Research on the globalization of Chinese and other emerging markets' companies has only just begun and is on the verge of taking off. As it does so, additional thought should be given to the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of the theories attempting to capture the phenomenon. Should Western-centric theory prevail? Be adapted? Or abandoned in favour of new indigenous approaches to theorizing, based on context? Finally, should the context itself be the basis of theorizing? While the debate will not stop here, the future may hold a multiplicity of approaches, both indigenous and internationalized, for explaining emerging markets' contexts and, more specifically, for understanding internationalization of their economies and their multinationals. This article provides an overview of the debate on Chinese Theory of Business vs. Theory of Chinese Business, and highlights the contribution of three key articles utilizing a hybrid approach of adapted theory, controlling for the various multinational contexts. We conclude that no theory has a monopoly on explanation and a multi-levelj multidisciplinaiy, and, perhaps, Eastern-centric theory may prove to show great potential in future theories of emerging markets' multinationals.

This study examined the combined effect of family ownership and high-discretion organizational slack on the international involvement of Taiwanese firms. Employing a sample of 179 publicly listed high-tech firms in Taiwan over a period of 6 years (2000–2005), we found that firms with high levels of international involvement, that is, a higher degree of internationalization, (i) were not closely held, and (ii) were not excessively controlled by the family. Further, high-discretion organizational slack (indicated by resources that can be deployed in a flexible fashion such as in cash and receivables) moderated the negative relationship between family control and international involvement. This relationship is stronger with a higher level of high-discretion slack. The results support the hypothesis that family control and high-discretion organizational slack negatively influence the decision to internationalize.

Using recent survey data, this study examines the impact of firm resources, industry dynamics, and government policies on the outward foreign direct investment (FDI) motives of Chinese firms, based on the integrated ‘strategy tripod’ framework. The results suggest that supportive government policies are important motivators for both strategic asset-seeking and market-seeking outward FDI. Firms' technology-based competitive advantages and a high level of industry research and development (R&D) intensity tend to motivate strategic asset-seeking outward FDI, whereas firm's export experience and higher level of domestic industry competition tend to induce market-seeking outward FDI.

Prior research on the internationalization of emerging market firms focused either on established incumbent firms or peripheral latecomer firms. However, an increase in outward foreign direct investment from emerging markets such as China has benefitted from a new organizational form – business groups. Given that new organizational forms pose fundamental challenges to existing theories on multinational enterprise, an examination of business group internationalization will bring the literature of multinational enterprise theories forward. Adopting an organizational approach, I propose that business groups, an organizational form that emerged to substitute market imperfections in China, constitute a micro-institutional environment for generating ownership, location, and internalization advantages, as well as for capitalizing on the linkage, leverage, and learning opportunities for internationalization. I posit that Chinese business groups facilitate such an internationalization process via their unique attributes including internal market, inward linkages, and institutional support. The article aims to provide a theoretical framework that generates insights for China's policy makers and managers, and to guide future research.

Instead of importing Western models of intelpersonal trust, we adopted a qualitative approach to understand trust relationships from indigenous cultures' perspectives. We examined trust relationships directed at diilerent foci in the organization (supervisor, peer, and subordinate) in two different countries, Turkey and China. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 Turkish and 30 Chinese employees working for a variety of large-scale organizations located in Istanbul, Turkey and Shenzhen, China. We report the content analysis of trust-building critical incidents narrated by the respondents. While the general antecedents of Ability, Benevolence, and Integrity were found to exist in both countries. Benevolence, with its culture-specific manifestations, played a very important role in trust-building across multiple foci in both countries. We also found that trust relationships in these two contexts tended to go beyond the professional domain, and to involve sharing of personal time, information, and space. Drawing on this evidence, we propose a trust-building process that is more affective in nature and which straddles both work and non-work domains.

The initiation of market liberalization resulted in a sharp decline in economic output and market disorganization across the former Soviet Union. Inadequate physical, financial, and human capital are among the explanations for the slow pace of enterprise restructuring and market development. The role of social networks, however, is less understood. Using survey data from a management-training programme in Russia, we examine the effects of entrepreneurial networks on both individual's professional advancement and firm's business development. We find that their participation in work-and association-based social networks varied and differentially affected outcomes at the individual and firm levels. We conclude that active participation in social capital networks catalyses returns on investments in human capital. Implications of this study for research on Chinese social networks are discussed.

Do Chinese people restrict their complex transactions to a trusted inner circle composed of strong ties? Hwang's (1988) study points out that Chinese people often convert unfamiliar ties into familiar ties when the latter become trustworthy people. This conversion is instrumental in ensuring the fulfilment of promises in complex transactions because it contains an element of emotional attachment or moral obligation. This paper employs network data in a Chinese workplace to demonstrate the following points: first, there is indeed a type of guanxi in the Chinese workplace that can be described as ‘familiar ties’. Second, familiar ties contain as much trust as friendship ties and more than acquaintance ties. A Chinese person may search for his or her possible partners among strangers, then develop trust within this guanxi and gradually transform the relationship into familiar ties. It is through these ties that interpersonal trust can grow and enable complex transactions.

Chinese people are known to be strong in dialectical thinking – a cognitive tendency toward the acceptance of contradiction. Based on this finding, we conceptualized cooperative and competitive orientation as two distinct constructs that represent individual beliefs about and attitudes toward the nature of their relationship with others. We hypothesized that as stable individual differences, cooperative and competitive orientation would have differential effects on people's cognition and behaviour. Adopting a contextualization approach to Chinese management research, we developed a seven-item cooperative orientation scale and a six-item competitive orientation scale that demonstrated high reliabilities and validities. A laboratory experiment using the response latency method showed that people scoring higher on cooperative orientation responded significantly faster toward words of a cooperative nature, whereas people scoring higher on competitive orientation responded significantly faster toward words of a competitive nature. A field survey in multiple Chinese organizations further showed that cooperative and competitive orientation had differential effects on employee task performance and organizational citizenship behaviour beyond the effects of the personality differences. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed in the context of work groups in Chinese organizations and beyond.