Family dynamics can significantly influence entrepreneurship, yet the temporal complexities of this relationship remain inadequately explored. This special issue addresses this gap by emphasizing the intricate interplay between internal family evolvability such as generational transitions and identity shifts, cultural continuity, and external adaptability to rapidly changing economic, institutional, and technological contexts in China. We introduce a dual tuning model that highlights how entrepreneurial and family firms (FFs) strategically synchronize their internal and external temporal rhythms to manage conflicts and optimize performance. This lead article reviews existing literature, articulates the dual tuning model, and synthesizes insights from the articles in this special issue to illuminate how Chinese FFs navigate tensions between evolving internal dynamics and external market demands. We conclude by identifying promising future research avenues that leverage this temporal perspective to deepen our understanding of family dynamics and entrepreneurship in China.

This editorial essay describes what is phenomenon-based research and why it is important to conduct indigenous Chinese management research. Grounded in the Chinese context, the author identifies emerging new organizational phenomena in the digital age that calls for new theoretical explanations and empirical validation. Adopting an evolution of theories perspective, the author outlines the various paths that can move a new theory explaining an indigenous phenomenon toward becoming a universal theory that can transcend time and space.

This editorial essay introduces three approaches for advancing management research through contextualization in Chinese management research. While the Chinese context offers fertile ground for theoretical contributions, scholars often struggle to effectively leverage contextual elements to extend existing theories. I address this gap by presenting three approaches: the counter-intuitive approach, which challenges established assumptions by identifying relationships that contradict conventional wisdom; the contrasting approach, which reveals paradoxical or opposing effects of organizational phenomena across different contextual conditions; and the theory integration approach, which combines different theoretical perspectives to create richer understanding of organizational phenomena. Using published works on guanxi and social networks as examples, I demonstrate how these approaches help scholars articulate why the Chinese context matters theoretically. These approaches provide researchers with tools to move beyond simply testing Western theories in China toward making substantive theoretical contributions that extend and enrich existing management theories through contextualization.

Chinese bureaucracy – the organizational apparatus of Chinese governments – has played a significant role in China’s economic development and political control in the post-Mao era. In this paper, we draw on research on Chinese bureaucracy in both English and Chinese to highlight major findings in three areas: agency problems and incentive provision, the use of guanxi in policy implementation, and variable coupling among different parts of the bureaucracy. These three aspects are interrelated: agency problems induce the prevalence of informal institutions as an organizational response, which leads to variable coupling in Chinese bureaucracy. We discuss the issues and implications this literature presents for the further development of organization theory and the emerging research agenda.

This study examines how university curriculum reforms that increase course selection flexibility influence entrepreneurial outcomes. Departing from traditional emphasis on educational attainment, we explore how institutional changes in education shape entrepreneurial tendencies among alumni. Leveraging a reform that removed constraints on course selection at a major university, we find that increased educational choice significantly fosters entrepreneurship. Our analysis reveals partial support for the moderating effects of individual, family, and spatial factors: the positive impact of these reforms is contingent on the type of electives and courses taken, with stronger effects observed among alumni with entrepreneurial parents, those born in urban areas, and those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. These groups leverage specific course patterns to align their educational choices with entrepreneurial aspirations, enhancing their likelihood of pursuing entrepreneurial ventures. However, these findings also underscore the potential for educational reforms to exacerbate inequalities, disproportionately benefiting those with preexisting advantages. By integrating insights on institutional changes, course-taking patterns, and individual moderators, this study advances understanding of the interplay between education and entrepreneurship, offering implications for designing more equitable educational policies.

The literature shows that social media enhances individual stakeholders’ ability to directly influence firm behaviors, paying less attention to how it enables different stakeholder groups to influence firms collectively. Drawing on the stakeholder multiplicity perspective in stakeholder theory, this study theorizes and empirically demonstrates that social media can empower lower-salience stakeholders to drive the actions of higher-salience stakeholders to influence firm behaviors. By analyzing 506 consumer crises involving foreign and local companies in China from 2000 to 2020, we find that firms take more substantial responsibility when confronted with consumers’ social-media-based collective actions than when confronted with conventional channels of consumer complaints. This heightened responsibility stems mainly from collective actions’ tendency to spur law-enforcing agencies into addressing alleged firm misdeeds, demonstrating a stakeholder multiplicity effect of social media empowerment. We also identify the institutional contingency of this effect, showing that local governments’ bureaucratic capacity positively moderates collective actions’ effect on law-enforcing actions, whereas their intervention in firms’ operational decisions negatively moderates law-enforcing actions’ effect on firms’ responsibility assumption. This study extends the understanding of social media's relationship with stakeholder influence and consolidates the stakeholder multiplicity perspective in stakeholder theory.

The institutional logics perspective provides a powerful theoretical lens that emphasizes how meanings and practices are intertwined in relatively enduring configurations that can profoundly shape organizational behavior across space and time. In this article, we propose the need for a broader research agenda on the dynamics of institutional logics in the Chinese context, particularly in three aspects. We begin by elaborating on the distinct configuration of logics in China, where state logic is more dominant and often directs other logics, thus shaping organizational behavior differently than its Western counterpart. We then argue for the need to examine (1) the change of logics per se, leveraging China’ market transition, which provides a unique opportunity to observe how existing configurations of logics undergo transformational change and regain coherence; (2) the governance of logics, focusing on the influence of social evaluators and command posts; and (3) the diffusion of the China Model, a distinct configuration of logics and orders, to other countries through the Chinese state’s political and economic campaigns.

Failure to attract external financing is a common puzzle for start-up firms and often leads to the use of entrepreneurs' personal funding, typically with the help of their family. With little entrepreneurial experience, nascent entrepreneurs will have no factual signals to show external investors, except their characteristics or those of their family. The literature mainly focuses on the net effects of entrepreneurs' personal capital endowments in isolation on start-up capital structure despite emerging appreciation of the importance of family-related factors. However, little is known about which combinations of capital endowments across capital dimensions (i.e., human, social, and financial capital) or generations (i.e., parent and child) will likely affect the level of external funding. Drawing on signaling theory, we adopt a configurational approach to examine the compositions of intergenerational capital endowments that are sufficient to shape external funding. Conducting a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis of Chinese privately owned enterprises of nascent entrepreneurs, we identify four typical family prototypes that feature intergenerational capital endowments for low external funding. Findings highlight the significance of family dynamics in China and their role in shaping new venture financing by displaying intergenerational signals.

How does a CEO’s early-life poverty trauma exposure affect a firm’s involvement in poverty alleviation and the prioritization between generic and strategic involvement? We find that CEOs with such exposure are more likely to engage in both types of poverty alleviation initiatives. We further examine the asymmetry effect and find that these CEOs will prioritize strategic over generic involvement in poverty alleviation. We also conduct a post hoc analysis to test the mediating effect of emphasis on resource efficiency on the relationship between CEOs’ early-life exposure to poverty trauma and the relative emphasis on strategic over generic involvement in poverty alleviation. Using a sample of Chinese publicly listed firms from 2016 to 2021, we find strong support for our predictions. Our study contributes to the literature on CEOs’ early-life experiences and corporate poverty alleviation engagement.

This study investigates how institutional origin affects the dot tax haven (DTH) internationalization of Chinese family firms (FFs). Drawing on institutional theory and the mixed gamble perspective, we propose that restructured FFs (RFFs), originating from state-owned enterprises (SOEs), are more likely to engage in DTH internationalization than entrepreneurial FFs directly established by family founders. This propensity is attributed to the institutional legacies inherited from their SOE predecessors, which create a distinct potential gain-loss calculus. Our empirical analysis of publicly listed Chinese FFs from 2012 to 2021 demonstrates that restructured FFs are 30% more likely to use DTH and establish 43% more DTH subsidiaries than entrepreneurial FFs. This tendency, however, is mitigated by the firms’ economic ties to financial institutions. Our study enhances understanding of FFs’ global entrepreneurial decision-making, contributing to FF heterogeneity research. A novel aspect of our study is examining the impact of institutional legacies on FFs – a topic less explored in family business literature. Furthermore, our findings provide insights for policymakers and regulators, emphasizing the importance of tailored policies that consider the intricate interplay between institutional origin and contemporary entrepreneurial goals in FFs.

This study examines how partner repeatedness drives alliance reconfiguration. Using data on 571 fund products initiated by 58 Chinese fund firms from 2007 to 2011, our results indicate that higher levels of partner repeatedness drive firms to reconfigure their alliance by re-introducing previous partners (those that have collaborated with the focal firm in the past, but not currently), rather than dropping active partners or introducing new ones, in an attempt to retain the positive aspects and mitigate the negative effects of partner repeatedness. However, resource richness and firms' centrality in their industries play a key moderating role, as these factors affect the perceived efficacy of the reconfiguration strategies at firms' disposal.

In the digital era, short videos have become a significant form of digital copyright, yet the debate over whether stronger copyright protection enhances their creation continues. To contribute to this discourse, we conducted an analysis based on a representative sample of short videos on a prominent Chinese short video platform, Douyin. Capitalizing on an external regulatory intervention, specifically the Campaign against Online Infringement and Piracy (COIP) implemented by the Chinese government, we employed the difference-in-differences (DID) method to assess the impact of reinforced copyright protection on the originality of short videos. Our findings reveal that strengthened copyright protection leads to a significant increase in the originality of short videos. Further research on creator heterogeneity shows that influencers exhibit a significantly more positive response to strengthened copyright protection than amateur creators. Finally, we present evidence explaining how external regulation works by enhancing intra-platform regulation. These results have rich implications for intellectual property protection, digital innovation management, and platform regulation.

The operating goals of family firms (FFs) typically include building both economic and socioemotional wealth. Innovation is increasingly recognized as a key source for the development and growth of family firms. From the multiple dimensions of socioemotional wealth (SEW), this research has focused on how family influences a particular type of innovation – green innovation – in family firms. Using 5,071 observations from among the listed firms in Taiwan over an eight-year period (2014–2021), we examined the relationships between FFs and green innovation. The results indicate that FFs are more likely to develop green innovation than their nonfamily counterparts. In particular, there are complicated effects within different types of FFs – control deviation family firms (CDFFs).

We theorize on how and when CEO humility positively shapes stakeholders’ evaluations of a firm. We posit that CEO humility has a positive effect on organizational virtuousness and, hence, on firm reputation in the eyes of the government in China when the firm is intensively connected to government intermediaries. Data for this study were collected from a large-scale on-site survey and archives of 195 firms in 32 Chinese industrial towns. Our 1,099 respondents included 975 top managers and 124 local government officers. Empirical analysis results support our theory. We also complemented our quantitative findings with qualitative evidence. We offer a new perspective for understanding humble CEOs’ influence and condition in shaping their firms’ reputational judgments.

Digital transformation presents a crucial strategic imperative for family businesses seeking to maintain competitiveness and long-term viability. The academic literature reveals divergent perspectives on how family businesses approach digital transformation initiatives. This study adopts a socioemotional wealth perspective to examine the relationship between family ownership and digital transformation. The research specifically investigates how family formal business networks and next-generation dispersion moderate this relationship. Analysis of panel data from Chinese listed family firms between 2016 and 2020 reveals that family ownership negatively influences digital transformation efforts. However, this negative effect diminishes when family firms participate in formal business networks or involve multiple next-generation members in leadership positions. These findings yield important theoretical contributions regarding the intricate relationships between family dynamics and technological advancement. The research also provides practical insights for family business leaders navigating digital transformation challenges. This study advances understanding of how different dimensions of socioemotional wealth shape family firms’ strategic responses to technological change.

On the basis of signaling and trust theories, we explore the impact of focal firms’ environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance on their collaborative innovation (co-innovation). We argue that high ESG performance serves as a positive signal that focal firms engage less in opportunistic behavior in the co-innovation process. This, in turn, makes it easier for focal firms to gain the trust of potential external innovation collaborators (collaborators) and ultimately increases the level of co-innovation in focal firms. Guided by signaling and trust theories, we further argue that heavy polluting firm attributes and historical co-innovation alter the impact of ESG signals on collaborators’ trust, which in turn leads to heterogeneity in the positive impact of ESG performance on firms’ co-innovation. Based on empirical data on A-share manufacturing companies listed in China from 2010 to 2021, we obtained empirical evidence to support the above theoretical arguments. This study provides new insights for a refined understanding of the innovation consequences of ESG performance and important implications for shareholders and policymakers to better encourage and guide firms in co-innovation.