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Message From The President

IACMR Conference News

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IACMR Newsletter

The IACMR Newsletter is a bilingual newsletter published by the International Association for Chinese Management Research to facilitate the communication between the association and its members as well as to stimulate the dialogue among researchers in the field of Chinese Management. It appears on a quarterly basis.

Newsletter Editors

Zhen Xiong Chen, The Australian National University (Editor-in-Chief)
Josh Keller, University of Texas at Austin, USA (English Version)
Jie Gui, Institute of Scientific & Technical Information of China (Chinese Version)

Contributions

Contributions to the newsletter should be sent to Mr Red Ng at: iacmr@asu.edu. Submission deadlines are listed at the end of this newsletter. Please limit all submissions to less than 300 words, and do not extensively format documents for publication.

Feedback

Feedback and comments with regard to the newsletter can be sent to Red Ng at iacmr@asu.edu .

Becoming a member of IACMR

The Power of Integration and Collaboration

A globalized economy is more of a reality than a fantasy in today’s world. If we look closely, we will find that the companies that are doing well on the global stage are not just those who own core technologies, secret recipes, or financial resources, but also those who are good at collaborating with companies across borders, or who are good at integrating resources at all levels. Boeing, Dell, and Walmart are all great examples that demonstrate the power of integration and collaboration.

We all know that Boeing makes wonderful airplanes. However, even though the final assembly of an airplane is conducted at a Boeing facility in the US, many components of the airplane are actually made by other companies, and the core technology involved in those components are not owned by Boeing. Let’s take the Boeing 777 jet airliner as an example. Eight Japanese suppliers make parts for the fuselage, doors, and wings, a supplier in Singapore makes the doors for the nose landing gear, and three suppliers in Italy manufacture wing flaps. Approximately 30% of the 777, by value, is built by foreign companies. For its next jet airliner, the 787, Boeing is pushing this trend even further, with app. 65% of the total value of the aircraft scheduled to be outsourced to foreign companies, 35% of which will go to three major Japanese companies (Pritchard, 2004). In this sense, the role Boeing plays in the aircraft making process changes from the single designer and manufacturer to an architect who designs and lays out the whole plan for the aircraft, a leader who integrates all kinds of resources, and a middleman who coordinates and collaborates with many companies to make the entire plan work out. The role change requires the company to develop new capabilities: it is no longer enough to manage effectively internally, the company also needs to possess the ability to communicate and collaborate externally to be able to create more value for self and for others.

If part of Boeing’ success is still relying on its core technology in making aircrafts, the success of Dell would depend on its ability to integrate. Dell does not own any technology in making components for a computer. All components are made by app. 400 companies all over the world, with 30 major companies located in Asia (e.g., Japan, China, The Philippines, and Malaysia). Dell sells 140-150,000 computers every day, and every computer needs to be custom-made to buyers’ specifications (Friedman, 2006). How to get parts from its suppliers all over the world, assemble them, and send them to customers on time, requires tremendous effort in communication, coordination, collaboration and integration. In this case, Dell plays the role of a conductor for a symphony in making sure that the suppliers in its global supply chain will play at the appropriate time, in appropriate loudness, and at the appropriate speed, so the whole symphony will always sound melodic, harmonious, and beautiful.

Of course the best example of successful integration and collaboration happens inside our beloved organization, IACMR. We have a global executive team with officers from all over the world. For example, our Newsletter editor-in-chief is in Australia, with two assistants located in China and the U.S. Our 2008 Conference Program Chair is in Canada, our local arrangement committee for the conference is in China, our PDW chair is in Finland, and our China Forum chair is in China. Our webmaster team works in China and the U.S. The editorial team members of our journal MOR are from US, UK, Spain, Hong Kong, mainland China and so on. We communicate with one another through emails and telephone calls. Even though we work in different time zones, we respond to each other’s request quickly. It is through global integration and collaboration that we have created great products such as conferences, workshops, MOR, Newsletters, books, and research papers. It is through global integration and collaboration that IACMR becomes such a vibrant organization.

Therefore, I strongly encourage research collaboration between our members. With our third biannual conference coming up in June, it will be a great opportunity for us to use the conference as a way to meet new friends, build bridges, and develop new projects. Great benefits will accrue for individuals who are good at integration and collaboration. It will be a rich and rewarding experience for all of us!

January 29, 2008, Seattle, Washington

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2008 IACMR Conference (June 19-22, 2008, Garden Hotel, Guangzhou, PRC)

We are proud to announce that the reviews for the submissions to the Third Biennial Conference of the International Association for Chinese Management Research (IACMR) are complete. All the decision letters for both the English program and the Chinese program have been sent out. If you have not received a letter regarding your submission, please feel free to contact Red Ng (Red.Ng@asu.edu) for the English program and iacmrmembership@pku.edu.cn for the Chinese program immediately.


Below are the highlights of the exciting Conference program:

• Seven keynote panels with distinguished scholars who are major contributors to the management and organization literatures. The themes of the keynote panels are: Strategic Challenges of Chinese firms; Sociological Perspectives on Chinese Organizational Studies; Quality, Trust, Governance, and the Continuing Economic Development of China; Entrepreneurship Research and Challenges; Behavior within Firms: Individuals, Networks, and Context; China Forum Keynote Session; and Management Research in China: Past, Present, and Future Directions. You will also have an opportunity to meet the keynote speakers in the “Meet the Keynote Panel Speakers” conversation session. Details of the keynote sessions are available on the conference website already.

• An English program and a Chinese Forum, which contain 28 English and 20 Chinese papers presentation sessions (including 147 paper presentations), 8 poster presentations session (4 English, 4 Chinese, including 112 poster/interaction paper presentations), and 4 symposia. The papers included in the conference program were selected from 360 submissions. Each paper was reviewed by at least two scholars, and more than 200 scholars contributed to the review process.

• A distinguished executive forum.

• Ten exciting Professional Development Workshops (PDW) and a Caucus session on June 22, including a thesis development workshop, junior faculty workshop, survey research method workshop, case writing workshop, reviewers’ workshop, MOR paper development workshop, and workshop on strategic research in China, all led by distinguished scholars. Please note that you need to sign up for PDWs and apply to have a caucus ahead of time. Please see the PDW page on the conference website for information on applying to the workshops and hold caucuses.

• This will be a wonderful conference with scholars from all over the world who conduct China-related and cross-cultural research. It will provide an excellent opportunity to exchange research ideas, broaden our views, develop new research skills, and meet old and new friends.

Pre-registration Required, No On-site registration, so Register now!

SIf you have not yet registered for the Conference, be sure to register by April 15, 2008 to enjoy the discounted registration fee. Conference registration will close on June 1, 2008. There will be no on-site registration to facilitate better resource management and provide higher quality service. Online registration is available on http://www.iacmr.org.

All Info is on Conference website:
http://www.iacmr.org/iacmr2008/2008_iacmr_conference.htm.
The hotel reservation form is available on the Conference website. Due to limited hotel space with special conference rate, please reserve early. The website also has information about travel and tours.

We look forward to seeing you at the conference in Guangzhou!

Jia Lin Xie, Program Chair

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Management and Organization Review in SSCI

It is our great pleasure to announce that on March 4, 2008, we received official notification that MOR has been selected for ISI coverage in Current Contents/ Social and Behavioral Sciences (CC/S&BS) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), beginning with MOR 4.1 (March 2008). This is an important milestone for MOR and IACMR and will allow MOR to better serve management scholars in China and beyond.

Between January 2005 and January 2008, Management and Organization Review articles were cited in 33 ISI indexed journals, including most of the top ten SSCI Management journals. These include multiple citations in the Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Management, Organization Science, and Journal of Organizational Behavior. This means that articles in MOR are having an impact on research published in the top tier journals. Please continue to disseminate the research published in MOR by citing its articles relevant to your work and by informing others who may not yet know of MOR about the excellent work that has been published in our journal.

A New MOR Special Issue and Caucus at the 2008 IACMR Conference

The Management and Organization Review (MOR) plans to publish a special issue on the topic of ‘Innovations in Public and Non-profit Sector Organizations in China’. We invite submissions that identify, document, analyze, and theorize cases of successful innovations in public and non-profit sector organizations in China. Public and non-profit sector organizations play critical roles in our modern life. Together with for-profit business organizations, they constitute an organizational network that enables the distribution and exercise of public and private functions that facilitate political, economic and social development. In our context, public sector organizations refer to central governmental agencies, state, county, municipal, and township governmental units, and quasi-governmental enterprises. Non-profit organizations include educational and research institutions, professional associations and societies, foundations, long standing community groups, citizen groups, religious groups, and international non-governmental organizations. Innovations are changes made either in administrative process, in service delivery, in institutional reform, or in leadership and organizational culture. Significance, scope, impact, and sustainability of the innovations should be discussed. Manuscripts should discuss the generalizability of the cases in the context of a broad framework of references, and we welcome papers that explore the implications of these innovative measures for China’s sustainable development. The full “Call for Papers” for this special issue is available on the IACMR website and will be in the July 2008 issue of MOR.

The guest editors are G. Zhiyong Lan, Arizona State University, Joseph Galaskiewicz, University of Arizona, and Xianglin Xu, Peking University. They will organize a Caucus at the 2008 IACMR Conference in Guangzhou. The caucus discussion will explore research on this topic, stimulate interests in these questions, and share experience on conducting research in this area. 

Other Special Issues in MOR

We have another new special issue call for papers on the topic of “The Globalization of Chinese Enterprises: Environment, Strategy and Performance”. The guest editors for this issue are Ilan Alon, Rollins College; John Child, Birmingham University; Shaomin Li, Old Dominion University; and John McIntyre, Georgia Institute of Technology. Please see the Call for Papers on the IACMR website (www.iacmr.org) and in MOR 4.1. The submission deadline is May 1, 2009.

Don't forget the impending submission deadline for Special Issue on “Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in China”, guest edited by Phillip Phan (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), Jing Zhou (Rice University) and Eric Abrahamson, Columbia University), is JUNE 1, 2008. You have three months to prepare your manuscripts. We look forward to your enthusiastic submissions.

MOR Volume 4, Issue 1(March 2008)

Volume 4, Issue 1 (March 2008) is here! The issue comprises several interesting and stimulating articles by noteworthy authors. Yiyi Su, Dean Xu, and Phillip H. Phan explore governance conflict and its effect among shareholder groups in Chinese Public corporations. Sean M. Dougherty and Robert H. McGuckin look at how federalism affects Chinese firms’ productivity. Xiao-Ping Chen and Siqing Peng investigate how various incidents can affect Chinese coworkers’ relationships. Barbara Krug and Hans Hendrischke provide a co-evolutionary model for understanding the variance of local business systems in China. Ching Horng and Wayne Chen offer insight into the transition toward own brand management of some manufacturers. This issue gets volume 4 off to a great start, and we hope you’ll enjoy it.

We hope you like “Professor Rat” on the cover of MOR 4.1, painted by Yanhua YU. In the picture, Professor Rat is teaching her pupils an old Chinese philosophy that people are born with kindness. Editor-in-Chief Anne Tsui selected the painting in honour of the Year of the Rat, which is the current Chinese New Year. People born under the sign of the Rat in the Chinese zodiac are charming, ambitious, perseverant, and successful.
Please don’t forget MOR as an outlet for your own artistic work; send your photograph or painting in a (.jpg) file to iacmr.mor@asu.edu, and you could be the next cover artist!

How to Write an Abstract

Do you want to make sure your article gets noticed when people search online? If so, then check out the following link provided by Blackwell on their website for some pointers:
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/bauthor/seo.asp

PLEASE update your address for IACMR and MOR!  

If you are a current member but have not received a recent issue of MOR, more than likely we do not have the correct address for you. We implore you to go to the IACMR online membership directory (www.iacmr.org) to validate that your contact information is complete and accurate. Every issue requires hours from multiple membership staff members to update member addresses, and even after this expenditure of time many issues get lost or returned because the addresses still are not correct.

If you are missing any back issues, please contact the MOR office at ASU (iacmr.mor@asu.edu) for those outside of China and the IACMR office at PKU (iacmr@pku.edu.cn) for those residing in mainland China.

ISI/ SSCI Update

Our application is still open regarding MOR’s inclusion the Institute for Scientific Information’s Social Science Citation Index. Please remember to cite relevant papers in MOR in any of your papers in process or papers appearing in other journals. You can help to disseminate the research published in MOR widely and to inform others who may not yet know of MOR about the excellent work that has been published in our journal.

Manuscript Central Progress Update

Due to the personnel change with the MOR Managing Editor, we have postponed the launch of MOR on Manuscript Central from the planned date of January 1, 2008. We are still looking forward to taking this step with the journal and are excited about streamlining our manuscript submission, reviewing, and tracking processes with Blackwell's internet-based system. Please look for more updates regarding our Manuscript Central progress shortly.

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Focused Workshop on “The Globalization of Chinese Enterprises: Transformational Politics, Business Strategies, and Future Paths”

Harvard University, Cambridge, USA, October 9-10, 2008

Overview

Among scholars and students of China, whether from economics, management or politics, a question looms: whither China? Will China replace the US economic, political and business leadership in the 21st Century? China is not only the world’s most populous nation, but is also the world’s third largest trader, second largest economy in PPP GDP, and the largest recipient of foreign direct investment, surpassing even the United States of America. China has 170 cities with more than 1 million people, 400 million subscribers to wireless phone services, and accounts for over 12% of the world’s luxury goods. Also, China has over a trillion dollars in foreign reserves. On the other hand, China fast economic growth is unbalanced and, perhaps, unsustainable. New or modified models for the globalization of Chinese enterprises are needed given the unique position of China’s emergence into the world stage. Can Western models of economic and political theory help explain China’s current trajectory, either on a macro or a micro level?

Submission

Submitted papers will be double blind reviewed for presentation in the conference. Selected papers from the workshop will also be considered for publication in a Special Issue of Management Organization Review (MOR) expected in early 2009. Papers should follow the author style and referencing guide of MOR [www.blackwellpublishing.com/journals/mor/]. Please email a copy of your paper in MS Word (2003 or earlier) or as a PDF to both Marc Fetscherin marc_fetscherin@ksg.harvard.edu and Ilan Alon ilan_alon@ksg.harvard.edu. The names, affiliations, and contact information (i.e., address, phone, fax, email) of all authors should be noted only on the cover page.

Important Dates

Deadline for Submission: June 1, 2008
Paper acceptance/rejection: July 15, 2008
Revised paper submission: August 15, 2008

Registration Fee

A registration fee of USD 245 includes refreshments, lunch, reception, conference dinners, and a copy of the book Globalization of Chinese Enterprises (Palgrave McMillan, 2007). The registration fee is due August 1, 2008.

Organizational Committee

• Dr. Julian Chang, Executive Director, Asia Programs, Kennedy School, Harvard University
• Dr. Marc Fetscherin, Assistant Professor, Crummer Graduate School of Business, Rollins College, Asia Fellow and Visiting Scholar, Harvard University
• Dr. Ilan Alon, Petters Professor, Director Rollins China Center, Crummer Graduate School of Business, Rollins College, Asia Fellow and Visiting Scholar, Harvard University
• Dr. John R. McIntyre, Professor, Director of Georgia Tech CIBER, Georgia Institute of Technology

This workshop is part of a series of research colloquia, which started in November 2004, organized by GT CIBER and Rollins China Center focusing on Chinese globalization.

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The Chinese Business Enterprise Review is an academic journal published by The Lien Chinese Enterprise Research Centre, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. The objective is to promote in-depth understanding of the latest development of Chinese enterprise management behavior and strategy through use-inspired research, and equip the Chinese entrepreneurs, overseas companies who tend to explore the China market, and scholars who are committed to the research of Chinese Enterprise with insights and ideology of the dynamic and fast-
evolving Chinese business environment. The journal will be published bi-annually in English and Chinese.

We cordially invite academics all over the world to contribute paper on topics of a broad range about Chinese enterprise research in
this publication, but will focus on the four domain areas:

• Enterprise Behavior and Strategy in China
• Great China Entrepreneurship and Venture Creation
• Global Business Management of Chinese Enterprises
• Technology, Innovation Management and Strategy of Chinese Enterprises

In recognition of its sharp content and critical analyses, the Chinese Business Enterprise Review has invited world renowned academics like Professor Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School and Dr Charles Hampden-Turner of Cambridge University as our advisor to ensure the high standard of the journal. We also invited other top scholars of the related domain to join the editorial board. Manuscripts received will be reviewed in –house according to the international recognized process. We will provide a platform in knowledge creation for entrepreneurs, business associates and academics who share a passion to succeed in the exciting times ahead of China’s emerging globalization. Our website: www.ntu-cerc.com

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I am Qing Tao, a professor in Southwest university of Finance and Economics, at the School of Business Administration, am engaged in teaching and research in Human Resources Management. At present, I am in charge of a National Social Sciences Fund which is related to enterprise-labor relations. I seek overseas scholars to cooperate in conducting an empirical study. My phone number is 86-13679089805. Email:qingtao@swufe.edu.cn

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Vice-President and Program Co-Chair for 2008 meeting -

Jia Lin Xie, University of Toronto

Vice-President and Program Co-Chair for 2008 meeting -

Jing Zhou, Rice University

Vice-President and Chair of the Local Arrangements Committee for 2008 meeting -

Xinchun Li, Sun Yat-sen University

Executive Secretary/Treasurer –

Xin Yao, Wichita State University

Representative at Large (The Americas) -

Catherine Levitt, California State University

Representative at Large (Europe) -

Ingmar Bjorkman, Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration

Representative at Large (Asia Pacific) -

Zhen Xiong (George) Chen, The Australian National University

Representative at Large (The PRC mainland) -

Yichi Zhang, Peking University

See also here.

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