2015 IACMR Research Methods Workshop was successfully held in July in Tianjin from July 12 to 16. The College of Management and Economics, Tianjin University co-organized this workshop.

The IACMR Research Methods Workshop is designed to meet the need for high quality research-based management knowledge in the Chinese contexts with two key considerations: local talent and scientific method. The first 4 workshops (1999-2002) were held at HKUST and lACMR has continued to organize workshops biennially since 2005 with different universities as hosting schools. This year, it is of the largest scale – there were 135 participants from 53 Universities/Affiliations in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau and Australia participating in the workshop. 34 of them were young faculty members and 101 were students. They were well balanced in gender: female (65) and male (70). All participants were divided into 14 discussion groups and each group was led by one faculty advisor in discussions.

The College of Management and Economics (COME) of Tianjin University attached great importance to the workshop. Prof. Wei Zhang, Dean of COME, took a special trip back and forth COME to join the faculty and students at the welcome dinner on July 12 because he happened to be attending meetings in Beijing. Prof. Minqiang Li, Associate Dean of COME, spent hours at both the welcome dinner and graduation dinner, expressing his thanks to the faculty advisors and the participants and ensuring the support from COME. Two faculty members, Baolu Chen and Jingzhou Pan, spent days and nights on every detail to ensure the success of the workshop.

The 14 faculty advisors came from the universities in USA, Hong Kong as well as Mainland China. With the spirit of service and a common objective of training up young scholars, the faculty devoted 5 days in the workshop, giving lectures, sharing their experience in doing research and guiding and coaching the young scholars in group discussions. Here is the list of the faculty advisors (in alphabetical order):

From Left to Right:

1.Chao C. Chen, Rutgers University, 2.Xiao-ping Chen, University of Washington,3. Jiing-Lih Larry Farh, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

From Left to Right:

4. Jinyu He, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 5. Xu Huang, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 6. Liangding Jia, Nanjing University

From Left to Right:

7. Haiyang Li, Rice University, 8. Jian Liang, Shanghai Jiaotong University, 9. Jiangyong Lu, Peking University

From Left to Right:

10. Wei Shen, Arizona State University, 11. Ann Zhang, Peking University, 12. Jing Zhou, Rice University

From Left to Right:
13. Xueguang Zhou, Stanford University, 14. Zhen Zhang, Arizona State University

Faculty gave 16 lectures on key research topics such as measurement, qualitative research, survey research, etc. Participants also had chances to discuss their research proposals in small group sessions led by faculty advisors.

IACMR and Tianjin University organized a dinner on the evening of the last day to celebrate graduation of all participants. Prof. Larry Farh and faculty advisors presented graduation certificates to the participants. Each group offered splendid and interesting performance which demonstrated their reflections on doing research after attending the workshop, their gratefulness to the faculty advisors and their joyfulness in getting acquaintance with fellow students as well as their mentors who will be good friends along their careers.

The workshop was well received and all the participants gave very high marks in their evaluation forms and extended their thanks to IACMR and faculty advisors. Their feedbacks and reflections will help future workshop applicants know better about the workshop, the faculty advisors as well as doing research itself.