The Second MOR Research Frontiers Conference explored knowledge creation and innovation capacity of SMEs on the economic development of transforming economies. The theme echoed the new trend in China that the economy has entered the ‘new normal’ (xinchangtai) stage and entrepreneurship and innovation have been regarded as the ‘twin engines’ for future growth. The majority of the conference papers paid attention to the entrepreneurial potential and innovation capacity of China's rising private sector, and pointed out for me an emerging research agenda on innovation and entrepreneurship studies in China.

This study integrates research on social networks and interpersonal counterproductive behaviours to examine the role of third party relationships in predicting an individual's susceptibility to co-worker mistreatment, and in moderating the relationship between co-worker mistreatment and job performance. Third party embeddedness and network closure are examined in the formal workflow network and the informal liking network. Results obtained from employees in a family-owned Chinese business in Singapore indicate that an individual is more likely to be mistreated by a co-worker when both parties are strongly embedded in mutual third party relationships in the workflow network, and that the individual is less likely to be mistreated when both parties are strongly embedded in the liking network. At the individual network level, network closure (i.e., the extent to which an individual's contacts are themselves connected to one another) in the workflow network increases the likelihood that a co-worker will mistreat the individual, but closure in the liking network weakens the negative relationship between mistreatment and performance. The findings offer a network-based perspective to understanding interpersonal mistreatment and counterproductive work behaviours, particularly in the context of Confucian Asian firms, and provide practical implications for organizations and individuals to reduce counterproductive behaviours at work.

Open innovation (OI) has been appointed as a key factor to promote innovative performance, but some research gaps remain especially when it comes to SMEs in developing countries. This article deals with (1) the effect of formalization of innovation strategy on OI activities in SMEs, (2) the impact of OI activities on SMEs’ innovative performance, and (3) the moderating role played by control on the relationship between inbound and outbound activities and the innovative performance. OI encompasses a range of innovative methods and procedures in firms to stimulate internal innovation and widen the external use of innovation (inbound and outbound). In this work, an empirical study is carried out on 543 Ecuadorian SMEs. The results show that the formalization of the innovation strategy promotes OI activities, both inbound and outbound. While outbound activities carried out by SMEs enhance innovative performance, this positive effect is only identified for inbound open innovation activities when control exists and increases, acting this variable as a moderating factor. These results have important implications both for the management of companies and the development of public policies aimed at promoting OI in SMEs in developing countries. This research contributes to the literature as it deals with a developing country context and considers a wide range of OI activities.

Management scholars and practitioners emphasize the importance of the sizeand diversity of a knowledge worker's social network. Constraints onknowledge workers' time and energy suggest that more is not always better.Further, why and how larger networks contribute to valuable outcomesdeserves further understanding. In this study, we offer hypotheses to shedinsight on the question of the diminishing returns of large networks and thespecific form of network diversity that may contribute to innovativeperformance among knowledge workers. We tested our hypotheses using datacollected from 93 R&D engineers in a Sino-German automobile electronicscompany located in China. Study findings identified an inflection point,confirming our hypothesis that the size of the knowledge worker's egocentricnetwork has an inverted U-shaped effect on job performance. We furtherdemonstrate that network dispersion richness (the number of cohorts that thefocal employee has connections to) rather than network dispersion evenness(equal distribution of ties across the cohorts) has more influence on theknowledge worker's job performance. Additionally, we found that thecurvilinear effect of network size is fully mediated by network dispersionrichness. Implications for future research on social networks in China andWestern contexts are discussed.

Past studies have shown that the flow of knowledge from incumbent firms is associated with the creation of startups and their subsequent performance. While much research has focused on the mechanisms of how incumbent-to-startup knowledge transfer takes place, such as entrepreneurs pursuing opportunities that their previous employers do not want to pursue, we explore with detailed qualitative analysis of six private startups in the Chinese synthetic-dye industry what type of knowledge actually flows and what type is more important for the long-term success of startups. We discover eight types of knowledge that flow from incumbents to new firms during the foundation of startups. Abstracting these eight types of knowledge into two general categories of functional knowledge and strategic knowledge, we find the reception of strategic (not functional) knowledge shapes the long-term competitiveness of surviving startups. Receiving technical knowledge – one type of functional knowledge – during the founding period is necessary for startups’ short-term survival but insufficient for long-term success. Our findings show that the performance implications of initial knowledge flows from incumbents hinge on the type of knowledge, contributing to a more explicit explanation of how incumbent-to-startup knowledge flows affect entrepreneurial performance.

In his letter, Zhang Ruimin symbolized Haier as a sea to signify the firm's openness and boundlessness. Using the metaphor of ‘Haier Is a Sea’, Zhang illustrated a number of cohesive, collaborative relationships between Haier employees and nature and the environment as well as the importance of an evolving corporate culture in a rapidly changing world. This letter was addressed to Haier employees, but it was also framed as a ‘communiqué to the public’ to explain who Haier was and what the company represented. This letter has been, and will likely continue to be, a model for inspiring Haier employees to believe that anything is possible.

To overcome liabilities of foreignness and outsidership during internationalization, board interlock is an effective conduit of foreign knowledge inflows and organizational learning that firms require. We focus on the time dimension of such influence and hypothesize that the tenure of board interlocks with firms with experience in outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) in a country promotes the OFDI decision of the focal firm to that particular country. However, such an effect diminishes as the tenure of interlock ties increases. Moreover, as an alternative knowledge source, OFDI knowledge from the focal firm's neighboring region may weaken the baseline effect. Based on longitudinal data of listed firms in China, our empirical results support the hypotheses. This study enriches the literature on social network learning by identifying its temporal nature and the substitution between different knowledge sources. It also demonstrates the importance of rotating a firm's board members, so that knowledge acquisition and learning remain fresh.

I truly enjoyed reading the perspective article entitled ‘Advancing indigenous management theory: Executive rationale as an institutional logic’ by Gordon Redding and Michael Witt (2015), especially its implications for a ‘promising avenue for indigenous management research’ (179). I agree with the authors in general terms that the research on the impact of culture as an informal institution, and also the effect of formal institutions, on business practices must come down from a highly abstract level to a more pragmatic ground, especially their interaction and integration as embodied by various specific mechanisms to guide practices. For that purpose, Redding and Witt introduce an interesting notion of ‘executive rationale’ to guide action. Applying the abstract notion of institutional logic to specific business practices, executive rationale refers to the ‘socially constructed, historical patterns of material practices, assumptions, values, beliefs, and rules by which individuals produce and reproduce their material subsistence, organize time and space, and provide meaning to their social reality’ (Thornton & Ocasio, 2008: 101) in the specific context of business practices. In other words, executive rationale provides a mental blueprint for practical actions in a business context. In addition, the authors have empirically generated a tentative model with multiple dimensions to compare the dominant executive rationales as institutionally-embedded across five key economies.

Strategic management scholars have shown increasing interest in explaining strategic change from the perspective of cognitive bias. However, most studies focus on individual cognitive bias but pay little attention to group cognitive bias. This study introduces a typical group cognitive bias (group polarization) to explain strategic change decisions made by the board of directors. Following the theory of group polarization, we argue that, when the average prior strategic change experienced in performance decline by board directors is relatively high (or low), the focal strategic change in performance decline will become even higher (or lower). We further contend that the proportion of female directors and board versus CEO power as the contingencies can mitigate this group polarization effect. Our hypotheses were strongly supported by a longitudinal sample of Chinese publicly listed companies during 2008–2018. The study's framework and findings contribute to the contextualization of social psychology research on group polarization in the study of board's strategic decision-making.

Integrating the resource-based view (RBV) and attention-based view (ABV), this study explores the impact of firm-specific knowledge (FSK) on a firm's exploratory innovation and the role of government support in this process. We argue that firms with a high degree of specificity in their knowledge assets tend to have a more localized attention focus, leading to those firms with less exposure to distant and diverse information and knowledge. Consequently, such firms are likely to have reduced exploratory innovative outputs. However, government resource support could expand a firm's attention focus beyond local searches, mitigating its negative effects. Based on a unique combined two-wave survey and archival data from over 500 firms in China, we find that the level of FSK is negatively related to a firm's exploratory innovation output. We provide evidence that localized attention focus partially mediates the negative effect of FSK on firms’ exploratory innovation. We further reveal that state ownership and state financial support for firm innovation weaken the negative main effect. This study makes important contributions to the literatures on the RBV, FSK, and firm innovation.

Despite the salutary effects of mask wearing broadly recognized during the COVID-19 pandemic, little is known about the consequences of wearing masks in the workplace. The current research raises the question of whether and how mask wearing may impact employees' emotional well-being at work. Drawing on emotion regulation theory (e.g., Gross, 1998, 2015), we propose that mask wearing enables employees to adopt more authentic emotional displays, which in turn decreases emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, guided by the social interaction model of emotion regulation (Coté, 2005), we further posit that for employees whose work requires more frequent face-to-face interaction, the positive impact of mask wearing on emotional exhaustion becomes more significant. Across a pilot study and a three-wave field survey, we find support for this hypothesized model. Implications of these findings for future theorizing and research on mask wearing are discussed.