Presidential Speech

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Presidential Speech for Conference 2008

Presidential Address: Independent Thinking: A Path to Outstanding Scholarship
Xiao-Ping Chen, University of Washington
June 19-22, 2008, Guangzhou, China

Index
1. What Is Independent Thinking?
2. Why Is It So Difficult To Maintain Independent Thinking?
3. Approaches to Developing Independent Thinking
4. Transforming outside pressure into intrinsic motivation
5. Listening with an Open Mind
6. Developing Passion for Research

Good evening!
Ladies and Gentlemen, Colleagues and Friends:

Welcome to the closing dinner for the Third Bi-annual Conference of IACMR! It is almost the end of our 3-day conference, you must be feeling excited, overwhelmed, and exhausted at the same time. I hope you have enjoyed this conference as much as I did, and I feel that I¡¦m rejuvenated and ready to go back for more research!

China is emerging as a prominent force shaping global business as well as shaping ¡§a whole new world¡¨, and it is the ¡§world¡¦s largest startup and turnaround¡¨ (McGregor, 2005). The secret of the Chinese economic miracle relies on its fast growing companies, grassroots entrepreneurial activities, and its hard-working people. As the largest developing economy in the world, China provides a rich context for management research and a great opportunity for management scholars to experiment and to test theories, models, and ideas.

I once had an opportunity to visit one of the most respected companies in China: Huawei Technologies Ltd. Huawei was incorporated and established in 1988, with its core products in telecommunication networks. In less than 20 years, it has over 44,000 employees, of whom 48% are dedicated to R&D. Its global R&D centers are located in Bangalore, India, Silicon Valley and Dallas, USA, Stockholm, Sweden and Moscow, Russia, in addition to those in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Chengdu in China. The company serves 28 of the world's top 50 operators, as well as over one billion users worldwide. It becomes a leader in providing next generation telecommunication networks. One of the things that impressed me the most was its university, responsible for training and developing the workers, technicians, managers, and future leaders of Huawei. Besides its top-notch facilities, it also has an R & D department that does research in management-related areas. For example, one of the challenges the company faces today is related to its operations in different parts of the world, that is, how to keep a balance between standardized corporate practices but at the same time show enough sensitivity to local culture so that such practices can be accepted. As one of the first companies in China that have the majority of its revenue from foreign operations, Huawei is desperately exploring ways of getting it right.

And this is just one of the numerous managerial challenges facing Chinese companies that call for management scholars to dive in and study. I see today¡¦s China as a golden time for management scholars to make contributions to theory development and to the growth of Chinese companies. For example, the various ownership types existing in China today provides a rich context to study how corporate governance structure influences firm performance; how firms with different ownerships go around about getting financial and human resources, or developing market needs; and why some firms are more ready to compete in the global market than others. Another example is the huge talent war that companies fight in today¡¦s labor market. We read news everyday reporting individuals and sometimes teams jumping ships. Even though employee turnover is a topic that has been studied for years, ¡§group turnover¡¨ is a unique phenomenon that has its own characteristics and mechanisms. Moreover, grassroots entrepreneurship is another phenomenon that calls for management scholars¡¦ attention, because it is the driving engine of a few most successful provinces¡¦ economy (e.g., Jiangsu and Zhejiang). Not to mention other topics such as leadership, teamwork, cooperation, competition, or communication that are important to the success of individuals and organizations, yet has not been studied much in the Chinese context.

While the opportunities are plenty, I see many challenges as well. One of such challenges is from within, that is, we often constrain ourselves to certain ways of thinking and conducting research, and dare not break old molds and propose completely new paradigms. We follow what others do and study the topics that have been studied by others; we hope that our ideas do not deviate too radically from the norm so that our papers can be accepted for publication. In this evening¡¦s speech, I would like to address this challenge, and share with you my view about the most important quality in an outstanding scholar. The title of my speech is:

Independent Thinking: A Path to Becoming an Outstanding Scholar
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1. What Is Independent Thinking?

As any scholar will do, I¡¦ll first define what I mean by independent thinking. Maintaining a rational, neutral, objective view about any topics and phenomena, including social problems, organizational issues, teamwork issues, even individual problems is the precondition to independent thinking.

What is a rational, neutral, and objective attitude toward research? Scholars who possess such attitude to research often do not have a pre-conceived preference for certain type of outcomes; rather, they will collect as much evidence as possible, use rigorous statistical tools do analyze the data before making conclusions. If they find that the data suggest something that is completely different from what they have hypothesized based on theoretical reasoning, they will think deeply and figure out why that is the case, and what explanations might help them understand such phenomenon, and then conclude whether it was the problem with their hypotheses, or it was the problem with the methodology they used in collecting and analyzing data. Based on these analyses, they either confirm or disconfirm their hypotheses.

And independent thinking is the ability to use multiple perspectives or unique/unusual perspectives to analyze and interpret certain phenomena; it is the ability to insist on using consistent scientific criteria and universal value systems to evaluate and make judgment about the phenomena of your interest. It emphasizes using new approaches and being different rather than following and imitating others.

2. Why Is It So Difficult To Maintain Independent Thinking?

As individuals who live in the society and constantly surrounded by others, we are more or less ¡§brainwashed¡¨ by the society and unconsciously wear ¡§colored glasses¡¨ when observing and judging what we see. As a result, we often only see things that we expect to see or want to see (it is called selective bias in social psychology). Sometimes, we would even totally ignore some facts, and sometimes view opposite evidence as the one that supports our hypotheses.

At the same time, we have also been educated to use the ¡§advanced-backward¡¨ criterion to evaluate everything, and often time equivalent ¡§Western¡¨ to ¡§advanced¡¨, and ¡§non-Western¡¨ to ¡§backward¡¨. The categories upon which we make such judgment include management practices, national cultures, corporate cultures, etc. Once this becomes a habit, it is very difficult to keep a neutral attitude anymore. Moreover, the things that are labeled ¡§advanced¡¨ often become popular, therefore, we all go after that to avoid appearing ¡§backward¡¨.

For example, in recent years, many terms become popular in Chinese management field, such as ¡§fire the bottom 5% of the workforce¡¨, ¡§competitive advantage¡¨, ¡§self-managed teams¡¨, ¡§balanced scorecard¡¨, ¡§six sigma¡¨, ¡§360 degree evaluation¡¨, ¡§ERP¡¨, and¡§CRM¡¨. Most of these terms are proposed by Western scholars or practitioners, who developed the knowledge over years of research and practice. Without a doubt, they should be useful for managers to learn and practice.

The interesting thing I observed, however, is that the popularity of these terms is much more prevalent in China than in the U.S. For example, GE uses ¡§fire the 10% of the bottom performer¡¨ in managing performance, it measures two dimensions: performance and value congruence. If an employee scores low on both dimensions, he/she is likely to be fired. This evaluation system created a very competitive environment inside GE, which was consistent with the corporate culture Jack Welch wanted to have, so it had a positive effect on GE¡¦s sustainable growth. On the other hand, we also know that many of other American companies do not adopt such evaluation system, and they are also doing very well. But I remember about three years ago when I visited China, almost every business executive I met was talking about GE¡¦s evaluation system and told me that they wanted to use it in their companies too. When I asked them why, they said that if GE¡¦s success is partly related to this system, then it should be equally effective if they use such system.

Another interesting phenomenon I observed is that once a management concept becomes popular, it will be pursued by majority of Chinese managers, and push it to the extreme. ¡§Learning organization¡¨ is such a construct. We all know that Peter Senge was the person who first proposed this construct, and it refers to an organization in which members are engaged in constant learning and applying new knowledge to improve the quality of product or service. These organizations encourage employees to think out of box, try out new ways of doing things, sharing knowledge, and challenging one another, as a result, they always reinvent themselves and maintain successful. This construct was well received by American companies, and many companies become more willing to provide resource in employee training and development. Many companies open universities, provide tuition reimbursement, and create intranet to promote employee learning. However, when this concept gained its popularity in China, almost everyone started to use this term in all kind of situations, and push it to the extreme. For example, I saw ¡§learning family¡¨, ¡§learning school¡¨, ¡§learning government¡¨, and even ¡§learning China¡¨ in Chinese newspapers, magazines or business forums. While at the same time, when I ask whether their companies actually provide tuition reimbursement to employees, almost none of them said yes.

Similar phenomenon occurs in the management research filed. For example, people often ask me what¡¦s hot in today¡¦s management research. They want to find out what¡¦s hot and popular, and assume what¡¦s hot is what¡¦s ¡§advanced¡¨; some also assume that there is ¡§advanced vs. backward¡¨ statistical methods, and only use the ¡§popular¡¨ statistical tools (e.g., hierarchical regression, HLM) in their research to increase its likelihood to be published. They forget that methods are tools used for the purpose of the research, they do not have meanings by themselves.

In my view, the salience of such phenomenon in the Chinese culture can be explained by the Theory of Reasoned Action (Ajzon & Fishbein, 1980). This theory posits that people are rational and they engage in deep analysis before taking an action. There are two main factors they take into consideration. One is their own attitude toward such action, the other is their perception of the social norm, or ¡§what others will perceive me if I do such a thing¡¨. When these two factors are consistent and positive, they will take action without hesitation. However, when these two factors are not consistent, whether they follow their attitude or their perception of the social norm becomes unclear. Research findings from cross-cultural research suggest that there exists cultural difference in predicting behavior. In countries that emphasize individualism such as the U.S., Canada, or Australia, majority of people will rely on their own attitude to make a decision, whereas in countries that emphasize collectivism such as China, Japan, or Korea, people are more likely to follow the social norm in determining behavior. Therefore, in collective and relationship-oriented cultures, individual behavior to a large extent reflects the superficial value orientation of the society, rather than the values he/she strongly identified with. Therefore, for scholars who live and grow up in a collectivist culture, they need to make a greater effort and experience more internal struggle to keep independent thinking and pursue what they are really interested in studying than scholars who live in a more individualistic culture.

There are a few consequences for chasing fad or pursuing popular topics. One is the short-term success. You studied something hot, used popular research methods or statistical tools, made good impression on the reviewers, and published your papers. But in the long run, because hot topics change fast (today OCB, tomorrow emotional contagion; today competitive advantage, tomorrow creativity and innovation), if for some reason you cannot keep up with the change and do not possess all cutting-edge knowledge of these hot topics, it will be extremely difficult to maintain a good publication record. Of course, a more serious consequence is the loss of your personal identity. After decades of research, even yourself might get confused about what exactly your research stream is, what you are known for, because you have not established a consistent image as a scholar. Moreover, those who always follow to pursue hot topics will never become the leader of a research stream, or an innovator of a new research paradigm, as a result, their contribution to management science will be very limited.

Therefore, without independent thinking a person is not likely to become an outstanding scholar.

3. Approaches to Developing Independent Thinking

Understanding the power of minority. Assume that you and your colleagues are discussing a research idea about studying the collective turnover phenomenon. Your colleagues all suggested use the notion of ¡§job embeddedness¡¨ to study this, but you thought that some other factors might have more predictive power, for example, the charisma of the team leader, conformity of the members, or company policy. But from discussion, you felt that your colleagues thought that job embeddedness was a relatively new concept, and there has been studies supporting it, so if you use this concept, it would increase the probability for your paper to be accepted. Nobody raised any objections. What would you do then?

Psychologists have studied individual behavior in groups for many years. The most classic one are the series experiments conducted by Asch (1951). Asch had a basic assumption before the experiment, that is, U.S. is a society with a strong individualistic orientation and with an emphasis on independence; individuals are more likely to insist on their own thinking and less likely to be influenced by others. Therefore when facing a simple task with a group of strangers, people will give independent and correct answer. So he designed a simple judgmental task of line length. To his surprise he found that even though 25% of the participants could always gave a correct answer, over 70% of the participants will follow others¡¦ incorrect answer at least once.

If I use this research finding to predict your behavior in your discussion with colleagues, it is very likely that you will keep your mouth shut and go along with your colleagues¡¦ decision. It is not surprising that the conformitive behavior is more likely to appear in societies that emphasize interpersonal harmony, especially when you are with your work colleagues. However, in studying conformity, Asch also found something quite unexpected.

Asch found that when people who express their opinions before a person all said the same thing, its effect on this person¡¦s conformity is the strongest. To further find out the group size effect, he experimented with 1, 2, 3, ¡K to 14 members with unanimous responses or not. It showed that when there is one person expresses a different view, even when all the other 13 people expressed the same view, the likelihood of conformity decreased dramatically. More interestingly, the effect remained the same even when the one person kept silence! Later, other researchers replicated the same phenomenon, and further discovered that the person with a different view could destroy the majority¡¦s consensus, and give courage to those who originally did not dare to express different views. This is the opposite of the conformity, and I call it ¡§the power of one dissident¡¨.

There is a famous American movie called The Twelve Angry Men that told a story about how one jury member who believed the innocence of the defendant convinced the other eleven jurors who all believed that the defendant was guilty. It took two hours in the movie to complete this process, and the actor played this ¡§minority¡¨ juror was Henry Fonda. This movie is now collected in American Congress Library as a ¡§National Treasure Movie¡¨. From what happened in history, we also know a lot of cases where the ¡§minority¡¨ influenced the majority and changed the course of history forever. Galileo, Darwin, Marx, and Einstein once were all ¡§minorities¡¨, it was the courage they had to express their views that changed majority¡¦s perception and understanding of the world, and eventually become main stream; hence the power of the minority.

So when you find that the topics that interest you are ¡§minority topics¡¨, or when you discover that your perspectives are completely different from others¡¦, do not be scared or discouraged. It is possible that when you speak up your mind with a trembling voice, it gives courage to people after you to express their ¡§minority views¡¨. Your action is not just influenced by others, it can influence others too. The influence exerted from majority to minority could be similar as the influence exerted from minority to majority, it is a process of mutual influence.

Under what circumstances will the minority¡¦s voice be actually heard by the majority and get their attention? Research shows two crucial conditions: (1) the minority opinion needs to be highly consistent. For example, your colleagues all thought that ¡§job embeddedness¡¨ is a viable concept to be used in your study, but you saw a lot of problems and raised your concern. At first, they are likely to ignore you because your view is just too far away from them. However in the second meeting and third meeting you again raise your concern and provide more evidence to prove that your concern is valid, then they may really start to pay attention. (2) the minority¡¦s attitude should not be too rigid. For example, when you question the usefulness of using ¡§job embeddedness¡¨ to explain the collective turnover phenomenon, your colleagues provide many reasons to explain why this is the case, but you do not listen and insist that you are right, then your influence on them will be very limited. In contrast, if you express that you understand their logic and believe their data, but also emphasize the reasonableness of your opinion, you will be able to influence them more.

Another interesting research finding is, even though conformity happens all the time, it does not mean that the individuals who conform really accept the majority¡¦s opinion. In most cases, they conform to fit to the group, and to be accepted by others. Once the pressure of being accepted is lifted, they will go back to their original position. On the other hand, in the process of minority influence on the majority, the opposite happens. Minority is often lonely, even a few individuals in the majority agrees with them, they dare not express under pressure. But minority¡¦s opinion will certainly challenge the majority¡¦s thinking and force them to look at things from different perspectives. This thinking will take some time, but once they could see the logic and rationale behind the minority¡¦s position, they are more likely to accept and identify with their views.

Therefore, by keeping in mind the power of minority, it could help us to hold on the belief of independent thinking.

4. Transforming outside pressure into intrinsic motivation

I often hear complaints from my colleagues or doctoral student: too much pressure! Asking them what the pressure is, they identified publication. For professors who have not got tenure, if they do not publish enough, they will not get promoted, thus no job security. For doctoral students, if they do not publish, they might not be able to graduate. This external pressure made doing and publishing research a great pain rather than fun, and also made it difficult to come up with new and fresh ideas. To deal with pressure, some chose to add one moderating variable and write a paper, then add another mediating variable in existing theoretical model and write a different paper.

A friend of mine told me her pressure. Her department just had a new director who was extremely interested in charity work, and often does fundraising in the office. For example, he asks them to donate old clothes to people in the earthquake, asks them to ¡§adopt¡¨ orphans, and donate money to the ¡§hope schools¡¨. She said she is a loving and caring person, and wish everyone has a good life. But if she keeps donating money to charity while need to take care of her own family, it creates some financial problems for her. But even though she has some reservations, she still participated in all these activities to deal with the external pressure and to maintain her director¡¦s face.

This story reminds me another story about an office manager. This manager is not into charities, but is a workaholic. He came to office at 7am every morning, and leave office after 9pm every evening. He works hard and uses the same criteria in treating his subordinates. Even though he did not explicitly tells others to stay in office late, to his surprise, he found that most of the subordinates stay until he leaves. What he does not is, the main reason that others do not leave is because he is still there.

If we move our focus from the supervisor to the subordinates, we can see the pressure they need to deal with. Even though the pressure sometimes is not directly related to work, and it is from supervisors whose behavior reflects their own interest, belief, and work style; this pressure is real to subordinates. In a culture in which conformity and obedience are expected, one needs to have special courage to resist such pressure.

It is similar in the academic field. When your department chair requires you to publish as much as fast as possible while does not care what your research topic is, or what methodology you use, it is likely that produce pressure on you so that you would like to find shortcut to publish, rather than focusing on the topics of your real interest and developing theories with depth, since it usually takes many years. Under these circumstances it is also very difficult to resist pressure.

Personally I like the methods used by some companies in encouraging employees to care for the public good. They do not force, but provide incentives and choices. For example, Microsoft has a ¡§matching policy¡¨ for all employees who make donations (money or time) to non-profit organizations or charities. If an employee donates $600 to Red Cross, Microsoft would donate $600 to match, this way, Red Cross actually receives $1200. Every year Microsoft spends $60 million on this alone.

A method like this can actually evoke one¡¦s intrinsic motivation to care for public welfare or charity, its effect is positive and sustainable. In fact, this principle applies to the academic field as well, and is consistent with the essence of the ¡§self-determination theory¡¨. Self-determination theory posits that individuals have the need for autonomy, when a person¡¦s behavior is driven by his/her intrinsic forces, the motivation is the strongest. When the pressure is from outside, there will be several reactions to it: reject, accept, identify, and internalize. With rejection or superficial acceptance, one has to complete a task, and don¡¦t see much meaning associated with the task. With identification and internalization, one actually transforms outside pressure to intrinsic motivation, and regards work as a necessary component of self-realization, thus happily work hard. Research has shown that behaviors driven by external pressure are likely to disappear once such pressure is lifted; whereas behaviors driven by ¡§internalization of pressure¡¨ are unlikely to change with the changes of the external environment. Therefore, the spirit of independent thinking can be fostered through the internalization of ¡§conducting research to discover truth and reveal underlying mechanisms is what I called for¡¨.

5. Listening with an Open Mind

Sometimes I find that when people have different views or interpretations about a person or an incident, it is not because they have different values or criteria, but because they have different information about this person or incident. For example, the impression/ judgment we make about a celebrity is based on what we read from newspapers or magazines, while the people who are very close to this celebrity might have very different views. In such a case, it is likely that we will modify our impression based on insider information.

The interesting thing is, however, in many situations, once we form an impression about a person or an incident, we often do not like to get new information to adjust our evaluation, especially when this new information challenges the judgment one already made. Social psychologist Gary Stassor and colleagues have studied the information sharing process in group decision making for many years and found the ¡§information sampling¡¨ phenomenon. In their classical experiment, they formed 3-person groups to make a decision about who was the best candidate for president of a student association. They first ask them to read the candidates background information individually, then put them in the 3-person group to discuss and make a decision. There were 3 candidates: A, B, and C, and the information about each candidate is shown below:

They created three experimental conditions: (1) all group members have all information, (2) some information is shared by all members¡Xcommon information while other information is owned by only one group member¡Xunique information. For example, common information is A (2 positive, 2 negative), B (2 positive, 2 neutral), C (4 negative), and unique information is 1 positive and 1 negative from each candidate, and (3) only 2 positive information about candidate is shared, all of the other information is unique.

After each subjects individually studied the information they received, they were put into a 3-person group. Theoretically, during group discussion all information will be discussed (no matter it was common or unique information) and shared, therefore, all group decisions will be the same, i.e., A will be the best candidate.

What they found however, was something quite different. Only groups in condition (1) chose A, whereas majority groups in condition (2) chose B, and groups in condition (3) had different choices! Based on the content analysis of the videotaped group discussion, they found that contrary to what we would have expected that the unique information should catch attention during discussion, the information that was discussed the most, over and over again, was the common information! In other words, the information received before group discussion somehow had a great effect on members¡¦ judgment, and this judgment influenced how they process information during group discussion. Two conclusions may be drawn from this research:

• When people get the same information, they make similar judgments, indicating that the judgment criteria are similar; whereas when they get different information, even with similar criteria, they make different judgment.

• Once a person made a judgment based on the available information, it is likely that this person will disregard new information not consistent with his/her judgment.

Therefore, when we hear different views or opinions, do not immediately assume that was because we have different value systems or judgment criteria, it is very much likely that it was because we had different information/facts/evidence. Independent thinking requires us to treat all information with equal weight, which will help us make more rational and accurate judgment. So listen and listen carefully with an open mind.

6. Developing Passion for Research

A few colleagues of mine are world renowned management scholars, they have researched many interesting phenomena, published hundreds of articles, and earned great respect in the field. Out of curiosity, I asked them what made them work so hard and be so productive. Their answers were surprisingly similar, that is, they are passionate about what they study. It is this passion that drives them continue working hard after they get tenure; it is this passion that sustains their exploration of different research field and produces their unique views and thoughts; and it is this passion that brings them great satisfaction in publishing articles, and ignore the ¡§fame¡¨ or ¡§external reward¡¨ associated with publishing.

It is interesting to see the connection between a person¡¦s passion about a research topic and the depth of his/her observation and insights regarding the topic. Often times I hear my students say that the most difficult time during their doctoral study is when they need to choose a topic for their dissertation. Sometimes even after they made a choice of topic, every time they need to think more about the topic, they feel pain. I sometimes joke to them, if this research topic brings you such pain, you¡¦d better stop now rather than later. It appears to me that they are in the strange circle of doing research for research, rather than doing research for the love of discovering something interesting, something that has not be revealed before, and something that really intrigues them. Without passion for the topic you study, it will be difficult to think deep and offer insights, thus limiting one¡¦s potential contribution to the field.

I would like to share my personal experience here. I still remember the first time I read an article on social dilemma written by David Messick and colleagues, that was 1986, I was a master¡¦s student at Hangzhou University. In the article, they described the resource dilemma and studied when many group members overuse resources, the need for leader emerges. I was absolutely elated and stunned about the complexity of the dilemma, and couldn¡¦t stop thinking about it (obsessionƒº. I needed to choose a research topic for my master¡¦s thesis at that time, so without a doubt, I chose social dilemma. I designed my own experiment, recruited subjects by going to classrooms ask for volunteers, and borrowed a conference room as my laboratory. I remember the great sense of exploration and adventure I had at that time, it was the very first social psychological experiment ever done in the history of our department. It was like a dream.

For the same reason, I felt great excitement after I arrived in University of Illinois and found out that Professor Komorita was conducting social dilemma experiment. During the years of my doctoral study, I kept thinking about one question: in a social dilemma situation where there is a conflict between maximizing personal interest and maximizing collective interest, what will be effective means to induce group members to cooperate and contribute to the group. I think about this when I¡¦m in class or when I sleep, when I walk or when I eat. Sometimes ideas will come to me when I wake up in the middle of the night. More interestingly, I notice that I also start to use the social dilemma perspective to observe things and I could ¡§see¡¨ many things that I do not see before. For example, issues related to team cooperation, strategic alliance, air pollution, over lumbering, population control, recycling, even corruption, could be analyzed using the social dilemma perspective. Thinking about these issues becomes an automatic process of my brain; I do not need to tell it to think, it thinks on its own. It was this kind of ¡§obsession¡¨ and deep thinking that produced many research ideas and insights to this problem, and later I conducted many studies to find the answers to the question and published many articles on this topic.

In fact, many management scholars are ¡§obsessed¡¨ with what they study. For example Jean Brett studies negotiation, adopts the negotiation approach to other phenomena, and constantly discovers the factors that would influence the negotiation process such as individual characteristics and cognition and cultural factors. Almost all of her published articles is related to negotiation. Zhang Weiying is another example; his ¡§obsession¡¨ with game theory is evident from all of the books and articles he published. He uses game theory to explain all kinds of problems existed in the Chinese society such as personal property, law and regulation, company reputation, and interpersonal trust, and provide a lot of insights to the understanding of the nature of the problems, and possible solutions.

Toshio Yamagishi is another scholar who is completely passionate about his own research. His early research was related to social dilemma, and proposed the structural and motivational approaches as solutions to social dilemma. Under the structural approach, he was the first to study how the sanction system works to promote cooperation. Later he moved back to Japan (from UW) and started to research the differences in the trust mechanism between the Americans and Japanese, and proposed a theory that is very different from what Fukuyama suggested about why Japanese has high levels of general trust. He posits that the high level of general trust between the Japanese can be explained by the sanctioning system in Japan. That is, there is closed social network in the Japanese society, anyone who violates the norm will be sanctioned (e.g., reputation loss). If you remove such sanction by putting a Japanese person into a group of complete strangers, the general trust level will be dramatically reduced. I visited him in 2006 and had several dinners with him, and he told me about his new experiment on trust with so much excitement and enthusiasm. He is studying the trust between people from different countries and regions, for example, how much trust there is between a mainland Chinese and a Chinese from Taiwan, between a mainland Chinese and a Japanese, and between a Japanese and a Chinese from Taiwan, and how that trust influences their communication and behavioral interaction. He also showed me his laboratory and asked me to go through his whole experiment. Even thought he does not have animated facial expressions when he talks to you, you could clearly feel his passion inside. It is this passion that leads him to pursue research for his life, to think independently, and to leave his mark in the scientific endeavor.

Therefore, I conclude that independent thinking is a path to outstanding scholarship. To elevate this idea to the organization level, I feel that an extraordinary academic association such as IACMR should also possess the spirit of independent thinking. Of course, the manifestation of independent thinking at the organization level will be different from that at the individual level, here¡¦s what I envision:

• It is an organization with paramount goals that will evoke a strong sense of meaning for work and research in its members

• It is an organization with high level of ethical standards, unmoved by what is ¡§popular¡¨ or ¡§trendy¡¨, but insist on doing good (not just not doing evil) for knowledge creation and dissemination under any circumstances

• It is an organization that promotes freedom of thinking, encourages members challenge old ways of doing things, encourages members to debate each other, learn from each other, and creates and develops new theory and knowledge

• It is an organization that provides support and resources to its members to help them develop and grow, and become more useful to the society.

To some extent I feel that IACMR has been shaping into an organization of those characteristics. Our motto is: source of inspiration, spirit of service, and commitment to excellence. Looking back, in the short 6-year history of IACMR, every step we took, every decision we made, and everything we did, was a result of following the motto; it becomes the gene (or DNA) of IACMR. As the president of IACMR, I take pride of what we do and what we have achieved so far. And I would like to thank the dedication and support from our executive team members and hundreds of volunteers. Let us work together and work harder to get IACMR to the next higher level!

Thank you!

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