In this article, we explore different behavioural assumptions in the training of managers. We show that training emphasizing rationality and self-interest, the standard assumptions used in economics, benefits those working in technical posts but may lead future managers to rely excessively on rational and explicit safeguarding, crowding out instinctive relational heuristics and signalling a deficient human type to potential partners. In contrast, the diverse, implicit, and even contradictory nature of behavioural assumptions in management theories avoids conflict with innate cooperative tools and may provide a good training ground for using such tools. Tentative confirmatory evidence shows that the weight placed on behavioural assumptions in the core courses of the top 100 business schools influences the average salaries of their MBA graduates. Controlling for the self-selected average quality of students and some other school characteristics, average salaries are seen to be significantly greater for MBA programs that include a larger proportion of management courses in their core curriculum.

Time pacing, which refers to the regulation of intensity and direction of people's attention and effort, is central to innovation management. However, in a study of complex product innovation in pharmaceuticals, we find that time pacing is a major source of conflict between managers and scientists over innovation management. Our analysis of this tension reveals that two very different forms of time pacing operate in this complex innovation. Clock-time pacing, which gauges progress by the predictable passage of clock time, is used by strategic managers to reduce unnecessary exploration, focus on necessary questions, and speed up the execution of steps. Event-time pacing, which gauges progress by the unpredictable achievement of learning events, is used by the scientists to develop a deep understanding of how a drug might behave in the body against a disease, to focus on learning by asking many questions, and to integrate emergent results into plausible patterns. We identify four dimensions that differentiate clock-time pacing from event-time pacing, which drive the tension between the two. We summarize negative effects that this tension can have on innovation if left unaddressed, and then suggest ways to integrate clock-time pacing with event-time pacing. We also discuss implications for Chinese management.

The principal–principal (PP) perspective of corporate governance shows that multiple large shareholder (MLS) structure has competing monitoring and entrenchment governance effects. We argue that the dominant effect depends on contest for control among large shareholders and the number of large shareholders involved. Using data from Chinese family listed companies from 2004 to 2007, this study shows inverse U-shaped relationships between contest for control and corporate market value, as measured by Tobin's Q, and between the number of large shareholders and corporate market value. Findings indicate that at low to medium levels of contest for control or number of large shareholders, formal institutions can strengthen MLS structure's monitoring effect and can help this effect last longer. As a whole, the findings extend the institution-based view in the context of family corporate governance by showing that formal institutions can shape the ability of MLS structure to exert governance.

Integrating theories of psychological ownership and stewardship, and taking a relational perspective, we examine key antecedents and outcomes of professional managers' psychological ownership in Chinese owner-managed family businesses. We tested the model using a survey of 166 Chinese professional managers (one from each of 166 family businesses). We find that owner–manager relationship closeness at work mediates the effect of both the owner's benevolent leadership and owner–manager friendship ties on the manager's psychological ownership. Psychological ownership, in turn, is positively related to the manager's intention to stay and to stewardship behaviour. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

This study contributes to an emic understanding of how different types of social obligations may help or hinder the formation of initial organizational trust within collectivist cultures. We extend prior social categorization insights by challenging the expectation that in-group favouritism automatically facilitates higher levels of initial trust among collectivists. We theorize and test the asymmetric effects of two different types of social obligations toward members of distinct social categories (kinship and friendship in-groups) on the formation of initial organizational trust. Using a quasi-experimental research design in a collectivist culture (Japan), we hypothesize and show that in ambivalent situations, voluntary social obligations toward members of friendship in-groups encourage early trust in trustees' organizations; however, involuntary social obligations toward members of kinship in-groups discourage early trust development toward the organization these trustees represent. The effects of (in)voluntary social obligations on initial organizational trust are contingent on how collectivists perceive each encounter: voluntary social obligations are more conducive to trust-building at lower levels of perceived opportunity; involuntary social obligations have stronger effects on initial organizational trust at higher levels of perceived risk.

In two studies conducted in the United States and the People's Republic of China, we examined how the effects of organizational justice perceptions on employees' organizational citizenship behaviours (OCB) are influenced by individually held cultural value orientations. In Study 1, we did not find evidence of moderation by cultural value orientation. In Study 2, we re-examined the moderated relationships and found that the relationship between procedural justice and OCB was significantly influenced by masculinity-femininity orientation and that the relationship between distributive justice and OCB was significantly moderated by power distance such that the relationships were more strongly positive when followers were more masculine and higher in power distance. Also, we extended our model to include perceived supervisor support as a mediator of the direct and moderated effects of justice perceptions on OCB. We found support for the mediation model, but did not find the moderated mediation effects we predicted. Due to the large number of non-significant findings and inconsistencies across our two studies, we conclude with recommendations for scholars who face similar challenges in their research.