From the editor - Brief Article - Editorial

Administrative Science Quarterly, Sept, 2001

It gives me the greatest pleasure to announce this year's winner of the ASQ Award for Scholarly Contribution. Each year, the Administrative Science Quarterly provides an award to the author(s) of the paper published five years previously that has had the greatest influence on subsequent theory and research. The winner of the award is selected by a subcommittee of the ASQ editorial board, which evaluates all papers published in the given year for their quality and contribution. I am delighted to announce that this year's winners are Kathleen M. Eisenhardt and Behnam N. Tabrizi for their article, "Accelerating Adaptive Processes: Product Innovation in the Global Computer Industry," published in the March 1995 issue of ASQ. Among the many comments in the assessment committee's written evaluations were the following observations:

"This paper is the first to 'examine theoretical models of fast-paced, organizational processes' and develops two theoretical approaches from the literature on the classic organizational distinction between certainty and uncertainty, and tests them in a field study of 72 product development projects among large firms in the global computer industry. It shows that fast product development emerges as more uncertain than predictable, more experiential than planned, and more iterative than linear. It demonstrates that there is no single way to be fast. Rather, there are multiple approaches for gaining speed in organizational processes. The paper joins a small but growing number of studies that challenge the relevance of organic processes to effective organization and relates closely to emergent ideas on balancing order and disorder within complex, adaptive systems. This paper has a high citation count, has had an impact on theory development (e.g., high AMR cites), has sparked research in strategy (third highest number of SMJ cites), and also advances research in the cognate fields of marketing and operations management, as evidenced by cites in high status journals in both fields. For me, this paper was the best."

"I really liked the initially counterintuitive findings of the paper, namely, that compression strategies do not always yield the best results. I also liked the way that they reconciled this puzzling finding by performing supplementary analyses that split the sample based on the uncertainty of the environment. I felt that I could really see how the research progressed in the authors' minds. Given the importance of understanding performance in uncertain environments, I feel that this paper is likely to continue to have an impact."

"I thought the Eisenhardt and Tabrizi paper did an excellent job of setting up the problem (How do firms develop products quickly?), describing the shortcomings in the literature (e.g., all anecdotal or case), and providing two different theoretical underpinnings (compression strategies versus experiential strategies) to test. I also enjoyed reading their efforts to understand why their results did not always conform to the two theoretical perspectives presented (their 'split sample' analysis). The paper also focused on an interesting industry and collected data from an international sample."

My heartiest congratulations to Kathy Eisenhardt and Behnam Tabrizi for their outstanding contribution to the field of administrative science!

I would also like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the chair of the evaluation committee, Hayagreeva Rao, and to the members of the committee, Donald Conlon, Janet Dukerich, Marta Geletkanycz, and James Wade for their hard work in selecting this year's winner.

Christine Oliver