Time pacing, which refers to the regulation of intensity and direction of people's attention and effort, is central to innovation management. However, in a study of complex product innovation in pharmaceuticals, we find that time pacing is a major source of conflict between managers and scientists over innovation management. Our analysis of this tension reveals that two very different forms of time pacing operate in complex innovation. Clock-time pacing, which gauges progress by the predictable passage of clock time, is used by strategic managers to reduce unnecessary exploration, focus on necessary questions, and speed up the execution of steps. Event-time pacing, which gauges progress by the unpredictable achievement of learning events, is used by scientists to develop a deep understanding of how a drug might behave in the body against a disease, focus on learning by asking many questions, and integrate emergent results into plausible patterns. We identify four dimensions that differentiate clock-time pacing from event-time pacing, which drive the tension between the two. We summarize negative effects that this tension can have on innovation if left unaddressed, and then suggest ways to integrate clock-time pacing with event-time pacing. We also discuss implications for Chinese management.

In this paper, we explore different behavioral assumptions in the training of managers for their consequences on future performance. They show that training emphasizing rationality and self-interest, the standard assumptions used in economics, benefits technical posts but may lead future managers to rely excessively on rational and explicit safeguarding, crowding out instinctive relational heuristics and signaling a deficient human type to potential partners. In contrast, the diverse, implicit, and even contradictory nature of behavioral assumptions in management theories avoid conflict with innate cooperative tools and may provide a good training ground for using such tools. Tentative confirmatory evidence shows that the weight placed on behavioral assumptions in the core courses of the top 100 business schools influences the average salaries of their MBA graduates. Controlling for the self-selected average quality of students and some other school characteristics, average salaries are seen to be significantly greater for MBA programs that include a larger proportion of management courses in their core curriculum.

There is regular and explicit media coverage of employees who engage in behavior intended to advance organizational interests but that exceeds necessity and reason thereby causing unacceptable harm to stakeholder interests. Although several constructs such as workplace deviance, organizational misbehavior, corporate crime and corruption, and unethical pro-organizational behavior have been advanced to account for this type of behavior, no comprehensive framework exists that also includes the full scope of its important consequences. Accordingly, we propose the umbrella construct of detrimental citizenship behavior (DCB) that allows us to integrate and build upon previous related conceptualizations that have developed mostly in parallel bodies of research. We rely on ethical decision making, creativity, and instrumental stakeholder theories to embed the umbrella DCB construct within a multilevel and longitudinal model. The DCB model includes processes through which such behavior and its consequences unfold over time for organizational members, organizations, and society at large. The proposed framework describes, explains, and predicts DCB and also leads to suggestions for future research. In addition, we offer suggestions regarding how to manage this highly consequential type of organizational behavior, thereby engaging in a much needed science-practice dialogue in management and organization studies.

In two studies conducted in the United States and the People's Republic of China, we examined how the effects of organizational justice perceptions on employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) are influenced by individually held cultural value orientations. In Study 1, we did not find evidence of moderation by cultural value orientation. In Study 2, we reexamined the moderated relationships and found that the relationship between procedural justice and OCB was significantly influenced by masculinity-femininity orientation and that the relationship between distributive justice and OCB was significantly moderated by power distance such the relationships were more strongly positive when followers were more masculine and higher in power distance. Also, we extended our model to include perceived supervisor support (PSS) as a mediator of the direct and moderated effects of justice perceptions on OCB examined in Study 1. We found support for the mediation model, but did not find the moderated mediation effects we predicted. Due to the large number of non-significant findings and inconsistencies across our two studies, we conclude with recommendations for scholars who face similar challenges in their research.

This study contributes to an emic understanding of how different types of social obligations may help or hinder the formation of initial organizational trust within collectivist cultures. We extend prior social categorization insights by challenging the expectation that in-group favouritism automatically facilitates higher levels of initial trust among collectivists. We theorize and test the asymmetric effects of two different types of social obligations toward members of distinct social categories (kinship and friendship in-groups) on the formation of initial organizational trust. Using a quasi-experimental research design in a collectivist culture (Japan), we hypothesize and show that in ambivalent situations, voluntary social obligations toward members of friendship in-groups encourage early trust in trustees' organizations; however, involuntary social obligations toward members of kinship in-groups discourage early trust development toward the organization these trustees represent. The effects of (in)voluntary social obligations on initial organizational trust are contingent on how collectivists perceive each encounter: voluntary social obligations are more conducive to trust-building at lower levels of perceived opportunity; involuntary social obligations have stronger effects on initial organizational trust at higher levels of perceived risk.

Integrating theories of psychological ownership and stewardship, and taking a relational perspective, we examine key antecedents and outcomes of professional managers' psychological ownership in Chinese owner-managed family businesses. We tested the model using a survey of 166 Chinese professional managers (one from each of 166 family businesses). We find that owner–manager relationship closeness at work mediates the effect of both the owner's benevolent leadership and owner–manager friendship ties on the manager's psychological ownership. Psychological ownership, in turn, is positively related to the manager's intention to stay and to stewardship behaviour. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The principal–principal (PP) perspective of corporate governance shows that multiple large shareholder (MLS) structure has competing monitoring and entrenchment governance effects. We argue that the dominant effect depends on contest for control among large shareholders and the number of large shareholders involved. Using data from Chinese family listed companies from 2004 to 2007, this study shows inverse U-shaped relationships between contest for control and corporate market value, as measured by Tobin's Q, and between the number of large shareholders and corporate market value. Findings indicate that at low to medium levels of contest for control or number of large shareholders, formal institutions can strengthen MLS structure's monitoring effect and can help this effect last longer. As a whole, the findings extend the institution-based view in the context of family corporate governance by showing that formal institutions can shape the ability of MLS structure to exert governance.

Publicly traded Chinese firms recently reformed their ownership structures by converting non-tradable shares, which constituted two-thirds of shares outstanding and were held largely by the state, into shares that could trade on domestic exchanges. To facilitate this reform, tradable shareholders were compensated with stock grants from non-tradable shareholders. Our analysis focuses on the level of compensation, the compensation ratio, the ratio of new tradable shares granted to tradable shares outstanding before the reform. Contrary to the predictions of asset-pricing models, most firms set the compensation ratio around 0.3. We explain this surprising convergence using institutional theory. In doing so, we analyze the power and interests of all relevant actors – not just owners, but also state regulators, executives, and other agents – and draw on insights from resource-dependence and agency theories. We find strong evidence of coercive and mimetic isomorphism, but no evidence of normative isomorphism. Because our dependent variable is continuous (a ratio), we are able to show that the mimetic effects we observe cannot be attributed to coercion or norms. Thus, we not only explain an empirical puzzle, we also advance institutional analysis of isomorphism by clearly distinguishing three isomorphic forces that have been conflated in much previous research.

Transformation is a vital challenge for Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and their top managers. To explore this increasingly important topic, we first summarize the institutional context of SOE transformation and the conflicting interests and interdependent relationships of six major actors as inside/outside stakeholders. Based on the strategic action view of institutional analysis, we emphasize the role of the change agent's level of aspiration and political skills in transforming an SOE. Then, through inductive case studies on the transformation of three SOEs, we address how top managers, acting as change agents, can initiate and engage in institutional change through strategic actions such as negotiation, manipulation, and coercion; we also illustrate how they adopt different actions to influence different actors. Based on the inductive results, we develop a theoretical model, which we refer to as the ‘strategic action model’ that shows how the aspiration level, political skills, strategic actions, and change outcomes interrelate and offer insights into the strategic action of top managers as change agents. Our most important contribution is revealing the interplay between the proactive role of inside actors as change agents and the enabling condition of institutional context.

This study seeks to explain why firms respond in different ways to similar external administrative pressures, such as government demands for charitable giving, particularly in a transitional economy such as China's. Taking the perspective of the CEO's representation on external demands, the study explores the relationship between political affiliation and corporate giving, stimulated by powerful and politically affiliated CEOs, who are the government's natural constituency and who comply with governmental demands for donation. The study introduces contingent factors that influence the CEO's perception of how to satisfy government demands, and that moderate the relationship between political affiliation and corporate giving. Using firm-level data of corporate contributions following the Sichuan earthquake of May 12, 2008, we find that corporations with CEOs who hold political affiliations have a significantly higher probability of donation and also more cash giving. This relationship is moderated by contingent factors such as government ownership, financial condition, and concentration of voting rights.

The manner in which technological capability and marketing capability can be successfully leveraged is an important research issue. Based on the resource-management model, this study aims to answer two research questions: (1) whether technological capability and marketing capability are complementary or supplementary capabilities; and (2) how technological capability and marketing capability can be used appropriately to respond to environmental turbulence. Based on a face-to-face interview survey of 212 Chinese firms, we find that technological capability and marketing capability have synergistic effects. We also find that technological turbulence enhances the performance effect of technological capability, but impedes that of marketing capability; whereas market turbulence advances the performance effect of marketing capability, but impedes that of technological capability. Thus, the appropriate way to leverage technological capability and marketing capability is to integrate them and to deploy technological capability to respond to technological turbulence and marketing capability to respond to market turbulence.

Management scholars and practitioners emphasize the importance of the size and diversity of a knowledge worker's social network. Constraints on knowledge workers' time and energy suggest that more is not always better. Further, why and how larger networks contribute to valuable outcomes deserves further understanding. In this study, we offer hypotheses to shed insight on the question of the diminishing returns of large networks and the specific form of network diversity that may contribute to innovative performance among knowledge workers. We tested our hypotheses using data collected from 93 R&D engineers in a Sino-German automobile electronics company located in China. Study findings identified an inflection point, confirming our hypothesis that the size of the knowledge worker's egocentric network has an inverted U-shaped effect on job performance. We further demonstrate that network dispersion richness (the number of cohorts that the focal employee has connections to) rather than network dispersion evenness (equal distribution of ties across the cohorts) has more influence on the knowledge worker's job performance. Additionally, we found that the curvilinear effect of network size is fully mediated by network dispersion richness. Implications for future research on social networks in China and Western contexts are discussed.

In this article we review research on Chinese guanxi and social networking in the past twenty years and identify the major perspectives, theories, and methodologies used in guanxi research at micro and macro levels. We summarize the main findings of over 200 journal articles on guanxi research in terms of its conceptual definitions and measurements, its antecedents and consequences, and its dynamics and processes. Furthermore, we identify the gaps between different levels of guanxi research and discuss future directions to advance our understanding of the complex and intricate guanxi phenomenon.