I truly enjoyed reading the perspective article entitled ‘Advancing indigenous management theory: Executive rationale as an institutional logic’ by Gordon Redding and Michael Witt (2015), especially its implications for a ‘promising avenue for indigenous management research’ (179). I agree with the authors in general terms that the research on the impact of culture as an informal institution, and also the effect of formal institutions, on business practices must come down from a highly abstract level to a more pragmatic ground, especially their interaction and integration as embodied by various specific mechanisms to guide practices. For that purpose, Redding and Witt introduce an interesting notion of ‘executive rationale’ to guide action. Applying the abstract notion of institutional logic to specific business practices, executive rationale refers to the ‘socially constructed, historical patterns of material practices, assumptions, values, beliefs, and rules by which individuals produce and reproduce their material subsistence, organize time and space, and provide meaning to their social reality’ (Thornton & Ocasio, 2008: 101) in the specific context of business practices. In other words, executive rationale provides a mental blueprint for practical actions in a business context. In addition, the authors have empirically generated a tentative model with multiple dimensions to compare the dominant executive rationales as institutionally-embedded across five key economies.

This study addresses why multinational enterprises (MNEs) in emerging economies establish regional headquarters outside their home countries but within their home regions – an important question that previous studies have largely ignored. We extend Rugman and Verbeke's firm-specific assets (FSAs) framework in contemporary internalization theory and differentiate two firm-specific regional strategies (i.e., foreign direct investment (FDI) and export regionalization) to examine their effects on MNEs’ establishment of regional headquarters in the context of emerging economies. Using survey data from 226 Chinese MNEs, we find that intraregional FDI and interregional exports encourage MNEs to build Asian regional headquarters (ARHQ). Furthermore, we find that home-city regional integration moderates the relationship between interregional exports and ARHQ establishment and that MNEs’ international management capability moderates the relationship between intraregional FDI and ARHQ establishment. This study contributes to the regional strategy literature by clarifying the regional strategies, structures, and management of latecomer Chinese MNEs.

In his letter, Zhang Ruimin symbolized Haier as a sea to signify the firm's openness and boundlessness. Using the metaphor of ‘Haier Is a Sea’, Zhang illustrated a number of cohesive, collaborative relationships between Haier employees and nature and the environment as well as the importance of an evolving corporate culture in a rapidly changing world. This letter was addressed to Haier employees, but it was also framed as a ‘communiqué to the public’ to explain who Haier was and what the company represented. This letter has been, and will likely continue to be, a model for inspiring Haier employees to believe that anything is possible.

Strategic management scholars have shown increasing interest in explaining strategic change from the perspective of cognitive bias. However, most studies focus on individual cognitive bias but pay little attention to group cognitive bias. This study introduces a typical group cognitive bias (group polarization) to explain strategic change decisions made by the board of directors. Following the theory of group polarization, we argue that, when the average prior strategic change experienced in performance decline by board directors is relatively high (or low), the focal strategic change in performance decline will become even higher (or lower). We further contend that the proportion of female directors and board versus CEO power as the contingencies can mitigate this group polarization effect. Our hypotheses were strongly supported by a longitudinal sample of Chinese publicly listed companies during 2008–2018. The study's framework and findings contribute to the contextualization of social psychology research on group polarization in the study of board's strategic decision-making.

The Internet era embraces disruptive dynamics of both organizational and management models. Management scholars and entrepreneurs worldwide are exploring new management theories and business models such as the management model of Rendanheyi (人单合一in Chinese, translated as ‘Maker-Customer Integration’) that has been evolving for 12 years since it was initiated by Haier in 2005. This model has successfully transformed Haier, and has also drawn much attention from the world with its salient implications for a new management paradigm (Cao, 2014; Fischer, Lago, & Liu, 2013).

This study examines the impact of language diversity on interpersonal relationships in multinational and national/domestic teams in a multilingual country – India. Specifically, it explores whether and how the influence of language diversity differs in the two types of multilingual project teams. To this end, using direct observations and semi-structured interviews, we conducted a thematic analysis and found that native language-based faultlines and groups exist in both kinds of teams. However, such faultlines and language-based groups can disintegrate into smaller, regional dialect-based subgroups due to the emergence of dialect faultlines. Furthermore, evidence suggests that multilingual managers are more effective as boundary spanners in bridging the faultlines in multinational teams; at the same time, they need to be aware of the distinction between language differences and faultlines. This study provides the required distinction between language diversity and the role of multilingual managers in national and multinational teams in an understudied context, thereby contributing to the literature on language diversity.

In this commentary, I expand on Fey's (2022) perspective on the future development of Chinese business schools. In particular, I explore some of the nuances related to Chinese business schools that were not covered by Fey with the goal of continuing this important dialogue.

Child and Marinova’s (2014) framework provides an important conceptual tool to analyze the globalization of Chinese firms by highlighting the Chinese context and the context of the host country. Their framework is defined by two dimensions: political stability and institutional maturity, which needs to be augmented by a cultural dimension. To illustrate this argument, I review the importance of a broadened notion of cultural distance, intercultural competence, and intergroup dynamics in shaping the learning and adaptation, and eventual success of Chinese expatriates and firms in their global expansion. There is a severe lack of research on the culture-related issues confronting Chinese global firms, a priority area for future research.

The increasing FDI in Africa from China and India in recent years has drawn the attention of scholars, policy makers, and the media. Africa is an arena where the two emerging giants compete on different bases. Indian firms have the advantage of institutional proximity and large diaspora communities in Africa, while Chinese firms rely on government-to-government relationship-building. The rivalry between India's soft power and Chinese hard power in Africa will continue for the foreseeable future.

Let me invite you to travel in your mind to the year 2030. Imagine that you are one of the Senior Editors of MOR and have been asked by the Editor-in-Chief to write a short retrospective on the previous 15 years.

Haveman, Joseph-Goteiner, and Li's (2023) perspective article contributes important insights into China's transition away from central planning and redistribution toward greater market coordination of economic exchange. In our commentary on their insightful article, we build on and extend their arguments in three main ways. First, we discuss how future studies might extend the authors’ work by leveraging the ‘messiness’ of institutional change to explore the cross-level dynamics involved in transforming institutional logics. Second, we build on the authors’ call for more historically grounded, contextualized research on institutional logics to argue that the conditions surrounding logic emergence have important implications for inter-logic dynamics and organizational responses. Third, we build on the authors’ suggestions for future research to underscore the broader consequences of institutional logics and their potential to perpetuate or exacerbate social inequalities and other societal challenges.

Private equity funds implement various management and governance practices in firms they endorse, signaling higher quality of sponsored IPOs (Initial Public Offer). However, the participation of such PE funds comes at a cost for newcomer firms, as they may lose both autonomy and future post-IPO earnings. If they do not choose to signal quality through PE funds, the IPO literature points to the validity of other mechanisms, such as the experience and centrality of the board of directors. We theorize and test the effect of the tradeoff between private equity sponsorship and board centrality and experience on IPO performance. We analyzed the effects of signaling on long-term performance through the one-year cumulative abnormal return in Brazilian IPOs issued between 2004 and 2013. Our results indicate that private equity sponsorship is the most effective signal, completely overtaking the relevance of board centrality and experience to explain IPO performance. However, these latter board characteristics significantly affected the performance of non-private equity-backed IPOs. Between PE-backed companies, there is a reverse effect of the board centrality on the IPO's performance and a substitution effect of the board's previous experience with IPO processes.