In an email message responding to our request for a contribution to this special feature, Kristian Kreiner explained why he was declining the invitation. Like a reply from Andrew Abbott related to our previous call (Sociologica, 2018/1), we found his reasons so eloquent and compelling that we have excerpted his message here and are publishing it with Professor Kreiner’s permission. We have added several bibliographic references and we are grateful to Professor Kreiner for providing these bibliographic details.
– The editors

I have searched my soul and picked my brain and concluded that the only publishing strategy I can imagine for myself is never to submit a paper that I wouldn’t want to read in print myself, immediately and 30 years later.

I began to put some thoughts on paper, but what I have written in response to your call doesn’t meet that criterion. I have elaborated on strategizing in architectural competitions as an analogy (Kreiner, 2012; 2013); I have played and amused myself writing about the role of the Just-World hypothesis in academic management; I have produced arguments to convince myself that we (I) should be careful to project our strategies onto young aspiring scholars without a strong “situational awareness” (a concept I picked up in Lucy Suchman’s nice response to your earlier call (2018); and I have relativized our learning from history by treating success as a by-product. The baseline is that none of us — not the architects and even less academics — are the architect of our own fortune.

However, none of this reflects my own publishing experience (limited, as it is). I could perhaps find a pattern in my publication record: I have published much “by invitation” (and thereby often ending up publishing in edited volumes and special issues), but to suggest that this is a strategy — good or viable — I would never do. The fact that I have survived career-wise would suggest to most people that I’m old, unambitious, or otherwise privileged (i.e., beyond competition and therefore irrelevant to the concerns of most academics).

I think you can tell that I have had a great time searching for a response to your call — and that I painfully recognize the distinction between searching and finding (Ryle, 1979). The few answers I found were not answers to your call, and the answers to your call that I could find, I either didn’t like or didn’t believe.

I apologize for not submitting a contribution.