Transforming economies such as the BRIC countries – Ex-Soviet Republics, or Eastern European countries – share national aspirations of becoming innovation economies. These aspirations have stimulated a push for entrepreneurship and experimentation with new ways of doing things. This has created a fascinating context for research on business model innovation, relating to the way incumbent firms adapt their business models or come up with entirely new models. Similarly, new business models may be originated by start-up companies that often are challenging and leapfrogging the ‘tired’ old business models or simply invent new ones. However, research that specifically explores indigenous business model innovation in the context of these transforming economies is still in its early stages. The MOR special issue on ‘Business Model Innovation in Transforming Economies’ aims to address this gap by soliciting research uncovering successful new business models that is indigenous to these economies, as they transition to becoming innovation economies themselves and contribute to strategy and management theory development.

In this article, I draw from organizational imprinting theory to illuminate the impact of the Soviet legacy on contemporary Russian economic geography and regional policy. I argue that central coordination in the creation and regulation of Russian urban agglomerations is connected to a socialist imprinted paradigm associated with the Soviet economic regionalization model and territorial-production complexes (TPCs). I conduct a qualitative historical study to analyze the role of the foundational environment and the dynamics in the development of this imprint. I propose that this imprint effect is prone to reproduction in contemporary regional development strategies and community-based paradigms due to exaptation and cultural-cognitive persistence. The article extends the literature of socialist imprinting by demonstrating how imprints may emerge, transform, and affect localized organizational communities in transition economies and highlights the role of imprinted paradigms in policymaking and regional development.

Taking an inductive approach followed by validation techniques, we analyzed the meaning and dimensionality of the organizational justice construct in the People's Republic of China (China). By using qualitative and quantitative methods, we found that organizational justice involves a higher level of subjectivity in the Chinese context. Interpretation and organizational justice judgments depend on the specific situation and social relations involved. The findings revealed similarities with the Western conceptualization with one important exception, suggesting both cultural values and institutional environment shape justice judgments and managerial practices in China. The article concludes with a discussion of the findings and implications for management theory, research, and practice.

The long historical view in Peng, Ahlstrom, Carraher, and Shi (2017), which discusses the issues regarding intellectual property rights (IPR) in China, is a welcome antidote to the overheated rhetoric in the public debate that characterizes China as a ‘pirate’ and slavish imitator. So, I thought that by engaging the paper obliquely, it might be possible to extend Peng et al.’s (2017) observations and conclusions. I will do this by contextualizing their observations about the history of IPR and then turn to the contemporary discussions of IPR and innovation in China.

It is unusual for any speech to maintain strong influence over the general strategies of an organization and the behavior of its employees over time. ‘Haier Is a Sea’, presented by Zhang Ruimin, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Haier, more than twenty years ago, is an exception. This commentary identifies the core features of sea as a metaphor, explores the philosophical roots of this metaphor, and discusses the implications.

We appreciate this invitation to comment on the paper on Western perceptions of Chinese culture, to provide an insider perspective. Because of its unique perspective on Chinese historical teachings, the study reminds us about the challenges in learning and applying indigenous knowledge. For example, it compares the lens of war and business in many dimensions, such as a focus on an enemy (war) or on customers (business), a matter of life and death (war) or not (business), one competitor (war) or a number of competitors (business), deception (war) or secrecy (business), or a one-time relationship (war) or a long-term relationship (business). The paper offers us a striking warning about the risk of overdrawing historical analogies in management research.

We study two quick-service restaurant (QSR) chains based on regional ethnic foods that were launched in China and India. The products that these QSR ventures offered had hitherto been sold by fragmented street vendors who typically operated single outlets. Inspired by the successful business models of international QSR brands, these entrepreneurs developed business models to popularize their chosen regional ethnic foods in multiple new regions and grew their organizations to 1,400 and 300 outlets in China and India, respectively. We build on the recently coined concept of ‘secondary’ business model innovation (SBMI), which is based on inter-organizational learning, break down its constituents into creative and imitative, specify the mechanisms through which it is achieved, and propose that it is a specific case of the more general construct of creative imitation.

This study presents a cross-temporal comparison of managerial ethics in China and the US. Although it is well established that cross-cultural differences exist in business ethics and that culture and values in a society may evolve over time, little attention has been paid to the longitudinal changes in such cross-cultural differences that might have occurred over time. Building on three different perspectives on values evolution, namely, convergence, divergence, and crossvergence, we investigate whether and how cross-cultural differences in managerial ethical decision-making and the associated moral philosophy have changed in China and the US over the decade between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s. Our analysis reveals that the difference in Chinese and American managers' ethical decision-making evolved in many different directions over the decade, lending support to the crossvergence perspective. Interestingly, however, we discover that the divergence outlook prevails when it comes to the moral philosophies behind their decision-making. These findings provide critical insights into cross-cultural as well cross-temporal evolution in business ethics in a world of increasing cross-cultural and multicultural interactions.

Structural and sequential ambidexterity are proved to be two prevalent approaches in managing tension between exploration and exploitation. Dominant studies have treated the two approaches as mutually exclusive but have provided less insight about their combination, and the organizational configurations that advance such combination, which is a major meaningful gap explored in the current study. This study aims to explore the configurations of organization design choices to combine structural and sequential approaches from a holistic perspective. We apply fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to analyze the empirical data collected from 102 firms in China. The results show that firms attain high ambidexterity with both separated and blended configurations. Blended ones demonstrate that the structural and sequential approaches can be combined in a way that one approach dominates and the other subordinates. Organizational design mechanisms regarding the configurations for combining structural and sequential approaches are concluded as multielements (complements and substitutes) and multilevels (fit and interaction). These findings are also interpreted through the Chinese ‘Yin-Yang’ framework, which introduces ‘Yin-Yang balancing’ into the ambidexterity literature.

In this study, we propose and test the idea that a strong relationship between leader and follower will be associated with the subordinate’s burnout. We base the study on the leader–member exchange framework (LMX), resource exchange theory, and the job demands–resources model of burnout, and conceptualize that a strong LMX is associated with burnout in two ways: high LMX involves high job demands, which lead to exhaustion; low LMX involves low job resources, which leads to cynicism. We propose that the relationship between LMX and the two forms of burnout will be stronger when the leader is perceived to be low on moral integrity. Using a survey of 218 employees, we find support for the hypotheses. Implications for future research and managerial practices are discussed.

One of the objectives of Yasheng Huang's book Selling China: Foreign Direct Investment in the Reform Era is ‘to gain a better understanding of the operations of the Chinese economy in the 1990s as well as its FDI patterns’ (p. 69). We have no disagreement with Huang's general argument that for much of the 1990s domestic Chinese firms were less competitive than they would have been if the Chinese government had not favoured state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

Similarly, while acknowledging the positive impact of FDI on China's development, Huang has real concern with FDI's disproportionately large role in the economy. He further feels that ‘some of China's FDI patterns may reflect institutional inefficiencies and weaknesses’ (p. 67). Again, we have no real disagreement that this was the case in the 1990s.

Built upon configuration theory, this study performs a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) to delineate alternative and sufficient configurations of local knowledge spillover (LKS) channels, that is, how informal interactions and spinoff, and absorptive capacity are combined to facilitate service innovation. Primary data was collected from the largest software outsourcing cluster in Vietnam in 2018, which provides a sample size of 42 firms. The findings imply that multiple configurations of different channels of LKS in conjunction with absorptive capacity can lead to service innovation. This study makes three important contributions. First, it contributes to the debate over the critical role of LKS and absorptive capacity in innovation by offering a more holistic, yet nuanced understanding of the causal mechanisms underlying service innovation. Second, this study sheds light on viable and equifinal pathways for enhancing innovation capabilities, therefore contributing to the literature on cluster upgrading and global service sourcing. Third, it provides some managerial implications for indigenous spinoff firms in developing countries seeking to innovate through the strategic use of LKS.

Choi, Jiang, and Shenkar (2015) offer an interesting and new perspective on the relationship between local governance and firm performance in China. This commentary focuses first on how we conceive of the nature of China's capitalism and then examines what that suggests about their metrics and findings.

It is of interest in China and across the world to predict whether China will catch up with the most economically advanced nations in innovation capacity. To facilitate an ongoing assessment of China's innovation capacity, the article develops a China Innovation Capacity Growth Index composed of eight separate measures. China's performance in 2020 is compared to the baseline from 2015, showing that China has progressed in six of the eight measures. This article and the accompanying Technical Appendix explain each of the measures, including the sources for the data, and report the changes in performance over time.

Modern portrayals of human action are overwhelmingly in a calculative and consequentialist tradition. Consequentialist reasoning is the basis for most of modern social and behavioral science and preeminently for economics. Action is seen as choice, and choice is seen as driven by anticipations, incentives, and desires. These ideas trace their roots at least to the Greeks, owe substantial parts of their modern manifestation to the formulations of Jeremy Bentham, and derive much of their contemporary power from the geniuses of L. J. Savage and John von Neumann.