As Long As It Catches Mice: The Red Hat Strategy in China's Private Enterprises
Institutional gaps and frictions encourage firms in transitional economies to build a diversified portfolio of property rights regime. In China, private-owned enterprises develop the red hat strategy. They disguise the private ownership by maintaining a formal status of state-owned or collective-owned enterprises. Drawing on a national representative survey, the paper investigates how institutional factors affect the adoption and abandonment of the red hat strategy in China's private sector.

"It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice." Deng Xiaoping
 

 
A Multilevel Analysis of Network Effects: Chinese Private Enterprises during Market Transition
Based on a multilevel analysis of Chinese private enterprises, I argue that on average, social networks do help private firms improve economic performance through legitimating status and securing financial resources, raw materials and sales market; and those who have optimal combinations of both network and market ties have better performance than those who mainly rely on network ties; while the latter firms also do a better job than those who mainly rely on market ties, other things being equal. I also argue that when we take contexts into consideration, we will have a brand new picture for network effects. That is, networks help private firms improve economic performance more when the private sector is still weak than after this sector has become strong. Also, network effects are found to have negative relations with economic development in the environment. The results show a tendency of convergence between reforming China and market-developed countries.
 

 
Making Informed Decisions in International Construction Joint Ventures
This paper is aimed to address the concern of managing the stability and  survival of partnership in International Construction Joint Venture (ICJV). The paper content is derived from the author’s study of determinants of performance with data gathered from 240 Singapore registered major construction companies. This paper discusses the interaction among key determinants and relates them to the importance of making early and informed decisions by monitoring the attributes that evolve in partnership. The findings suggest that under a time-limited project environment, stability and survival of partnership need to be carefully managed and reinforced on tangible terms, which serve as common valence in garnering cooperation and commitment among partners. Reaching for a common purpose among members seems to provide this critical valence, which precedes true commitment, forms a proxy for the survival of the ensuing partnership.
 

 
Mapping the Research on Success Factors for Managing International Joint Ventures in China
The literature on success factors of managing international joint ventures (IJV) especially with regard to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is wide and varied but shows some gaps. In order to grasp what is actually known and to direct future research we carry out a meta-analysis of relevant articles published in major academic journals in the period from 1991 to 2001. We first identify and categorize applicable research papers. We then analyze and synthesize the empirical findings of the most relevant contributions into a comprehensive model showing factors affecting the success of IJVs in the PRC. We thus aim to make a contribution to the mapping of the territory for Chinese management research.
 

 
Psychological Contracts and their Cultural Value Antecedents
A five-category framework of employee expectations was constructed and tested using samples from Singapore and China. A set of cultural values were measured and linked to the expectations. It was found that achievement orientation was associated with employee expectations on career motivation, job motivation, and the context of inter-personal relationships. Collectivism was associated with expectations on relationships. Paternalism was associated with expectations concerning benefits and employee well-being. The cross-sub-sample comparison on expectation, values, and value-expectation linkage found many similarities between the two Chinese societies. Discrepancies were also highlighted. Directions for future research were suggested.
 

 
Effects of Psychological Contract and Power Distance on Important Organizational Outcomes: An Examination Among Chinese Knowledge Workers
In a field study conducted in China, we examined the impacts of the psychological contract and power distance on organizational commitment, and in turn, on organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) and turnover intention. Data from the 255 knowledge workers and their immediate supervisors suggested that: (a) both psychological contracts and power distance were related to different dimensions of organizational commitment; (b) while continuance commitment had a direct negative effect on OCBs, the effects of affective and normative commitment on OCBs were moderated by employee perceptions of psychological contract violation; and (c) affective and normative commitment were negatively related to turnover intention.
 

 
Who Contributes to Organizational Social Capital? - A Network-Structural Study in Chinese Cultural Settings

In this paper, I examine which structural positions in which types of networks will generate organizational social capital (OSC). Both dimensions of objective associations and general trust are included as the two basic elements of OSC. The finding suggests that an individual's go-between position in advice networks is important, and the central position in friendship networks also shows significant effects. They mainly influence objective associations, which generate trust and information sharing behaviors with others.
 

 
Self-Interest-based Reciprocation and Affect Consideration in Favor Accounting
This literature examines two interaction effects in the decision of reciprocation of a favor. The first interaction effect shows that when the reference information is absent, reciprocation is decided based on the decision-maker’s self-interest. The giver will concern his cost more than the recipient’s benefit when deciding the expected reciprocation magnitude; the recipient will pay more attention to his benefit more than to the giver’s cost when deciding the reciprocation he would like to give. The second interaction effect is that the recipient will consider the affect factors—the giver’s cost—more when the reference information is available than when the reference information is absent. That is, when the recipient evaluates the favor, the giver’s cost will weight more than the recipient’s benefit when the reference information is available; and the recipient’s benefit will weight more than the giver’s cost when the reference information is absent.
 

 
Effects of Staff Localization on Firm Performance in China
This paper examined the form of the localization-performance relationship as moderated by environmental uncertainty.  We postulated that the positive impact of staff localization on firm performance only continues to a certain point.  Beyond this point, the costs of a high degree of staff localization outweigh the benefits.  The negative effect of an increase in localization beyond an optimal point is expected to be stronger under the condition of high environmental uncertainty.  Both the curvilinear relationship and the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty are confirmed through the survey results of 111 MNC subsidiaries operating in China.  
 

 
The Impact of FDI on Performance in Chinese State Enterprises: The Role of Management Decentralization
The research tests the hypothesis that centralization within a Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) interacts with (or moderates) industry foreign direct investment (FDI) in predicting performance. The results show that when industry FDI is low, centralized SOEs outperform decentralized and moderately decentralized SOEs. But when industry FDI is high, moderately decentralized SOEs outperform both centralized and decentralized SOEs. These results have significant implications for SOE managers and reform-minded policy makers.
 

 
Collaboration with Service Intermediaries, Technological Innovation and Performance in Chinese New Technology Ventures
New technology ventures in industrial parks tend to have close collaborations with service intermediaries (e.g., law, accounting and talent search firms). Different from other types of collaborations, collaborations with service intermediaries may not provide direct inputs to new ventures’ technological innovation. In this study, drawing upon the resource-based view, we develop a resource acquisition-reallocation framework to examine the relationships between such collaborations and technological innovation and performance. This framework suggests that as new ventures collaborate with service intermediaries on peripheral activities, they can focus scarce resources on their core activity such as technological innovation. With a sample of 202 new ventures in China’s high technology industries, we find that collaboration with service intermediaries is positively related to new ventures’ technological innovation, and such a positive relationship becomes weaker when founding team size is larger and industry growth is higher. In addition, we find that technological innovation mediates the relationship between collaboration with service intermediaries and new venture performance. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.
 

 
Are Work Values Changing? A Longitudinal Study of China, Hong Kong, and the US 
In 1989, we collected data that compared the managerial work values of managers in Shanghai, China, Hong Kong (S.A.R.), and the northeastern region of the U.S. Twelve years later, in 2001, we replicated that study in the same locations with samples that were as demographically similar to the first data collection as possible. In this paper, we report the findings of that replication on the managerial work values across those three locations. Additionally, we present a Time 1 (1989) – Time 2 (2001) comparison of what has changed and what has remained the same across this period that has seen relative stability in the U.S. and substantial change in Hong Kong, with perhaps even more change in China. Please note that all data were collected prior to the events of September 11, 2001. The findings indicate that the U.S. responses have been remarkable stable over this period, with no statistically changes identified. Conversely, we found a number of significant changes in the responses to this survey in both Hong Kong and Shanghai, China. These changes appear to reflect, in large part, the socio-political changes experienced in these locations over this 12-year period that saw the repatriation of Hong Kong by China. In essence, the findings suggest a regional (or, within Chinese cultures) converging of values, while also indicating a diverging of values across the Anglo-Asian cultures. These findings are interesting in that, not only do they make some degree of sense intuitively, but they also are consistent with a constrained definition of convergence. Alternatively, these finding are contrary to other recent research that has indicated a tendency for converging, or at a minimum crossverging, values across Asian and Anglo societies. An implication is that the dynamics within these transitioning Asian societies is ripe for further exploration and analysis.
 

 
The Change of Guanxi Closeness in Chinese Organizations: An Explorative Study
Adopting a dynamic view of guanxi, this research studies how the quality of guanxi changes as a function of the existing guanxi closeness between two parties and the newly occurred work and non-work related incidents/ behaviors in organizational settings.  We proposed a model of guanxi quality change and tested four hypotheses regarding the moderating effect of existing guanxi quality on the relationship between newly occurred incidents/behaviors and the changes in guanxi quality. Three studies were conducted to (a) establish the construct domain of a quality guanxi, (b) identify the work and non-work related incidents/ behaviors that would enhance or weaken guanxi quality, and (c) test the hypotheses derived from the model of guanxi quality change.
 

 
Internal vs External Successions and Their Antecedents: An Empirical Study of Chinese Unofficial Enterprises
Prior executive succession study on China’s enterprises has been inconclusive, and studies suffer from validity threat of ignoring the complexity of China’s firms in the transition context. This study uses 172 succession events of Chinese unofficial enterprises over one year period to investigate the antecedents of top management successor type. Results indicate that the type of dominant shareholder is strongly correlated with the successor type. Nonsymmetrical effect of performance is found for organizations with inside dominant shareholder and firms with outside dominant shareholder. The results of this study call into question past research findings based on models without considering dominant shareholder.
 

 
Will you Choose Money
Monetary incentives may be the most commonly used strategy to improve performance or elicit the willingness in the management science. This paper analyzes that monetary incentives may be less effective under both the situation of small-scale compensation and the situation of large-scale. We employ 4 experiments to compare the effectiveness of monetary incentives, non-cash incentives and no compensation. The result shows that when the money offered is a small amount, it is less effective than no compensation; when the money offered is a large amount, it is less effective than the non-cash incentive equaled in the monetary value. Several possible interpretations of the results are discussed. Practical implications are also provided.
 

 
Beyond Organizational Commitment: The Effects of Loyalty to Supervisor and Perception of Social Norm on Employee Organizational Behavior and Turnover
In this study we hypothesized that loyalty to supervisor is a distinct concept than organizational commitment in the Chinese context and that it would exert unique influence on employee organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and turnover.  We also hypothesized that due to the relation-oriented nature of the Chinese society, social norm would play an important role in determining employee OCB and turnover in addition to organizational commitment (a work-related attitude). Data from two hundred and three supervisor-subordinate dyads of seven organizations in People’s Republic of China indicated that both loyalty to supervisor and perceived social norm had unique effects on employee OCB and turnover after controlling the effects for organizational commitment.  Specifically, we found that the effects of loyalty to supervisor were harmful to organizations:  it had negative effects on employee OCB but positive effects on employee turnover.   Moreover, we found significant effects of perceived social norm on OCB and turnover, i.e., the perception of others’ negative behavior had negative effects on employee OCB whereas the perception of others’ positive behavior had negative effects on employee turnover.   The implications of these findings for future Chinese management research and practices are discussed.
 

 
Open-minded Discussion in China: Field and Experimental Studies on Social Face Dynamics 
Chinese people have  been theorized to be particularly sensitive to social face and avoid direct discussion in conflict to promote interpersonal harmony. Social face has been used to explain the proclivity of East Asians to smooth over conflict. More research is needed to study social face empirically and its relationship with direct discussion and the processes by which social face has its impact. Results from a field interview study and an experiment conducted in China support theorizing that confirmation of face induces cooperative goals and open-mindedness. In contrast with common assumptions about Chinese organizations, direct discussion, compared to avoiding, strengthened relationships. Direct controversy, especially when face was confirmed, induced open-mindedness: Participants asked more questions, explored the opposing views, demonstrated more knowledge of the opposing arguments, and worked to integrate views. These results were interpreted as suggesting that Chinese people can discuss their conflicts directly and cooperatively when they are assured that their face is confirmed. Results have implications both for the general theory of cooperation and competition as well as our understanding of social face in China.
 

 
The Role of Gender in the Life Stress among Chinese Employees
As two primary spheres of adult life, work and family influence the life stress of employees. On the basis of theories of gender role ideology and self-identity of stress, we predicted that there are gender differences in the perception of work versus family demands among Chinese employees and that gender moderates the relationship between family/work demands and the life stress of Chinese employees. In a sample of 239 Chinese employees, we found no significant gender differences in the perception of work and family demands. However, while family demands were associated more strongly with life stress for Chinese women than for men, work demands were associated more strongly with life stress for Chinese men than for women. Overall, our research suggests the utility of gender role ideology and self-identity theory of stress in examining the life stress of employees.
 

 
The Relationship Between Organizational Justice and Organizational Citizenship Behavior in the People's Republic of China and the United States
As the People’s Republic of China (PRC) enters the World Trade Organization, it is important to better understand various factors affecting employee behavior in the PRC and in PRC companies worldwide.  This study examines the relationship between two forms of organizational justice – distributive and procedural justice (as rated by employees) – and five dimensions of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) (as rated by supervisors) in both the PRC and the U.S.  Our results showed that country differences regarding the effects of organizational justice on OCB depend on the specific type of OCB under investigation.  We discuss implications for theory and practice.
 

 
Entry mode choice and its impact on performance: A financial management approach
This paper applies the financial management approach to analyze the entry mode choices by multinationals. The analytical model developed leads to several testable hypotheses. Using a database of foreign investment in China, we find that the hypothesized effects on entry modes are largely supported. We also find that foreign investment projects whose modes are selected according to the prescription of the model are more successful than those whose modes are selected otherwise.
 

 
Multifaceted Conceptions of Supervisor-Subordinate Ratings Disagreement on One Organizational Citizenship Behavior Scale
Supervisor-subordinate ratings disagreement is the extent to which supervisors’ ratings of something (e.g. performance) differs from ratings made by subordinates. As increasing number of researchers are interested on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), supervisor-subordinate ratings disagreement on OCB is becoming a central concern owing to mixed and conflicting results. Most past researches, however, only examine the disagreement in terms of levels of ratings, and ignore other forms of disagreement. This paper identifies 7 different forms of supervisor-subordinate ratings disagreement that are detectable through the use of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The causes for each form of disagreement are discussed, as well as its conceptual and practical implications. The procedure is illustrated by simulation data of 300 supervisors’ ratings on OCB with their subordinates’ ratings.