The 2009 Dan and Mary Lou Schendel Best Paper Prize
The 2009 Winners are Sidney Winter and Richard Nelson
Sidney Winter and Richard Nelson accepts award
The recipients of the Dan and Mary Lou Schendel Best Paper Award for 2009 are Richard R. Nelson and Sidney G. Winter, for two papers published in the Strategic Management Journal. This is the 17th year of the award, co-sponsored by the SMS and Wiley-Blackwell Publishing. Papers published in SMJ five years or more prior to the year of the award are eligible for the prize. The authors of the two winning papers split the monetary award of US $5,000.
Richard Nelson, the George Blumenthal Professor Emeritus of International and Public Affairs, Business, and Law at Columbia University, received the award for his article ‘Why do Firms Differ, and How Does It Matter?’ (Vol. 12, Winter 1991 Special Issue). Sidney Winter, the Deloitte and Touche Professor Emeritus of Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, received the award for his article ‘Understanding Dynamic Capabilities’ (Vol. 24, October 2003). Both men were honored during the Awards Luncheon at the Strategic Management Society Conference this October in Washington, D.C. The awards were presented by SMJ Co-Editor Ed Zajac, along with remarks by SMJ Associate Editor Connie Helfat. An excerpt from these remarks follows:
“Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter have had an enormous impact on the field of strategic management, through their pioneering research on evolutionary economics. These Best Papers in SMJ rest on two important implications of evolutionary economics that are central to strategic management. The first implication is that of firm heterogeneity, which Nelson examined in his article on why firms differ. This paper directs our attention to a central feature of firm heterogeneity—namely, it arises from, and is sustained by, factors that are inherently evolutionary. That is, to truly understand the sources and consequences of firm heterogeneity requires a historical dynamic perspective, in order to uncover the way in which firm differences arise and evolve over time. The second key implication of evolutionary economics in these papers is that of organizational capability for change, which is the topic of Winter’s article. Research in strategic management often focuses on the concept of routines from evolutionary economics. As we know, routines are important underpinnings of firm capabilities. Nelson and Winter, in their 1982 book An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change, point out that firms often have routines for search and change. These routines support capabilities for search and change, or what today we call dynamic capabilities. In his article, Winter helps clarify this concept by providing a logical hierarchy of capabilities that is widely used in strategy research today.”
Author: Connie Helfat & Ed Zajac
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