It is with mixed feelings and profound emotions that I write my final Letter from the Editor. Becoming the Editor of Management and Organization Review was most serendipitous but also an immensely challenging opportunity. To follow Anne Tsui, who founded the journal (and who started her amazing and illustrious career at Duke University in 1981 after receiving her PhD at UCLA), was an honor and a challenge that only crystalized for me as I began to confront the significance and implications of management research in the context of China. It was especially daunting because ambitious and highly motivated management scholars in China were submitting interesting empirical papers testing diverse theoretical ideas and frameworks that were developed and validated in the context of management research, writ large, in the west. However, the paucity of indigenous research informed by China's historical and cultural context was especially striking. It served to define my editorial mission, responsibilities, and dedication to the development of MOR.
The editorship of MOR represented a huge learning opportunity and came with a moral obligation to be on the ground in China mentoring PhD students and faculty (mostly junior faculty). Being on the ground served to reveal the importance of understanding the historical, cultural, and philosophical underpinning of China and their manifestation as China was aggressively evolving an unprecedented modern, centrally directed economy. I was fortunate to serve as the elected Chair of Duke Faculty when Dr. Justin Yifu Lin visited Duke University after earning his PhD from the University of Chicago. At the time, I did not appreciate the import of his evolving thinking and writing, and the implications for economic development that eschewed the so-called Washington Conesus that dominated the development of emerging economies. To be perfectly up front, I did not appreciate the power of ‘New Structural Economics’ as an alternative to economic development until after the inaugural MOR Research Frontiers Conference. The conference was organized and hosted by Guanghua School of Management at Peking University under the auspices of Dean Hongbin Cai. It led to the publication of China Innovation Challenge (Lewin, Kenney, & Murmann, 2016) and featured a chapter by Justin Yifu Lin.
Indigenous management research in the context of China involves recognizing, for example, that China has a 3000-year history, spanning 24 emperor dynasties, and coexisting long-held embedded philosophies of Confucianism, Daoism, Zhong Yong, and Buddhism. These philosophies manifest themselves in management practices as exemplified by Zhang Ruimin (2016), the founder of Haier, who applied Daoism thinking to self-organizing and adaptation; by Mao Zhongqun (Niedenführ, Reference Niedenführ, von Kimakowitz, Schirovsky, Largacha-Martínez and Dierksmeier2021), who applied Zhong Yong thinking and finding the middle way to managing and organizing the innovative FOTILE company; and by Ren Zhengfei, who applied Confucianism to human resource management at Huawei (Lewin, Välikangas, & Zhan, Reference Lewin, Välikangas, Zhan, Wu, Murmann, Huang and Guo2020). The conceptualization of guanxi in the context of family businesses, managerial and organizational ties, entrepreneurship, and business and government ties is a vast subject in the context of China and other countries (see MOR Guanxi Collection). Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), many of which are family businesses, play a significant role in China and in many other countries. Family businesses’ share of private sector firms around the world is still very significant (e.g., Germany 95%; Brazil 90%; India 90%; China 86%; and US 80%–90%). The share of workforce employed in family businesses is also very significant (Brazil 86%; India 79%; China 66%; US 63%; Germany 57%); and share of GDP attributed to family businesses is also significant (e.g., Brazil 75%; China 65%; India 60%; US 57%; Germany 55%). MOR, under the leadership of Deputy Editor, Xiaowei Rose Luo, has attracted a growing number of papers on family business research and MOR issue 18.1 will feature papers from the MOR Research Frontiers Conference on Family Business and Small and Medium Enterprises. However, research on family business and SMEs is still relatively not in the spotlight, and it is especially strategic for China, which aspires to upgrade the manufacturing sector, dominated by family business and SMEs to world class (i.e., INDUSTRIE4.0).
James March was fascinated by how ambiguity is manifested in China (see MOR 17.4 Special Issue celebrating James March interview by Peter Ping Li, 2021) in terms of the Chinese philosophical concept of yin and yang that expresses how contradictory forces can be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in everyday life, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another (e.g., Li, Reference Li2014, Reference Li2016). Ambiguity and paradox are important constructs in Chinese philosophy and culture and have emerged as important themes for MOR.
The criticism of empirical social science research emerged during my term as editor, with MOR, as well as a few other journals (SMS, AER, OBHDP), taking the lead in enforcing new standards of methodological rigor, transparency, and reliability (see free downloadable MOR Collection). A forthcoming paper in MOR by Fey, Hu, and Delios provides a comprehensive approach to reporting and discussing effect size. Going forward, the reporting and discussion of empirical results must satisfy these updated policies and, once accepted for publication in MOR, empirical papers must upload to a public website, such as the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io), the entire experimental record (data sets, surveys, data manipulations, and empirical findings necessary for other scholars to replicate and build on the published research in MOR).
During my second term as editor, geo-political developments have created new research arenas affecting China and the rest of the world. The pandemic revealed the importance of understanding and managing organization resilience (see Välikangas & Lewin, Reference Välikangas and Lewin2020; and subsequent articles in MOR). However, the pandemic has also revealed the emergence of de-globalization and decoupling as a rapidly growing area of international research involving China and the rest of the world. It also ushered a new era of applying Political Science Realism for influencing international business scholarship (see Petricevic & Teece, Reference Petricevic and Teece2019; Witt, Reference Witt2019; Witt, Li, Välikangas, & Lewin, Reference Witt, Li, Välikangas and Lewin2021) and follow-up and forthcoming papers in MOR (e.g., Buckley & Casson, Reference Buckley and Casson2021; Tallman Reference Tallman2021; Verbeke & Buts, Reference Verbeke and Buts2021).
Lastly MOR is also leading the way in research on responsible leadership and is currently reviewing submissions for the MOR Special Issue on Responsible Leadership. The goal was to attract research ‘that identifies various forms of responsible leadership, including theory development, qualitative studies, as well as hypotheses testing using quantitative, qualitative, or experimental methods’. The goal of the guest editors (Xu Huang, Xiao-Ping Chen, Michael Hitt, Runtian Jing, Arie Y. Lewin, Johann Peter Murmann, Anne S. Tsui, Lori Yue, and Jianjun Zhang) is ‘to discover Responsible Leadership at any level of the firm that addresses pressing social and economic issues. This special issue aims to contribute to both theory development and the practice of responsible leadership at different levels and in different contexts, especially in China’.
I think it is altogether clear that management research, writ large, in the context of China is entering a period of active and creative discovery, transcending the more traditional organization theory, behavior, strategy, and entrepreneurship research streams to encompass the new challenges of responsible leadership, de-globalization, decoupling, and the possibility of a China-US cold war competition for the new commanding heights of science and technology (e.g., quant computing, artificial intelligence, block chain, etc.) and space exploration. The future of MOR looks to usher an awakening and stimulating age of management scholarship.
I am most grateful for the opportunity bestowed on me to lead Management and Organization Review during a transformative time of management research in the context of China.
