This issue leads off with a perspective paper, ‘Chinese Entrepreneurs, Social Networks, and Guanxi’, by Ronald S. Burt and Katarzyna Burzynska. The paper is followed by three commentaries from Yanjie Bian, Nan Lin, and Olav Sorenson, which collectively advance social network analyses in China, and contribute to a much more nuanced understanding of the significance of guanxi and entrepreneurs’ social capital in China. This paper was presented by Ron Burt as the keynote address at the Second Management and Organization Review Research Frontiers Conference hosted by Guanghua School of Management, Peking University (October 6–8, 2016). It is my hope that this study could be replicated in other transforming economies such as India, and Russia, Ex-Soviet Republics, and Eastern Europe. In the case of Africa, the legacy of colonial powers may have influenced entrepreneurial social capital and guanxi in surprising ways.
The focus of the Second MOR Research Frontiers Conference was on The SME Ecology of China: Knowledge Creation, Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Economic Growth. To support MOR's expansion to all transforming economies, additional conferences on this theme in the context of India, hosted by India Institute of Management Bangalore (January 19–21, 2017), and Russia, Ex-Soviet Republics, and Eastern Europe, hosted by Rotterdam School of Management (May 17–19, 2017) were held this year. The conferences have resulted in two upcoming MOR Special Issues – ‘The Innovation and Entrepreneurship Eco-system in India’ with Suresh Bhagavatula, Ram Mudambi and Johann Peter Murmann as guest editors and ‘Business Model Innovation in Transforming Economies’ with Henk Volberda, Oli Mihalache, Carl Fey, and Arie Y. Lewin as guest editors. The next MOR Research Frontiers Conference, with a focus on Latin America, is being planned for 2018. It is my hope that these conferences will signal the strong interest of MOR in attracting strategy, management, and economic development research papers from all transforming economies.
This issue also features empirical papers that were revised during the revise and resubmit process to satisfy the new reviewing policies of MOR or are followed by an addendum that serves to highlight revisions that satisfy the new reviewing policies. I wish to take this opportunity on behalf of the MOR editorial team to express our appreciation for the positive responses received from authors, who have been receptive to supporting the new editorial policies. We are also encouraged by the willingness of many authors to make their datasets and related details available and will be including badges to formally recognize this in upcoming issues.
Lastly, I would like to direct attention to the Dialogue, Debate, and Discussion editorial area of MOR and the paper ‘Assessing Statistical Results in MOR Articles: An Essay on Verifiability and Ways to Enhance It’ by Ming Li, Barton M. Sharp, and Donald D. Bergh. Their analysis of a sample of MOR articles, in terms of three statistical verification tests, is supportive of recently instituted MOR editorial policies. As Liisa Välikangas, the Editor for this editorial area observes, ‘this article advances, and further invites, self-reflection of research and reporting practices that would make social science less vulnerable to its critics’.
