China is now poised to achieve its national aspiration of becoming an innovation economy. As it seeks to greatly increase equality in wealth creation, it also aims to assert global leadership in the development of all transforming economies, lead an expansion of international trade, and contribute to global environmental security policies. President Xi Jinping gave voice to these aspirations in his opening speech to the nineteenth national congress of the Chinese Communist Party in October 2017.
The implications for Management and Organization Review and indigenous management research are far reaching. China is advancing audacious national goals involving a wide range of national initiatives, including the ‘Belt and Road’ globalization initiative, shifting investment in infrastructure to environmental protection, food safety, and air, water, and soil pollution, supporting small business innovation, pulling ahead in electric vehicle and battery technologies, lowering entry barriers for foreign businesses, expanding the opening of the digital economy and services sector, reforming science and technology education, making huge bets in science and technology (e.g., largest telescope, particle accelerator), and spurring the developing of a mixed-ownership economy. As these social and economic policies kick in, it will become imperative for China and Chinese businesses to engage and learn about indigenous management and institutional systems in other transforming economies that China hopes to lead, trade with, and influence.
This highlights new challenges for Chinese management scholars undertaking indigenous management research that informs the achievement of China's national aspirations and advances empirical research that focuses on relevance and impact while satisfying the new falsifiability and replication requirements. Courage and curiosity will be needed to develop theories that move indigenous management research forward. In anticipation of an increase in qualitative studies that are open to serendipitous discoveries of new phenomena anchored in Chinese history, culture, and philosophy, MOR has a special issue underway on qualitative studies, co-edited by Emmanuella Plakoyiannaki, Tian Wei, Carol Hsu, and Shameen Prashantham, which features and legitimizes qualitative studies. Moreover, I expect that new empirical methodologies will need to be utilized, such as hermeneutic analyses of oral history, legends, poetry, and speeches made by founders and CEOs to their employees. The foundations for this approach to indigenous management research in the context of all transforming economies have been articulated and nurtured at MOR since its founding.
To further promote these editorial goals, I am pleased to announce two new initiatives. Beginning with volume 14, MOR is rededicating itself to publishing research that advances Engaged Indigenous Scholarship focused on management and organization themes in the context of all transforming economies. With the term ‘Engaged Indigenous Scholarship’, we mean that ‘indigenous’ refers to forms of scholarship that are culturally and contextually embedded in a geographic region, ‘engaged’ focuses on indigenous scholarship that incorporates the views of many stakeholders in the focal context, and ‘scholarship’ means something more than ‘research’. ‘Surely, scholarship means engaging in original research, but the work of the scholar means stepping back from one's own investigation, looking for connections, building bridges between theory and practice, and communicating one's knowledge effectively’ (Boyer, Reference Boyer1990: 16; see also Sydow & Windeler, Reference Sydow and Windeler1998).
Engaged Scholarship is a participatory form of inquiry in which researchers involve other relevant stakeholders in research problem formulation, theory building, research design, and communicating and using research findings (e.g., Sydow & Windeler, 1998). To further inspire achievement of this goal, I am thrilled to welcome Professor Andrew Van de Ven (University of Minnesota Carlson School) as Deputy Editor for Engaged Indigenous Scholarship. MOR readers may recall his coauthored commentary on engaged scholarship with Professor Runtian Jing (2012). Also, we are pleased to announce a general call for papers for ‘Engaged Indigenous Scholarship’ submissions, which appears at the end of this issue.
The second initiative reinforces the Preregistration and Preapproval reviewing policies introduced in volume 13. Much progress was made this past year with preregistration and recognizing authors who made their research instruments, protocols, and datasets available for replication studies (Li & Cui, forthcoming; Zhang & Wei, Reference Zhang and Wei2017). However, theory development and venturing to study breakthrough research questions represent perhaps the greatest challenge that authors submitting papers to MOR must overcome. Conversations with editors of leading management and social science journals highlight the same challenge. Following several mentoring experiments this past year, MOR is offering to run custom Professional Development Workshops (PDWs) at the invitation of a school or a consortium of schools. Applications from schools for hosting the PDW will be accepted after the formal announcement is posted online with publication of MOR14.1. Once a workshop is announced, authors will apply to participate. Those admitted will be treated to an immersive workshop. We anticipate that many of the manuscripts will emerge from the session ready for a Conditional Acceptance, granted under our editorial policies for preregistration-preapproval manuscripts (see Lewin, Chiu, Fey, Levine, McDermott, Murmann, & Tsang, Reference Lewin, Chiu, Fey, Levine, McDermott, Murmann and Tsang2016). The Editors and I strongly believe that the MOR proactive preapproval and theory development PDWs and the Engaged Indigenous Scholarship initiatives will greatly impact the relevance and rigor of papers published in MOR.
In closing, I would like to welcome the following new Senior Editors: Helena Barnard (University of Pretoria), Roy Chua (Singapore Management University), Runtian Jing (Shanghai Jia Tong University), Leigh Anne Liu (Georgia State University), Maral Muratbekova-Touron (ESCP Europe), and Krishna Savani (Nanyang Technological University). I also wish to express my deep appreciation to Mie Augier, Bor-Shiuan Cheng, Yaping Gong, Dana Minbaeva, and Xueguang Zhou, who have completed their terms as Senior Editors.
