With the first issue of volume eleven, Management and Organization Review turns a new leaf by welcoming Cambridge University Press as the new publisher. I am very pleased to note that the complex and extensive transition from Wiley to Cambridge University Press, which involved a very demanding and detailed process, has been accomplished on time and almost without any crisis. I would like to take this opportunity to express my deep appreciation to Tina Minchella, MOR Managing Editor, for overseeing and supporting the transition process, Zhijun Yao, Executive Director of IACMR in Beijing, for her tireless support, and to Rebecca O’Rourke, Senior Commissioning Editor, Social Science Journals Cambridge University Press, and her team for making the transition as seamless as possible. We look forward to an active partnership with CUP which will elevate the awareness of MOR in every region of the world and grow recognition of MOR from leading libraries around the world. We also look forward to a new proactive, multifaceted marketing and media strategy under the leadership of Professor Sheen Levine, the new Deputy Editor-in-Chief for Research Outreach, which will draw attention to MOR's expanded editorial coverage and increase high quality submission of manuscripts.
In line with the expanded focus on all emerging economies in addition to China, I am pleased to note that this issue features a Guest Editorial on research opportunities in Africa, by Professor Gerard George, who has recently assumed the deanship of Singapore Management University. In that regard I also welcome Professor Stephan Manning, University of Massachusetts Boston, as the new Senior Editor for guiding the review process of manuscripts whose context is Africa.
This year MOR Senior Editors will, where appropriate, also identify emerging economies that are of specific interest to them and these regions or countries will be more explicitly identified in their editorial statements.
Most countries in Africa are multi-lingual and multi-cultural: The history and founding conditions of these ‘nation-states’, in a way, represent artificial boundaries thanks to their colonial history. As a result, geographic ‘contexts’ from an International Business perspective are multi-layered in Africa. This should perhaps prompt us to rethink what ‘national context’ means in IB, including long-standing concepts such cultural distance, etc. and similarly how diversity may play a much bigger role in Africa.
Africa is a challenging and interesting context for better understanding post-colonial relationships and their influence on International Business. For example, how does former French, British, Portuguese, etc. colonial history impact FDI patterns? Clearly historical colonial ties become another relevant ‘context layer’.
Business/enterprise development in Africa is often intertwined with foreign aid initiatives that have resulted in de facto long path dependent legacy on foreign aid. However, this also opens opportunities to better understand social enterprises, hybrid organizations, social entrepreneurship in the context of emerging economies, economic development, management, and labor markets in the context of International Business. As one example, increasing our understanding of under-researched industries with relation to international business and international trade, such as mining (and related economic, political, and social issues), has emerged as a huge topic in South Africa, but it is also central in Latin America and countries in Asia.
With this issue of MOR I also wish to introduce Professor Liisa Välikangas, Aalto University and Hanken School of Economics, as the new Editor for the MOR Editorial Area Dialogue, Debate, and Discussion. Professor Välikangas’ editorial statement follows the guest editorial on Africa by Professor Gerard George. My hope is that this editorial area will focus on emerging economies as management laboratories that could question established management ideas and practices and revitalize management discourse and experimentation. Articles, interviews, and opinions published in this editorial area hopefully will facilitate dialogue, debate, and discussion on management and organization theory rooted in management challenges and solutions originating in emerging economies.
The Inaugural MOR Research Frontiers Conference was held December 4–7 at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology School of Business. The theme of the conference was ‘Globalization of Knowledge Creation and Innovation in the Context of Emerging Economies’.
The conference program can be accessed on the IAMCR website here: http://www.iacmr.org/v2en/Detail.asp?id=484. I wish to take this opportunity to express my thanks and appreciation to the Management Department and to the Institute for Emerging Market Studies at HKUST for hosting the conference and for their very generous financial support. The conference discussions have identified two potential themes for future MOR special issues and have led to an edited volume to be published by Cambridge University Press under the tentative title Building Innovation Capacity in China: An Agenda for Averting the Middle Income Trap. The special issues under discussion will be announced as soon as the teams of guest editors have been finalized. However, I wish to emphasize that the lead times for submission of papers will be sufficiently long to encourage de novo submissions from the widest network of interested authors.
With best wishes for an exciting, fulfilling, and productive year of the Ram!
