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.

We explore the meaning of parochialism (xiao nong yi shi, 小农意识) to explain certain paradoxical Chinese managerial behaviors. We discuss how cultural, political, and economic traditions in China formed a salient context to cultivate parochialism. Qualitative data from Chinese and American managers reveal that the conceptual framework of parochialism includes a cognitive dimension of closed-mindedness, a behavioral dimension of self-protection, and a relational dimension of in-group focused social relationship. Parochialism hampers effective globalization of Chinese firms because it negatively impacts key facets of organizational culture: employee development, communication, customer orientation, social responsibility, strategic planning, and innovation. The study offers theoretical and practical implications for Chinese management research and the development of global competence.

Environmental responsibility has been increasingly emphasized in the management field. Perceived organizational environmental support is generally considered desirable within organizations. Nonetheless, both scholars and practitioners doubt that it is a panacea for enhancing employee green behavior (EGB), an important workplace behavior benefiting the environment and corporate sustainability. From a congruence perspective, this research explores when and why perceived organizational environmental support fails to increase EGB effectively. Drawing upon cue consistency theory and the corporate hypocrisy literature, we propose that perceived organizational environmental support backfires when it is incongruent with another critical cue signaling an organization's environmental stance – perceived supervisory environmental support (particularly when perceived organizational environmental support is higher than perceived supervisory environmental support). This is because the inconsistent signals of environmental support from the organization (in the form of policy commitment) and supervisor (in the form of supportive behaviors) arouse employees’ perception of corporate hypocrisy, which in turn inhibits EGB. Both the scenario experiment results (Study 1) and the polynomial regression results of the field survey data (Study 2) support our hypotheses. Theoretical contributions and managerial implications are discussed.

In this perspective article, I draw on transition research that has been developed to account for the transitions in many socio-technical systems within human society, such as energy, water, and food. I argue that many ideas developed in transition research can be applied to the ecosystem of contemporary business schools in China for its transformation. Using the multi-level perspective (MLP) from transition research as an analytic framework, I examine the socio-technical system of business schools in China for understanding the main forces that may shape a potential transition of the sector. I also draw on transition management theory and insights from research on the politics of transitions for important conditions that are required to enable a transition in this specific context.

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.

The central theme of this commentary is that The Art of War is not only highly useful for Chinese business historically in particular, but also universally relevant for global business (including Chinese business as an integral part) in general at the present time and also in the future. We will discuss three issues to elaborate the above central theme: (1) the essence of The Art of War, (2) its historical relevance, and (3) its modern and global implications.

In this study, we conceptualize the thus far little explored relationship between expatriate and host country as a form of social exchange governed by the norm of reciprocity. Drawing from social exchange theory and our analysis of 451 self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) living and working in the United Arab Emirates, we examine whether the degree of SIEs’ career and community embeddedness explains their host country withdrawal intention via enhanced perceived institutional trust and a more tolerant attitude toward workplace discrimination. Our results provide general support for our theoretical model and most of our hypotheses. In this way, our article makes three contributions. First, it suggests a novel way to conceptualize the relationship between SIEs and host country as a form of social exchange. Second, it differentiates between two dimensions of embeddedness and explicates how the two contribute to SIEs’ intentions to stay in the host country. Finally, the analysis theorizes and empirically tests two previously little explored mechanisms of enhanced institutional trust and a more tolerant attitude toward workplace discrimination through which SIEs’ host country embeddedness influences their host country withdrawal intentions.

Through two in-depth case studies, we compare the approaches of a state-owned enterprise (SOE), Beijing Automotive Industries Holding Co., and a privately owned enterprise (POE), Geely, to acquire and absorb advanced technological knowledge to enhance their innovation capabilities. Each company acquired advanced knowledge from troubled famous Swedish automakers and upgraded their products technologically. Analyzing data mainly collected from secondary sources identifies major differences in approaches and actions at each acquisition step rooted in the type of ownership. We juxtapose these differences with insights from the literature on knowledge acquisition and research on firm ownership. Our findings show that the POE seeks the strategic goal of synergistic technology integration for better innovation and economic performance. In contrast, the SOE pursues national objectives with less regard for market success. This SOE focuses on an independent approach to knowledge absorption and development during their acquisition, whereas the POE emphasizes collaboration in innovation capacity development. This study provides insights into Chinese firms’ positioning on innovation development on the global stage, comparative capitalism, and the particular case of state capitalism in China.

This article develops a framework to test how surface-level and deep-level faultlines impact team performance through subgroup formation and team interaction quality. We test it with 96 empirical articles on team faultlines from 2002 to 2022, using meta-analytic techniques. Firstly, results suggest that subgroup formation and team interaction quality act as serial mediums through which surface-level and deep-level faultlines exert negative indirect effects on team performance. Secondly, moderator analyses reveal that increasing interaction time will mitigate the effects of surface-level faultlines but enhance the effects of deep-level faultlines. Finally, surface- and deep-level social faultlines and deep-level task faultlines are detrimental to team interaction quality, and these negative effects are mediated by subgroup formation. Surface-level task faultlines are beneficial to team interaction, and this positive effect does not work through subgroup formation.

Size is an important antecedent of firm survival, and several studies theoretically sustain and empirically support a ‘liability of middleness’. Indeed, it is widely believed that companies should act strategically to either become large or remain small and occupy a niche position, because mid-sized firms face the strongest market selection pressures. This study challenges that logic in renewable natural resource industries. Measuring size as product-line scale and firm-level portfolio breadth, we argue that in industries characterized by cost competition, the lack of product differentiation, large capital investments, and sharp price oscillation, scale and breadth have a curvilinear effect on survival that favors mid-sized firms rather than penalizing them. An empirical analysis of the US pulp and paper (P&P) industry over the period 1970–2000 strongly supports our arguments. This study is particularly relevant for emerging economies, in which natural resource industries represent an important portion of the total economic activity.

Chinese business schools have made impressive progress in improving their quality, but there is still room for improvement. However, they have improved largely by copying the traditional American model of business education at a time when this model is coming under increasing critique for good reasons, including placing great effort on producing much rigorously conducted research, which makes little practical impact. Thus, having learned much from foreign business schools, the time has come for Chinese business schools to be bold and pursue their own model. Such a model should focus more on research that pays increased attention to context, including indigenous research, and is of greater practical relevance. Furthermore, given ongoing change inside Chinese business schools and in their external environment, it may be easier to make needed changes in China. Regarding teaching, business schools are encouraged to move beyond a focus on teaching content well to teaching content in ways that it can be readily applied; do more to develop understanding of how to leverage modern technologies like AI, big data, internet of things, and digitalization; focus more on adjusting teaching to the local context; and focus more on developing innovation/creativity and analytical ability, rather than memorization of facts.

The Needham Puzzle is part of a larger and very complex historical enigma. What explains the slow-down in scientific innovation in China about five hundred years ago? Also, after a recent forty-year period of growth not heavily dependent on spontaneous innovation, are such inherited influences returning to the surface as significant obstacles at a time when innovativeness is becoming more strategic?

In light of inconclusive findings on the effect of political connections, this study explores conditions that affect the effectiveness of political connections on firm performance in democratic systems. First, using a resource dependence rationale, this study stresses the importance of variation in political connections and classifies direct and indirect political connections based on sources of power and the mechanisms for developing connections. Second, this study recognizes that influencing political outcomes is an entire political process in which political power matters. Furthermore, as power is central to the resource dependence rationale unlike exchange in transaction cost economics, this study explores how the effectiveness of political connections is contingent on the dynamics of de jure political power. We find that the effect of direct political connections is susceptible to changes in de jure political power due to its dyadic relationship with de jure power, while indirect political connections are more robust to such changes due to their connections with informal networks holding de facto political power. Further, the positive effects of political connections on firm performance are mediated by operational capability.

In this study, we argue that foreign subsidiaries may benefit from the corporate strategies of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in different ways in terms of knowledge transfer and strategic flexibility. From this viewpoint, we explore the relationship between product diversification and financial performance of their subsidiaries under the condition of MNE geographic diversification. Using panel data on foreign subsidiaries in European countries from 2006 to 2011, we find a U-shaped relationship between product diversification and subsidiary performance and the joint effect of product and geographic diversification. Given the importance of transition economies in international business today, we conducted a subsample test contrasting the results based on the transitional (Central and Eastern European) versus Western European countries. The contrasting results provide important implications for other transition economies like China. We validate the relationship in several ways in our robustness tests.