

What help do you offer authors?

After an article is accepted, we routinely edit or rewrite when necessary. We want Strategy & Leadership to be read like a magazine, not skimmed like a journal. We try to cut jargon and to express ideas as simply and directly as possible. The editing is done in partnership with the authors. The process is easy for them and relatively fast. Fixes are made and then they are asked if they approve of them or if they would prefer to suggest an alternative.

Strategy & Leadership endeavours to provide top managers a stream of critical knowledge to help them make choices that will attract and retain valuable customers, experiment and adapt rapidly in continuously changing markets, and position their organization advantageously for the future. If we do our job right, executives should make a “To do” list of actions to take after reading the feature articles in every issue.

Robert M. RandallEditor