This article addresses the question of how the emergence of a cluster in a global innovation system is influenced by early entrants. It does so by presenting an explorative study of the emerging digital creative industries cluster in Bangalore. I find that MNE entrants develop production and technological capabilities comparatively fast within a narrow range of value chain activities with limited spillovers to the cluster. In comparison, local entrants develop such capabilities more slowly, but within a broader range of value chain activities and with higher spillovers of skills and knowledge, as well as higher participation to building a local entrepreneurial ecosystem. I propose that these effects are moderated by the size of national consumer markets as well as industry context in the guise of project lengths and technological modularity. I also point to the role of global connectivity, proposing that local entrants, in particular, leverage international personal relationships for development of not only relational, but also production capabilities.

In the movement of Chinese indigenous management research, a sort of ‘Chinese exceptionalism’ (as critiqued by Peng, 2005: 133) seems to have been emerging, namely, some Chinese scholars see Chinese culture, philosophy, and way of thinking are unique and cannot be accounted for by some of the established, often West-based, theories.

Building on recent developments in optimal distinctiveness (OD) research, we identify two dimensions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices – CSR scope conformity and CSR emphasis differentiation – and examine the antecedents of both. We theorize that private ownership and enhanced media coverage may increase scope conformity and emphasis differentiation, while such effects may be contingent on industrial context. In socially contested industries, the impact of private ownership on scope conformity will be mitigated, and the impact of media coverage on scope conformity will be amplified. Meanwhile, in highly competitive industries, the impact of private ownership and media coverage on emphasis differentiation will be mitigated. We test our predictions using a database of 942 Chinese publicly listed firms between 2008 and 2016. Our findings imply that the choice of optimal CSR strategy has to be made in accordance with the embedding context. The multidimensionality view of OD enables firms to better orchestrate firms’ strategic positioning along different dimensions of complex practices, which leads to better customization of societal expectations and the industrial competitive landscape.

In this article, I propose a typology of thinking pattern that helps us understand the variants of the so-called ‘both/and thinking’ shared by many organizational paradox scholars in the West and China. The variants are distinguished by the ‘primary thinking-secondary thinking’ structure between the combined elementary thinking. One of the variants, i.e., Neither-And thinking, is associated with James March's discussion of logic of consequences and logic of appropriateness. An examination of March's writings reveals an additional ‘principle-practice’ structure underlining March's unique solution to paradox. Incorporating the ‘principle-practice’ structure into the proposed typology in turn helps us better understand the other variants of ‘both/and thinking’ such as ambidexterity, contingency, and Zhong-Yong. The typology shows March's Neither-And solution is unique because it embraces a primary neither/nor thinking while all the other variants do not. To demonstrate the value of March's unique solution, I apply Neither-And thinking characterized by the ‘principle-practice’ relationship to paradoxes outside organization studies, e.g., in Deconstruction, Buddhism, and quantum physics. The wide application of Neither-And thinking implies that James March's unique solution to organizational paradox may have provided a key to understanding paradox in general.

Pursuing ambidextrous foreign direct investment (FDI) has been suggested as a desirable strategic choice of emerging economy (EE) firms in their internationalization. Yet, reconciling explorative and exploitative activities overseas is complicated due to their conflicting and tensional nature. This study explores why some EE firms can achieve high levels of ambidextrous FDI while others cannot. Drawing on upper echelons theory, we propose a micro-foundation perspective of ambidextrous FDI by studying top management teams’ (TMTs) attributes. Applying a configurational approach to a sample of 294 EE firms’ FDI observations (of which 43 are ambidextrous FDI in nature) from 2011 to 2015, we not only confirm the equal importance of both TMT incentive and cognitive factors as causal conditions to achieve a high degree of ambidextrous FDI, but also provide original evidence on the interactive configurations of those factors that lead to ambidextrous FDI.

This special issue is devoted to celebrating and extending the scholarship of Kwok Leung, who passed away on May 25, 2015. Management and Organization Review is grateful to Michael W. Morris, Zhen Xiong (George) Chen, Lorna Doucet, and Yaping Gong for their thoughtful, instrumental effort in the publication of this special issue.

We develop a stakeholder framework that examines how firms respond to the conflicting demands that arise from governments and investors in the context of corporate philanthropic giving. We argue that firms that experience such conflict exhibit a decoupling response in philanthropic giving. Furthermore, we identify the boundary conditions of the relationship between the conflicting pressures and the decoupling response. Drawing on stakeholder salience literature, we argue that this relationship will be weakened when CEOs perceive government demands as more salient (such as those with a communist ideology) and when CEOs are less sensitive to investor claims (such as those with fewer career concerns). We find empirical support for our arguments using a sample of 8,857 Chinese listed firms from 2006 to 2015. Our study contributes to the literature on stakeholder theory, decoupling, and corporate philanthropy.

Employee performance attainment is a pervasive issue in the workplace and is increasingly becoming an important problem for effective human resource management. A review of the extant literature on perceived organizational support (POS) and performance suggests that there is a dearth of research aimed at examining the underlying mechanisms and the boundary conditions of the relationship between POS and performance. One of the objectives of this study is to examine the mediating role of psychological capital on the relationship between POS and performance. Furthermore, this study investigates the moderating role of organizational justice perception in said indirect relationship. Study 1 included a sample of 465 employees from both large private life insurance and telecom organizations. Study 2 was conducted on a sample of 216 employees from a large steel manufacturing firm. Findings suggest that psychological capital mediated the relationship between POS and performance. The indirect relationship of POS and performance via psychological capital was moderated by organizational justice. However, there is a counter-intuitive finding in this research. It was observed that at a high level of organizational justice, it had a smaller effect on performance in contrast to low level of organizational justice. Finally, theoretical contributions and managerial implications are discussed.

Chance serves as the gate to organizational change. Based on a relational view of chance, we propose that in an organizational context, the chance to change is affected by the perceptions of change agents and the affordance of situational momentum, and that different time points of change are associated with different degrees of chance favorability. We develop a theoretical model to represent how change agents can assess the favorability of current and future momentum and how they can benefit from identifying a perceived chance by employing chance grasping, entraining, creating, or riding strategy to promote organizational change. We generate theoretical propositions to illustrate the four timing strategies of chance management. The overall contribution of this study is a chance management view of organizational change that considers change agents and situational momentum as two interdependent factors in the process of managing the chance to change.

This study provides an overview, categorization, and integration of what has been achieved in the niche of cross-culture experimental economics (CCEE) so far, aiming to inspire indigenous management researchers to extend their methodological toolbox by including experimental methods. As a result of the review, I find that most of the early studies lack depth and contextualization as well as detailed explanation about why human behavior differs. Hence, a better understanding about the influence of culture on economic decision-making is rather limited if it cannot be explained in more detail. In contrast, deep contextualization is a principle in indigenous management research (IMR). Both have so far not benefited from each other in the study of how culture affects human behavior, as both currently develop in parallel. Following the call for high-quality IMR (Tsui, 2004), this paper argues that an experimental methodology can make a contribution to IMR in the future by drawing on the strengths of both IMR (i.e., contextualization) and CCEE (i.e., methodology).

Both lay beliefs and research findings suggest that people tend to avoid conflicts if interpersonal harmony is highly valued. Counter to this widely accepted convention, we adopt the perspective of motivated social cognition to argue that conflict avoidance is subject to the joint effect of the need for epistemic security (need for closure) and the motivation to prevent losses (prevention focus). Such effect is mediated by negative anticipation towards the consequences of confronting conflicts. Results across three studies indicated that individuals with relatively high need for closure and high prevention focus show the strongest conflict avoidance tendency due to their heightened negative anticipation. However, with low need for closure, the negative anticipation and conflict avoidance tendency of high prevention-focused individuals are weakened or even disappear. This research offers a novel theory about the mechanism of conflict avoidance. The findings about the debiasing role of low need for closure also provide rich implications for conflict resolutions.

A cartel is an association of independent businesses for the purpose of regulating trade in an industry. There are three important reasons for studying international cartels: they will become important in the future; they are of immense historical significance; and they are poorly understood. This paper reviews the economic, political, and historical literatures on international cartels and considers the lessons for international business theory and policy. If IB researchers are to retain their reputation for policy-relevance, they must engage with the issue of institutional responses to globalization, and this must include the analysis of cartels.

While the construct of moqi (默契, pronounced ‘mò-chee’) is ubiquitously understood and finds itself in everyday conversations around the home and workplace in China, the theoretical development of moqi has been scarce. In this article, we expand on prior work on moqi and conceptualize moqi as a dyadic level construct that describes a situated state of shared contextualized understanding without saying a word between two counterparties. We further articulate a broader view of moqi as a dyadic communication construct that is both target-specific and situation-specific. We propose a nomological network of moqi that shows how shared contextualized understandings between counterparties are informed by several different layers, including ‘capability’ (a) a generalized proclivity to be able to form such understandings with others, and ‘contributing factors’, (b) how those understandings are formed either (i) through interactions or (ii) without them through overlaps in background characteristics or experiences, and (c) how other factors accentuate the capability and inclination to ultimately achieve moqi. We then discuss several potential consequences of moqi in organizational settings. Finally, we discuss why moqi is a powerful form of effective communication that is meaningful beyond the Chinese cultural context.

Transformation is a vital challenge for Chinese state-owned enterprises(SOEs) and their top managers. To explore this increasingly important topic,we first summarize the institutional context of SOE transformation and theconflicting interests and interdependent relationships of six major actorsas inside/outside stakeholders. Based on the strategic action view ofinstitutional analysis, we emphasize the role of the change agent's level ofaspiration and political skills in transforming an SOE. Then, throughinductive case studies on the transformation of three SOEs, we address howtop managers, acting as change agents, can initiate and engage ininstitutional change through strategic actions such as negotiation,manipulation, and coercion; we also illustrate how they adopt differentactions to influence different actors. Based on the inductive results, wedevelop a theoretical model, which we refer to as the ‘strategic actionmodel’ that shows how the aspiration level, political skills, strategicactions, and change outcomes interrelate and offer insights into thestrategic action of top managers as change agents. Our most importantcontribution is revealing the interplay between the proactive role of insideactors as change agents and the enabling condition of institutionalcontext.

This essay argues that to assess the likelihood that incumbent firms will successfully make the required transformations to their strategy and operations in the face of technological transformations, it is not sufficient to investigate their dynamic capabilities. Whether an incumbent is likely to succeed in its effort to change itself via dynamic capabilities depends also on how quickly start-ups or diversifying entrants can build ordinary capabilities to offer the new technology at scale. We offer a framework to assess dynamic competition that integrates both ordinary and dynamic capabilities into the analysis by systematically comparing incumbents, start-ups, and diversifying entrants. We illustrate the framework with a case study of electric vehicles and aim to show how crucial such comparative analyses are for making well-founded predictions about the likelihood that incumbents will be able to maintain their leadership positions in the future.