EDITORIAL

Dear BAR Readers,

I am very pleased to announce the publication of the first special issue of BAR. The theme of the special issue is "Strategy and Organizational Performance".

The reason for publishing this special issue stems from BAR's commitment to follow the guidelines of "Best Practices of Scientific Publication" ("Boas Práticas da Publicação Científica"), released by ANPAD's Forum of Editors of Scientific Journals in 2011. This guide suggests that "[w]hen the journal has an inventory of two or more full issues ready for publication, it is definitely the time to increase the number of papers per issue and/or the number of issues per year".

As BAR follows this recommendation, authors can be assured of our commitment to publish accepted articles no later than six months after the final acceptance by the Editor.

Moreover, BAR is striving to reduce the time between the submission of a manuscript and the final decision (accept or reject) by the Editor. Our goal is to reach this decision in at most six months after the submission (usually rejection would take less time than acceptance). I would like to clarify that this time does not include the period that the article is with the authors for their revisions, but rather considers only the period that the article is BAR's hands (with Reviewers or Editors). Rigor in Reviewers' assessment of papers continues to be paramount and should not be sacrificed due to time reduction purposes, however.

Regarding this special issue, it was necessary to choose articles that shared some commonality. So, the articles that compose this issue are not necessarily the ones accepted earlier, but those that address one of two main topics: Strategy as a Social Practice or Organizational Performance and some of its determinants.

The first paper ("A Constructionist Approach for the Study of Strategy as Social Practice", by Alfredo da Silva, Alexandre de Pádua Carrieri and Eloisio de Souza) discusses strategy practices by bringing the articulation of three approaches to social dynamics - those of Foucault, Certeau and Moscovici - and building on their points of convergence and divergence.

The second paper ("Implementing Strategies in Complex Systems: Lessons from Brazilian Hospitals", by Victor Meyer Junior, Lucilaine Pascucci and J. Patrick Murphy) takes hospitals as an example of complex organizations in order to discuss strategy implementation issues. The authors also discuss the co-existence of formal planning and informal execution.

The next paper ("Intellectual Capital and Organizational Renewal: Building Dynamic Capabilities through People", by Fabio de Biazzi) discusses management, work and participation practices and advances a conceptual framework of the supposedly essential elements that should be dynamically aligned to allow organizational success in the long term.

The fourth paper ("The Entrepreneurial Orientation-Dominant Logic-Performance Relationship in New Ventures: an Exploratory Quantitative Study", by Héctor Campos, José Pablo de la Parra and Francesc Solé Parellada) investigates the influence of dominant logic on the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance. The study goes a step ahead and examines the relationship between certain firm characteristics (risk taking, aggressiveness and innovativeness) and the conceptualization of dominant logic.

Investigation of determinants of Organizational Performance is also the subject of the next paper ("Is ISO 14001 Certification Effective? An Experimental Analysis of Firm Profitability", by Renato Ferron, Bruno Funchal, Valcemiro Nossa and Aridelmo Teixeira). In particular, the authors examine whether environmental management certification (ISO 14001) affects the profitability of publicly traded Brazilian companies.

The final paper in this special issue ("Toward a Subjective Measurement Model for Firm Performance", by Juliana Santos and Luiz Artur Brito) brings a methodological contribution. The study discusses the definition, dimensionality and measurement of organizational performance and empirically examines the appropriateness of a multidimensional approach to represent different aspects of firm performance.

I hope you will enjoy the reading these articles.

All best wishes,

Jorge Carneiro

Editor-in-Chief

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  14 May 2012
• Date of issue
  May 2012