We investigate how informal social networks can assist multinational firms in their internationalization strategy. We propose a refinement of the Uppsala internalization model (Johanson & Vahne, 2009) grounded in network theory, by developing an intermediate position between an ‘insider’ and an ‘outsider’ for conditions when the transformation of an outsider into an insider is limited by institutional constraints. An intermediary position represents one of the sides of ‘patron-client’ informal networks (Denoeux, 1993) whereby the other side is represented by the ‘insider’. We argue that this setup would help mitigate the Liability of Outsidership (Johanson & Vahne, 2009), a replacement of the Liability of Foreignness (Hymer, 1976; Zaheer, 1995), in the modern networked business world. We contextualize our proposition for the case of Iran, a large rising West-Asian economy with known institutional limitations, and suggest that the informal network of local merchants (bazaaries) could play an important intermediary role in Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) internationalization process. We review the history of bazaaries and make a series of propositions exemplifying possible ways informal networks could influence the internationalization process. In addition to re-affirming the importance of the MNE country of origin (emerging markets, and low psychic distance with Iran), we propose that an intermediary of the Iranian bazaaries will have a positive impact on performance and survival of the MNE's subsidiary in Iran, especially in the case of incongruence of MNE's leadership with Shi'a Islam. Additionally, we suggest that employing the Iranian diaspora may also improve subsidiary performance and survival.

The uncertainty and information asymmetry that surround initial public offering firms (IPOs) often introduce difficulties for potential investors to discern organizational value, thereby leading to ‘underpricing’. Using the signaling theory, we investigate the role of organizational reputation in the underpricing of IPOs. We analyze 463 initial public offerings in China from the period of 2010 to 2016 and find that being known for quality and generalized favorability dimensions of reputation are negatively related with underpricing on the first day of trading. In addition, we find that the negative effects of organizational reputation on underpricing are mediated by investor attention.

This article addresses three questions concerning authority relations (personal relations with superiors) in transitional China. First, can superiors retain an organizational unit in order to save a protege's job? Second, has instrumental usage of particularistic relations, or guanxi, lost its importance? Third, has ‘principled particularism’, an integration of political loyalty and authority relations, continued to impact careers? Based on first-hand survey data, I find that state-owned enterprises in which managers had closer authority relations were less likely to be sold or discontinued, and close authority relations also reduced the likelihood of career blockage (demotion/lay off). The significant interactive effect of party membership and authority relations revealed the continuation of ‘principled particularism’. The study underlines institutional continuity during rapid social change, renders insights into the processes of organizational restructuring, and depicts the relational base of formal organizations.

Drawing on a dataset consisting of 344 personal interviews, participant observations, and internal documents collected in 26 privately owned business organizations in Russia, the study aims at complementing existing research on Russian indigenous management in three ways. First, it examines the managerial styles of key individuals (i.e. owners and/or CEOs) in the case organizations. Hence, it taps into the existing heterogeneity of managerial styles, the so-called groupvergence, found in contemporary Russian organizations, and documents their idiosyncratic features, such as the transformational nature of authoritarian leadership. Second, the study explores the antecedents of the identified styles to establish what factors contribute to their emergence and thus sheds light on how the heterogeneous managerial styles in Russian organizations come into existence. Finally, the study investigates how the identified styles manifest themselves in organizations by influencing organizational goals and strategies, organizational structures, supporting mechanisms, relationships between organizational members, and reward systems. It therefore elaborates on the organizational implications of the styles and highlights the mechanisms of their sustainable diffusion to lower organizational levels in Russian organizations.

This study examines how competitive and cooperative relationships within R&D consortia influence member firms’ innovation output. We propose a U-shaped relationship between the presence of market competitors for a member firm and the firm's joint R&D output with other consortium members, and examine how the relationship is mediated by interactions with other members at the firm level and moderated by collaborative efforts at the consortium level. Using a unique sample of 320 firms from 52 R&D consortia in China, we find support for our predictions. This multi-level study extends our understanding of competition and cooperation in multi-party networks and provides insights for creating a balance between the two forces that is conducive to innovation.

The above article from Management and Organization Review, published online 7 SEP 2011, has been retracted by agreement between the authors, the journal's outgoing Editor-in-Chief Anne Tsui, the journal's incoming Editor-in-Chief Arie Y. Lewin, and John Wiley & Sons Asia Pty Ltd. The retraction has been agreed due to unattributed overlap with work previously published in Academy of Management Review, 34(4): 586–591: ‘Editor's comments: The better angels of our nature – Ethics and integrity in publishing process’ by Marshall Schminke. The editors and authors joindy wrote a letter, available below, to explain the process used to come to the retraction decision.

The purpose of this letter is to explain the circumstances and reasons for the retraction of the paper ‘Ethics and integrity of the publishing process: Myths, facts, and a roadmap’ by Schminke and Ambrose in Management and Organization Review (MOR), Volume 7 issue 3, pages 397 to 406, November 2011.

Retraction of a published paper due to self-plagiarism is an unpleasant if not painful experience for both journal editors and authors. Self-plagiarism means that authors have used materials in another paper (whether published or in working paper format) without attributing the source of the materials or ideas. In this instance, the materials being self-plagiarized are from an earlier editorial written by the lead author. Self-plagiarism is in violation of publication ethics, according to the Committee of Publication Ethics' guidelines on suspected plagiarism (http://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/plagiarism%20B_0.pdf).

There is a growing call to understand the influence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on organizational outcomes, especially in developing economies. Given the strong link between organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and organizational performance and survival, on one hand, and the constant need in the literature to understand their antecedents, on the other hand, this study adopts the social cognitive theory to examine the relationship between employees’ perceptions of their organizations’ engagement in CSR and their individual engagement in OCB in Nigeria. Based on the relevance of organizational learning culture to both CSR and OCB, the study further examines the mediating role of organizational learning culture in the relationship between employees’ perceptions of their organization's CSR engagement and their individual engagement in OCB. We tested these relationships in a sample of 254 employees drawn from banking, oil and gas, manufacturing and service industries. The results showed that there is a significant positive relationship between employees’ perceptions of their organizations’ engagement in CSR and their exhibition of OCB. This relationship is mediated by organizational learning culture. The implications of the results for CSR, especially in non-enabling institutional contexts, were discussed.

Unlike previous research that has largely focused on the influence of national institutions on human resource management practices in China, our study taps into the role of sub-national institutions. We demonstrate, via a qualitative configurational analysis, that foreign subsidiaries of multinational corporations still adapt HQ compensation practice to the local context despite low regulatory pressure and low mobility of skills at the sub-national level. This adaptation is facilitated by a decentralized structure in the multinational corporation. Our study also shows that high regulatory pressure and high portability of skills at the sub-national level alone are sufficient to induce local adaptation of compensation practice. Our explanation points to the significant role played by sub-national institutions in large and rapidly changing emerging economies and contributes to research on local adaptation of HRM practice in China. It offers an insight into forms of institutional agency by political and economic actors at local levels of governance as they attempt to influence the skills and human resources available for MNCs through regulatory means.

Although state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are recognized as important economic actors, the literature to date has assumed close state control over SOEs and, therefore, their passive stance towards institutions. Drawing on the institutional work and historical institutionalism literatures, we challenge this view. We develop a multilevel framework of SOE top management teams’ (TMTs’) embedded agency, spanning the national macro-institutional level, the meso-level of regimes of state-SOE relations, and sector-specific institutions. We then derive propositions regarding the factors across these multiple levels that shape SOE TMTs’ motivation, resources, and scope for institutional work. This framework allows us to explain the leeway for and likelihood of SOE TMTs’ engagement in institutional work across institutional contexts.

This Editors' Forum – ‘Made in China: Implications of Chinese Product Recalls’ – presents four perspectives on Chinese product recalls: supply chain management, moral degradation or the decline of traditional business ethics, evidence based management and free riding on the ‘Made in China’ brand. Extended supply chains and uncertain ethical standards almost certainly contribute to lapses in product quality as do cost pressures facing most Chinese firms. Product quality issues, moreover, will be most significant for goods posing hidden risks to health and safety, such as food and toys, and less significant for goods like computers and consumer electronics whose conformity to specifications can be readily monitored.

A business ecosystem is a community of multiple co-evolving actors with interdependent product offerings organized around a specific value proposition. While the extant literature focuses on these two structural elements of ecosystems that existed ex ante, we challenge this notion with our core discovery that ecosystem actors emerge in an ex post dynamic process. With a longitudinal qualitative study of the vertically disintegrated part of the Chinese mobile phone industry, we develop a two-dimensional process model of ecosystem emergence, namely the temporal dimension that delineates three processal stages of ecosystem emergence and the spatial dimension that highlights an architectural pattern of reciprocities between value chain and resource pool to enable the ecosystem emergence. We also offer inter-temporal enabling conditions during ecosystem evolution. These findings enable us to complement the ecosystem literature by elaborating the antecedents, outcomes, and enabling conditions of ecosystem emergence in relation to multiple types of ecosystem actors. We also shed light on the value chain (re-)configuring process which derives from the reciprocity between value chains and ecosystem resources.

Drawing from the theory of territorial behavior, this article predicts the explanatory role of silence behavior in the relationship between knowledge hiding and hider's innovative behavior in Chinese organizations, and the potential of Zhongyong thinking in mitigating the detrimental effect of knowledge hiding. Results derived from a time-lagged and multi-source survey support our hypotheses. Specifically, knowledge hiding is negatively associated with the innovative behavior of the hider. Silence behavior mediates the relationship between knowledge hiding and innovative behavior. Meanwhile, Zhongyong thinking moderates the positive relationship between knowledge hiding and silence behavior, as well as the indirect relationship between knowledge hiding and innovative behavior through silence behavior. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed based on these findings.

Pursuing an international career in China can be risky particularly when there is a lack of informal relationships and knowledge of the socio-cultural environment of the country. Drawing from social capital theory of career success and intelligence theory, this study investigates the influence of expatriate manager-local subordinate guanxi on expatriate managers’ career performance and the contingency role of cultural intelligence. Using multi-source data from a sample (N = 154) of expatriate managers in China, our results show that expatriate manager-local subordinate guanxi positively influences expatriate career performance, and that this relationship is positively moderated by expatriates’ cultural intelligence. The broader theoretical and practical implications of the findings for international careers are fully discussed.

This study investigates the origins of discrete interpersonal emotions in team-member dyads using two independent samples from an education institute and a telecommunication services company in China. Results across both studies showed that the quality of team members’ dyadic relationships positively relates to interpersonal admiration, sympathy, and envy, and negatively relates to interpersonal contempt. Furthermore, teams’ cooperative goals moderate these dyad-level linkages. The association of relationship quality with interpersonal emotions is particularly pronounced in teams with less cooperative goals but buffered in teams with more cooperative goals. Finally, on the individual level of analysis, envy and contempt are inversely associated with team members’ work performance, objectively measured. These findings provide new insights about key antecedents and crucial moderators in the development of interpersonal emotions in Chinese work teams and reiterate the relevance of these emotions for tangible performance outcomes.

Does social capital operate differently in China? A long and vibrant literature on the concept of guanxi suggests not only that social capital might have a different character in China but also that it might prove more valuable there to employees and entrepreneurs alike. Drawing on unusually high quality data on Chinese executives, Burt and Burzynska (2017) explore the question of whether the same structural configurations of relationships appear associated with success in China as have been found in the West. Their short answer is yes. As in the West, the founders and managers of larger companies have relationships characterized by a larger proportion of ‘structural holes’ – where the focal individual represents the only connection between his or her contacts (in other words, a brokering relationship). Closure – having multiple ties in common with another individual – meanwhile appears to foster trust, just as it does elsewhere. One could therefore view the results as strong evidence for the universality of a structural approach to social capital, one based on the patterns of relationships between individuals (e.g., Burt, 1992; Coleman, 1988; Podolny, 1993).

Although the role of top teams has been recognized in ambidextrous organizations, it remains unclear which characteristics and how the cognitive processes of top teams are used to address the dual cognitive challenges of ambidexterity. To address this puzzle, I developed a model in which I theorize that a top team with task-related diversity engaging in perspective taking will influence the achievement of an ambidextrous organization. Moreover, I further theorize that transformational leadership of the CEO will help diverse top teams master ambidexterity by influencing the team's cognitive processes. The results show that diverse teams can address the differentiating-integrating challenges of ambidexterity when they engage in perspective taking. The results also confirm that transformational leadership strengthens the relationship between a diverse top team's perspective taking and ambidextrous orientation.