Letter from the Editor

With this issue, MOR gives voice to, and signals its strong interest in, attracting qualitative studies. I am extremely pleased and proud of the seven papers featured in this issue and the breadth of coverage that they represent. Recent work based on extensive ethnographic studies have shared insights on complex but important socio-economic and organizational conflict phenomena. For example, the book by Puffer, McCarthy, and Satinsky (2018), Distinguished Winners of the IACMR-RRBM Award for Responsible Research in Management 2019, is grounded in 150 in-depth interviews of technology professionals who emigrated to the US from former Soviet republics (1970s to 2015), and documents their personal stories and scientific and technological contribution to the economic development of the US, based on a grounding in social science theories of institutions, imprinting, and identity. Julia DiBenigno (2018), also a winner of IACMR-RRBM 2019 Award, describes a 30-month comparative ethnographic field study of four US Army combat brigades and the conflict resolution that arises when professional subunits, with embedded different professional identities, are in conflict, and how this affects brigade achievement of the dual goals of mission-readiness and mental health fitness. These two examples set a high bar for qualitative studies that also address Responsible Research in Management.

I highlight these two examples in order to reinforce MOR's support for and commitment to attract RRBM research and the important contribution that qualitative studies can contribute. To paraphrase the words of the guest editors, the special issue goes beyond highlighting current debates affecting the purpose and conduct of qualitative research and highlights studies of ‘unique phenomena’ arising in transition economies ‘…that can set the building blocks for new or refined context-bound theories, indigenous theories, and contextualized explanations’. I wish to take this opportunity to express my thanks and deep appreciation to the guest editors, Professors Tian Wei (Fudan University), who initiated the idea of the special issue with me, Emmanuella Plakoyiannaki (University of Leeds), and MOR Senior Editor Shameen Prashantham (China Europe International Business School) for their notable developmental editorial guidance and mentoring in bringing this special issue to publication.

MOR has increasingly been successful in attracting papers that engage complex management phenomena or policy issues embedded in the cultural history and institutional logics of transition economies. For example, recent issues have featured the Forum on Tesla and the Global Automotive Industry (September 2018 and March 2019). The forum featured two papers by David Teece and has attracted wide attention (top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric) and many Letters to the Editor (March 2019). The analytical, elegant paper by Papageorgiadis, Xu, and Alexiou, ‘The Effect of European Intellectual Property Institutions on Chinese Outward Foreign Direct Investment’ (March 2019) concludes that Chinese firms’ OFDI show a preference for investment in former Soviet Republics with weaker IP regimes. The study has direct implications for policy makers concerning IP regimes across the EU. I am very encouraged and pleased that MOR increasingly attracts papers that engage complex phenomena and I look forward to seeing papers that go beyond traditional a priori hypotheses testing templates and integrating insights from follow-up exploratory qualitative studies that, for example, unpack sources of unexplained variance such as the high heterogeneity in firm fixed effects variance. Such papers are likely to greatly benefit from the MOR preapproval process.