“Anomalies: Where the Action Is in Strategic Business Research”

Call for Papers – Special Issue: “Anomalies: Where the Action Is in Strategic Business Research”

Journal: Strategic Business Research
Publisher: Elsevier
Open access
Submission deadline: 30 June 2026

This special issue reframes anomalies—not as statistical “noise” but as core empirical phenomena that challenge prevailing theories and open new avenues in strategy, management, finance, marketing, tourism, and public‑administration research. It invites scholars to treat outlier, unexpected, or contradictory observations in firms, markets, and consumer behaviour as catalysts for rethinking causal models, variable relationships, and dominant logics in strategic business inquiry.

Why this issue matters

• Anomalies often trigger paradigm shifts: Ray Kroc’s trip to investigate an unusually large milk‑shake‑machine order is a classic SBR‑style anomaly study that led to the creation of McDonald’s modern franchise model.

• The SI calls for moving from “bad science” (focusing on simple directional effects and averaged relationships) to “good science” that models distinct, complex, and singular outcome conditions via algorithms, filters, and heuristics that capture real‑world heterogeneity.

• Anomalies can be positive, neutral, or negative—but they all reveal where theories break down and where new frameworks for understanding resilience, innovation, and value creation may emerge.

Core themes and research areas

The issue welcomes empirical, method‑oriented, and conceptual papers that highlight anomalies in strategic business domains. Sample streams include:

• Finance & economics

  • Market‑pricing and risk–return anomalies (momentum, size effect, low‑volatility outperformance, post‑earnings drift, calendar anomalies).

  • IPO underpricing, dividend puzzles, and cross‑border valuation gaps that contradict standard market‑efficiency reasoning.

• Management & strategy

  • Firm‑performance outliers that thrive in adverse conditions (“contrarian” cases).

  • Innovation and governance anomalies, such as high‑R&D firms with low output or weak‑governance firms with strong performance, and “winner‑curse defying” M&A deals that create long‑term value.

• Marketing & consumer research

  • Consumer choice anomalies: preference reversals, framing effects, irrational brand loyalty, and customer‑satisfaction–profit paradoxes.

  • Pricing, branding, and WOM anomalies, e.g., premium pricing for commoditised goods, negative‑review‑driven sales spikes, and high‑WTP for low‑awareness brands.

• Tourism, hospitality, and public administration

  • Destinations that flourish despite poor infrastructure or safety perceptions, and service‑delivery anomalies where sub‑optimal inputs yield exceptional outcomes.

• Method and theory of anomalies

  • Papers that demonstrate complexity‑ and configuration‑based approaches (e.g., algorithmic or necessity‑based methods) for identifying and modelling anomalous patterns rather than smoothing them away.

Guest editors

• Prof. Arch G. Woodside, Boston College, USA

• Prof. V. Kumar, Brock University, Canada

Submission details

• Submission platform: Strategic Business Research via Elsevier Editorial Manager:
  https://www.editorialmanager.com/sbr

• Submission deadline: 30 June 2026

• Manuscript length: 6,000–10,000 words is preferred.

• All papers must be original, not under review elsewhere, and written in accordance with the journal’s Author Guidelines.

This special issue is ideal for quantitative, mixed‑methods, and configurational‑methods scholars who wish to treat anomalies as central phenomena and use them to build richer, more robust theories in strategic, financial, managerial, and marketing research.

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