Call for paper: Reframing Organizational Strategy under Artificial Intelligence: Strategic Responses, Transformation and Long-Term Value Creation

Organizations across industries are experiencing profound strategic reconfigurations driven by the rapid diffusion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and related digital technologies, alongside increasing sustainability pressures, evolving institutional environments and intensified multi-stakeholder interactions (Appio et al., 2024; Caputo et al., 2025; Ferreira et al., 2025). AI is no longer merely an operational or technological enabler. It is increasingly reshaping the foundations of organizational strategy, value creation logics and long-term competitive positioning.

Emerging research suggests that AI-based transformation influences how organizations generate and transfer knowledge, orchestrate innovation processes, design governance mechanisms and engage with diverse stakeholders within complex ecosystems (Farinha et al., 2025; Lykourentzou et al., 2025). In this context, recent contributions (e.g., Miah et al., 2025) have highlighted several interconnected streams of inquiry:

AI and Strategic Knowledge Dynamics: AI-enabled tools enhance knowledge creation, transfer and recombination, supporting strategic renewal and process innovation.
Leadership and Strategic Transformation: Transformational and responsible leadership play a pivotal role in aligning AI adoption with organizational purpose, sustainability and long-term value creation.
Ecosystem and Quadruple Helix Perspectives: The interaction between academia, industry, government and civil society is central to the development of AI-driven innovation ecosystems and digital entrepreneurship.
Decision Support and Strategic Evaluation: Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) and advanced analytics increasingly support strategic choices under uncertainty, particularly in sustainability-oriented and digitally enabled initiatives.

Despite these contributions, important gaps remain:

These literatures often evolve in silos, limiting cross-fertilization.
The role of AI-driven digital transformation and its potential to accelerate or disrupt strategic change is still underexplored.
Existing research has yet to fully unpack how AI and advanced analytics can enhance knowledge transfer, stakeholder collaboration and decision support in complex strategic contexts.
A need persists to combine theoretical advancement with practical insights, equipping managers, policymakers and entrepreneurs with robust frameworks for navigating uncertainty.

This Special Issue aims to address these gaps by integrating perspectives on AI-based digital transformation, leadership, sustainability, knowledge transfer, entrepreneurship and decision sciences. It seeks to establish a common research ground that connects micro-level practices with macro-level institutional dynamics, while also offering actionable pathways for organizations undergoing strategic change.

Scope and Aims

The Special Issue invites conceptual, empirical and methodological contributions that advance our understanding of how organizations navigate strategic change in the digital era.

Why This Special Issue Matters

This Special Issue aims to advance both theory and practice. For scholars, it offers an integrative platform to connect fragmented literatures and to rethink organizational strategy in light of AI-driven transformation. For practitioners, it provides actionable insights and decision-support frameworks to guide responsible and sustainable AI adoption. For policymakers, it generates evidence-based knowledge to design institutional environments that foster innovation, resilience and long-term value creation. By bridging strategic theory, managerial practice and public policy, this Special Issue seeks to shape future research on organizational strategy in the AI era.

List of topic areas

AI and Strategic Knowledge Transfer: Designing and governing AI-enhanced mechanisms for inter- and intra-organizational knowledge exchange.
Strategic Leadership and Responsible AI: Leadership roles in mediating AI adoption, strategic renewal and long-term value creation.
Institutional and Policy Dynamics: How national cultures, institutional logics and regulatory frameworks shape AI-based strategic responses.
Quadruple Helix and AI-Driven Ecosystems: Opportunities and barriers to collaboration, coordination and value co-creation in AI-enabled ecosystems.
MCDA and Strategic Decision Support: Multi-criteria frameworks for evaluating AI-enabled and sustainability-driven strategic initiatives, especially in SMEs.
Theoretical Advances in Strategy: Integrating strategy, institutional theory, digital transformation and decision sciences to enrich theories of strategic change under AI.

Submissions Information

Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available at: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/emjb

Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see: https://www.emerald.com/emjb

Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to ““Please select the issue you are submitting to”.

Manuscripts will undergo a rigorous double-blind peer-review process. Submissions should demonstrate strong conceptual or theoretical foundations, and empirical research methods must be logically linked to these foundations.

To enhance the scholarly rigor of submissions, authors are encouraged to provide a robust literature review that synthesizes existing knowledge on the SI topics. This should serve to contextualize the contributions within the broader academic landscape, identify gaps and establish the relevance and novelty of the proposed research. In recognition of the increasing emphasis on social impact, we additionally encourage authors to consider and discuss the societal implications of their applications in entrepreneurship and small business.

Authors are invited to submit original manuscripts that align with the scope of this special issue. Submissions should adhere to the journal’s formatting guidelines to ensure a standard and professional review process. Manuscripts which are incorrectly formatted or do not contain all the required elements may be returned to authors for correction prior to review. Prospective contributors are invited to informally discuss their proposed paper with the Guest Editors prior to submission. Other inquiries should be sent directly to Professor Fernando Ferreira (fernando.alberto.ferreira@iscte.pt), clearly indicating in the subject “Special issue in EuroMed Journal of Business”.

Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.