Taken together the five papers of this special issue
help to locate SMA more clearly in the ‘second era’ of
SM (see Nixon and Burns, this issue, Section 2.2) by
focusing not just on external alignment but also on the
internal practices, processes and issues that shape the
formulation and implementation of strategy. This focus
underlines the need to view SMA as part of a single system
of complementary, reinforcing components (Milgrom
and Roberts, 1995; Roberts, 2004). The emphasis of these
papers also highlights the important role of SMA in providing
a common language to facilitate communication and
collaboration across functions and with a community of
external suppliers, alliance partners, customers, stakeholders
and special interest groups. The papers provide a broad
agenda and good platform for future research that will help
to redress the negligible impact of the SMA literature on
managerial discourse and practice (Seal, 2010). Additionally,
the research suggested by these papers should help to
align the development trajectories of the SM and SMA literatures
that at the moment appear to be moving in opposite
directions.