The Academy of Management Journal (AMJ) Best Paper committee consisted of Peter Bamberger, Jean M. Bartunek (Chair), John Delery, Wenpin Tsai, Anne Tsui, and Freek Vermeulen. 

The AMJ Best Paper award goes each year to a paper that is viewed as best addressing an important idea or question, whose methods provide sound, clear answers to the question, whose theory advances our understanding of organizations and which is expected to affect future management research and practice. 

The three finalists for the award, all of which are exemplary according to these criteria are:

• Joseph P. Broschak and & Allison Davis-Blake.  Mixing standard work and nonstandard deals: The consequences of heterogeneity in employment arrangements.
• Royston Greenwood and Roy Suddaby. Institutional entrepreneurship in mature fields: The big five accounting firms
• Alva H. Taylor and Henrich R. Greve.  Superman or the fantastic four? Knowledge combination and experience in innovative teams.

The award goes to:  Royston Greenwood and Roy Suddaby for their paper Institutional entrepreneurship in mature fields: The big five accounting firms

This paper answers a critical question in organizational/management theory, namely how change occurs within institutional frameworks which, by their very nature, promote stability, order and inertia.  The paper provides important insights into that process, and in doing so, offers several factors central to this process of elite-driven change in highly institutionalized organizational fields.

AMJ Best Paper Winners: Roy Suddaby and Royston Greenwood with committee chair, Jean Bartunek