This editorial examines the empirical foundations of Chinese management research through an analysis of data sources and research designs in all empirical papers published in Management and Organization Review (MOR) over the past five years. Our review shows that 53.2% of studies rely on archival or secondary data, with 37% of quantitative studies focusing on publicly listed firms. While established datasets provide consistency and comparability, their prevalence may limit opportunities to explore China’s diverse organizational ecosystem. We identify three promising avenues for advancing the field: (1) expanding empirical attention to include a wider variety of organizational forms, (2) leveraging emerging computational methods, digital trace data, and AI-enabled technologies, and (3) recognizing the development of novel datasets as valuable scholarly contributions in their own right. We also examine how recent regulatory developments are creating new considerations for research design while reinforcing the value of collaborative approaches between international and Chinese scholars. We contend that by embracing methodological pluralism and adapting to evolving data landscapes, management scholars can generate additional novel insights that illuminate the complexity and distinctiveness of Chinese organizational life.

This introduction paper for our special issue on Chinese multinational enterprises (CMNEs) situates the important theme of CMNE growth within the context of rapid technological innovation, intensified geopolitical tensions, and trade wars in the global business environment of the mid-2020s. Using this context as a backdrop, we discuss the growth of CMNEs to derive implications for international business (IB) theory. We review key theoretical perspectives that inform prior research on CMNEs and outline the key challenges confronting CMNEs’ international expansion, as gauged against prior research. We summarize key theoretical insights from the eight papers included in this special issue. We then illustrate how future research can be informed by an explicit consideration of the international sanctions and geopolitical tensions in which CMNEs operate, as well as by the growing technological, linguistic, and ideological distance between China and European and North American countries, which influences CMNEs’ international strategies. We conclude by noting that at this critical juncture in CMNEs’ development, there are substantial opportunities for the IB community to broaden research and challenge existing theories by capturing the latest trends in the international expansion of CMNEs.

Chinese bureaucracy – the organizational apparatus of Chinese governments – has played a significant role in China’s economic development and political control in the post-Mao era. In this paper, we draw on research on Chinese bureaucracy in both English and Chinese to highlight major findings in three areas: agency problems and incentive provision, the use of guanxi in policy implementation, and variable coupling among different parts of the bureaucracy. These three aspects are interrelated: agency problems induce the prevalence of informal institutions as an organizational response, which leads to variable coupling in Chinese bureaucracy. We discuss the issues and implications this literature presents for the further development of organization theory and the emerging research agenda.

This editorial essay introduces three approaches for advancing management research through contextualization in Chinese management research. While the Chinese context offers fertile ground for theoretical contributions, scholars often struggle to effectively leverage contextual elements to extend existing theories. I address this gap by presenting three approaches: the counter-intuitive approach, which challenges established assumptions by identifying relationships that contradict conventional wisdom; the contrasting approach, which reveals paradoxical or opposing effects of organizational phenomena across different contextual conditions; and the theory integration approach, which combines different theoretical perspectives to create richer understanding of organizational phenomena. Using published works on guanxi and social networks as examples, I demonstrate how these approaches help scholars articulate why the Chinese context matters theoretically. These approaches provide researchers with tools to move beyond simply testing Western theories in China toward making substantive theoretical contributions that extend and enrich existing management theories through contextualization.

Family dynamics can significantly influence entrepreneurship, yet the temporal complexities of this relationship remain inadequately explored. This special issue addresses this gap by emphasizing the intricate interplay between internal family evolvability such as generational transitions and identity shifts, cultural continuity, and external adaptability to rapidly changing economic, institutional, and technological contexts in China. We introduce a dual tuning model that highlights how entrepreneurial and family firms (FFs) strategically synchronize their internal and external temporal rhythms to manage conflicts and optimize performance. This lead article reviews existing literature, articulates the dual tuning model, and synthesizes insights from the articles in this special issue to illuminate how Chinese FFs navigate tensions between evolving internal dynamics and external market demands. We conclude by identifying promising future research avenues that leverage this temporal perspective to deepen our understanding of family dynamics and entrepreneurship in China.

This editorial essay describes what is phenomenon-based research and why it is important to conduct indigenous Chinese management research. Grounded in the Chinese context, the author identifies emerging new organizational phenomena in the digital age that calls for new theoretical explanations and empirical validation. Adopting an evolution of theories perspective, the author outlines the various paths that can move a new theory explaining an indigenous phenomenon toward becoming a universal theory that can transcend time and space.

How do subsidiaries sell initiatives to their headquarters? Multilayer decision-makers at corporate headquarters, with divergent interests and power, can overly complicate the acceptance process. We present a multi-case study to explore how subsidiaries of a Chinese multinational enterprise convince top management teams and department heads at their corporate headquarters to engage in foreign investments. Building on a micropolitical perspective, we develop a process model of subsidiary micropolitical strategy adoption consisting of (a) political tension retrieval regarding divergent interests and power at corporate headquarters around specific initiatives, (b) selective coalition building whose interests and power are aligned with the initiatives, and (c) a transitive relation leveraging strategy based on the ties of allied headquarters' managers. We further reveal the interplay between corporate motivations (i.e., market seeking vs. strategic asset seeking) and specific micropolitical activities adopted by subsidiary managers. We enhance the understanding of micropolitics in subsidiary initiatives by underscoring how to strategically manage differences among multilayer actors at corporate headquarters. Additionally, we reveal a political view of foreign investment decision-making in addition to rationality.

This study examines how university curriculum reforms that increase course selection flexibility influence entrepreneurial outcomes. Departing from traditional emphasis on educational attainment, we explore how institutional changes in education shape entrepreneurial tendencies among alumni. Leveraging a reform that removed constraints on course selection at a major university, we find that increased educational choice significantly fosters entrepreneurship. Our analysis reveals partial support for the moderating effects of individual, family, and spatial factors: the positive impact of these reforms is contingent on the type of electives and courses taken, with stronger effects observed among alumni with entrepreneurial parents, those born in urban areas, and those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. These groups leverage specific course patterns to align their educational choices with entrepreneurial aspirations, enhancing their likelihood of pursuing entrepreneurial ventures. However, these findings also underscore the potential for educational reforms to exacerbate inequalities, disproportionately benefiting those with preexisting advantages. By integrating insights on institutional changes, course-taking patterns, and individual moderators, this study advances understanding of the interplay between education and entrepreneurship, offering implications for designing more equitable educational policies.

The literature shows that social media enhances individual stakeholders’ ability to directly influence firm behaviors, paying less attention to how it enables different stakeholder groups to influence firms collectively. Drawing on the stakeholder multiplicity perspective in stakeholder theory, this study theorizes and empirically demonstrates that social media can empower lower-salience stakeholders to drive the actions of higher-salience stakeholders to influence firm behaviors. By analyzing 506 consumer crises involving foreign and local companies in China from 2000 to 2020, we find that firms take more substantial responsibility when confronted with consumers’ social-media-based collective actions than when confronted with conventional channels of consumer complaints. This heightened responsibility stems mainly from collective actions’ tendency to spur law-enforcing agencies into addressing alleged firm misdeeds, demonstrating a stakeholder multiplicity effect of social media empowerment. We also identify the institutional contingency of this effect, showing that local governments’ bureaucratic capacity positively moderates collective actions’ effect on law-enforcing actions, whereas their intervention in firms’ operational decisions negatively moderates law-enforcing actions’ effect on firms’ responsibility assumption. This study extends the understanding of social media's relationship with stakeholder influence and consolidates the stakeholder multiplicity perspective in stakeholder theory.

Despite extensive media coverage on issues related to intellectual property (IP) in China, the academic literature on this topic has been sporadic. Two factors might be at play here. One is the multifaceted nature of IP: as IP is a legal asset with significant implications for firm performance and social welfare, the literature is scattered in various disciplines such as law, economics, strategy, and political science. The other is the unique institutional environment in China: policy-driven investments in IP have resulted in the decoupling of IP as a value appropriation mechanism in market competition and IP as a nonmarket strategy to engage with regulators. This review aims to bring the multiple streams of literature into a structured framework, with a side-by-side comparison with research based in developed countries, mostly in the US. Building on the combined research streams, we then recommend avenues of future research that can potentially speak to a broad audience in innovation, competition, and nonmarket strategies.

Failure to attract external financing is a common puzzle for start-up firms and often leads to the use of entrepreneurs' personal funding, typically with the help of their family. With little entrepreneurial experience, nascent entrepreneurs will have no factual signals to show external investors, except their characteristics or those of their family. The literature mainly focuses on the net effects of entrepreneurs' personal capital endowments in isolation on start-up capital structure despite emerging appreciation of the importance of family-related factors. However, little is known about which combinations of capital endowments across capital dimensions (i.e., human, social, and financial capital) or generations (i.e., parent and child) will likely affect the level of external funding. Drawing on signaling theory, we adopt a configurational approach to examine the compositions of intergenerational capital endowments that are sufficient to shape external funding. Conducting a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis of Chinese privately owned enterprises of nascent entrepreneurs, we identify four typical family prototypes that feature intergenerational capital endowments for low external funding. Findings highlight the significance of family dynamics in China and their role in shaping new venture financing by displaying intergenerational signals.

The institutional logics perspective provides a powerful theoretical lens that emphasizes how meanings and practices are intertwined in relatively enduring configurations that can profoundly shape organizational behavior across space and time. In this article, we propose the need for a broader research agenda on the dynamics of institutional logics in the Chinese context, particularly in three aspects. We begin by elaborating on the distinct configuration of logics in China, where state logic is more dominant and often directs other logics, thus shaping organizational behavior differently than its Western counterpart. We then argue for the need to examine (1) the change of logics per se, leveraging China’ market transition, which provides a unique opportunity to observe how existing configurations of logics undergo transformational change and regain coherence; (2) the governance of logics, focusing on the influence of social evaluators and command posts; and (3) the diffusion of the China Model, a distinct configuration of logics and orders, to other countries through the Chinese state’s political and economic campaigns.

How does a CEO’s early-life poverty trauma exposure affect a firm’s involvement in poverty alleviation and the prioritization between generic and strategic involvement? We find that CEOs with such exposure are more likely to engage in both types of poverty alleviation initiatives. We further examine the asymmetry effect and find that these CEOs will prioritize strategic over generic involvement in poverty alleviation. We also conduct a post hoc analysis to test the mediating effect of emphasis on resource efficiency on the relationship between CEOs’ early-life exposure to poverty trauma and the relative emphasis on strategic over generic involvement in poverty alleviation. Using a sample of Chinese publicly listed firms from 2016 to 2021, we find strong support for our predictions. Our study contributes to the literature on CEOs’ early-life experiences and corporate poverty alleviation engagement.

This study investigates how institutional origin affects the dot tax haven (DTH) internationalization of Chinese family firms (FFs). Drawing on institutional theory and the mixed gamble perspective, we propose that restructured FFs (RFFs), originating from state-owned enterprises (SOEs), are more likely to engage in DTH internationalization than entrepreneurial FFs directly established by family founders. This propensity is attributed to the institutional legacies inherited from their SOE predecessors, which create a distinct potential gain-loss calculus. Our empirical analysis of publicly listed Chinese FFs from 2012 to 2021 demonstrates that restructured FFs are 30% more likely to use DTH and establish 43% more DTH subsidiaries than entrepreneurial FFs. This tendency, however, is mitigated by the firms’ economic ties to financial institutions. Our study enhances understanding of FFs’ global entrepreneurial decision-making, contributing to FF heterogeneity research. A novel aspect of our study is examining the impact of institutional legacies on FFs – a topic less explored in family business literature. Furthermore, our findings provide insights for policymakers and regulators, emphasizing the importance of tailored policies that consider the intricate interplay between institutional origin and contemporary entrepreneurial goals in FFs.