The Business School of Sun Yat-Sen University (SYSBS) is pleased to announce its 2019 annual international symposium on frontier management research in Guangzhou, China on June 21, 2019. This year’s theme is Managing in a Volatile World.

Globalization is currently under stress in many ways, along with significantly higher volatility in geopolitical, economic, physical, and social environments. Paradoxically, globalization has been critical to the impressive expansion of wellbeing and opportunities over the past seventy years, and growing cross-border economic interdependence accentuates deeper, broader, and more intricate interconnections between nations, businesses and individuals. Yet, the dark-side problems of globalization have not been correspondingly circumvented to the level it should, ascribed in part to ineffectiveness of governing systems of world economic and geopolitical order. As nationalism and protectionism grow in many countries, international companies, regardless of their origin, size, and sector, encounter greater uncertainty and unpredictability today than ever before.

This global volatility raises a series of complex issues that may challenge existing international management theories and conclusions as it changes ways of investing overseas, selecting foreign locations, organizing global operations, and networking with ecosystem partners. It redefines what risks are and what it takes to curtail these risks. At a time when the world economy is more complex and volatile than ever and faces many new challenges and obstacles, international companies need to build new capabilities and launch new initiatives, individually and collectively, to cope with and manage this volatility. A series of important questions await scholars (and policymakers and executives) to delve. For instance, we need a nuanced understanding of new types of international business risks and uncertainties and more importantly new defensive and offensive measures that should be undertaken by MNEs.

While cooperation among nations may become harder to maintain in today’s multi-polar world, global cooperation among MNEs from same or different countries should, and can, be solidified. The part of such firm-level cooperation lies in collective efforts in adapting to and influencing the economic and geopolitical environments that cause volatility. MNEs are in a unique, and sometimes powerful, position that allows them to do so through working together in jointly dealing with both home country and home country institutions. We encourage submissions (abstracts or papers) that address how MNEs manage new volatility individually and cooperatively and how they launch, legitimatize and leverage opportunities that may arise from the said cooperation.

Global volatility increases difficulty for MNEs in organizing geographically dispersed yet internationally orchestrated activities as their global supply chain, production chain and value chain systems are much more interdependent with players in other countries. This connectivity is squarely hampered by volatility of global economic and geopolitical parameters. The ascendance of economic nationalism distorts, rather than stabilizes, orchestration and organization of global operations, calling for more research on redesigning, restructuring, reconfiguring, and redeploying global resources. This re-organization often involves, however, internal risks and new costs. An MNE’s capability renewal or dynamic capabilities in drastically evolving and volatile conditions become pivotal for their survival. We hope to receive submissions that explore the role of geopolitical intelligence in business community in general, and MNEs in particular, and integrate such role with the firm’s dynamic capabilities and sustained growth.

We welcome full-fledged papers as well as abstracts/proposals that broadly deal with managing and (re)organizing in a volatile and complex world. The submissions can deal with the conference theme in either international setting (e.g., for international companies) or domestic setting (e.g., for domestic firms). We encourage submissions that address motives, processes and strategies involving various management approaches toward complexity in general, and global volatility in particular. We welcome submissions that address the above issues by different types of organizations (e.g., state vs. privately owned; international vs. local firms, digitally enabled vs. traditional firms) and firms competing in different countries and in industries.

This conference is intended to attract papers or abstracts/proposals that will lead the discourse on some fresh or new perspectives on managing and organizing in a new era of global volatility. Submissions should extend and deepen our understanding of some new perspectives across multiple domains—organizational behavior, international business, strategic management, operations management, entrepreneurship, economics, political science, and the like—and at multiple levels of analysis, such as country, industry, organization, and group. To this end, we invite papers or abstracts/proposals (3-5 pages) relating to the conference theme. We only accept original, unpublished papers in English. This conference adopts the online submission system, please create users and submit papers on our conference website: http://en.hudongxuetang.com/m/STVSW

The conference is featured with several world-renowned keynote speakers who are the authority in the field, such as Yadong Luo (University of Miami), Oded Shenkar (Ohio State University), Chris Marquis (Cornell University) and Yan Anthea Zhang (Rice University). The conference will also recognize 2-3 best paper awards based on the quality of the paper submissions.

 IMPORTANT DATES
Paper and abstract/proposal submission deadline:   May 15, 2019
Author notification of accepted presentations:         May 31, 2019
Conference registration deadline:                              May 31, 2019

 CONFERENCE CO-CONVENORS
Yadong Luo (University of Miami) & Oded Shenkar (Ohio State University)

 SYSBS CONFERENCE COMMITTEE
Guangzhong Li, Weiwen Li, Xin Qin & Li Jiang

 CONFERENCE SPEAKERS
The conference is featured with several world-renowned keynote speakers who are the authority in the field.

Dr. Oded Shenkar is currently the Ford Motor Company Chair in Global Business Management and Professor of Management and Human Resources at the Fisher College of Business, the Ohio State University, where he heads the international business area. Professor Shenkar has published a hundred scientific articles in leading journals such as Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Human Relations, Journal of International Business Studies, Strategic Management Journal, and Harvard Business Review, among many others. His books include Organization and Management in China 1979-1990 (M.E. Sharpe), International Business in China (Routledge, w. L. Kelley), Global Perspectives on Human Resource Management (Prentice-Hall), The Handbook of International Management Research (University of Michigan Press, with B.J. Punnett), International Business (Wiley; Sage -2nd edition- with Yadong Luo), The Handbook of Strategic Alliances (Sage, with Jeff Reuer), The Chinese Century (Wharton School Publishing), which has been translated into twelve languages, and Copycats: how smart companies use imitation to gain a strategic edge (Harvard Business Press), which has been translated into six languages. His work has also been cited by Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Daily Mail (UK), Liberation (France), International Herald Tribune, Time, Business Week, Economist, Chief Executive magazine, the Associated Press, Reuters, Nikkei Financial Daily, the China Daily, Reference News (China), and The China Business Weekly, as well as on radio (e.g., NPR, CBS) and TV (BBC, CNN, Reuters, ABC, Canada Business TV, Korean TV, Bloomberg). Professor Shenkar is a past Vice President and Fellow of the Academy of International Business.

Dr. Chris Marquis is the Samuel C. Johnson Professor in Sustainable Global Enterprise and Professor of Management at Cornell University and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Peking University and Shanghai Jiaotong University. Prior to joining Cornell, he worked for 10 years at Harvard Business School. Professor Marquis’s teaching and research is focused on how business can have a positive impact on society and the natural environment. He is currently pursuing several streams of research.He also published in Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly and etc. His research has won a number of national awards, including the 2006 William H. Newman Award for best dissertation across the entire the Academy of Management, the 2006 Louis R. Pondy award for best dissertation in organizational theory from the Academy of Management. Before his academic career, Marquis worked for 6 years in the financial services industry, most recently as Vice President and Technology Manager for a business unit of J.P. Morgan Chase.

Yan Anthea Zhang is a Fayez Sarofim Vanguard Professor of Management at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, Rice University. Dr. Zhang’s areas of specialization include CEO succession and dismissal, and foreign direct investment and technology entrepreneurship in emerging markets. Her research on these topics has been published in top-tier management journals including the Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, and Journal of International Business Studies, among others. As evidence of the significance of her work in the management profession, her research has been written about in the business press on numerous occasions – including Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Business Week, The Economist, Investor’s Business Daily, CNBC, and USA Today. She is an associate editor of the Academy of Management Journal and a consulting editor of Management and Organization Review. She also serves on the editorial review board of Strategic Management Journal and is the representative-at-large of the Corporate Strategy and Corporate Governance Interest Group of Strategic Management Society (SMS). She is the recipient of the 2010 Strategic Management Society (SMS) Emerging Scholar Award.

Dr. Yadong Luo is the Emery M. Findley Distinguished Chair and Professor at University of Miami. As an elected fellow of Academy of International Business, Dr. Luo has emerged as the world’s top research scholar in international management since the mid-90s. He has published over 150 articles in major refereed journals in international business and management. He also authored more than a dozen books and about a hundred other publications. His research interests include global corporate strategy, global corporate governance, international alliances, and management in emerging economies, among others. Professor Luo’s research record includes seminal pieces on important and timely topics, such as co-opetition in international business, business-government relationships, cross-cultural cooperative strategies, multinational enterprises in emerging markets, and international expansion of emerging market enterprises. Dr. Luo was ranked the world’s most productive author in leading international business journals by International Business Review in 2010 and by Management International Review in 2012, and the world’s most prolific and cited author on Chinese management by Asia Pacific Journal of Management in 2007. He currently is a senior editor of JIBS. He is the recipient of dozens of research, teaching and education awards for his long contributions to international management research and education.

 CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

Date	Time	<span “=””>Event<span “=””>
June 21	08:00-09:00	Registration
	09:00-09:15	Opening Ceremony
	09:15-09:50	Keynote Speech Ⅰ（Prof. Oded Shenkar）
	09:50-10:25	Keynote Speech Ⅱ（Prof. Chris Marquis）
	10:25-10:50	Tea Break
	10:50-11:25	Keynote SpeechⅢ（Prof. Yan Anthea Zhang）
	11:25-12:00	Keynote SpeechⅣ（Prof. Yadong Luo）
	12:00-13:30	Lunch
	14:00-15:00	Parallel Sessions Ⅰ
	15:00-15:10	Tea Break
	15:10-16:10	Parallel Sessions Ⅱ
	16:10-16:30	Tea Break
	16:30-17:10	Meeting Editors and Speakers (Round Table Forum)
	17:10-17:30	Best Paper Award Ceremony

 CONFERENCE AVENUE

International Conference Hall of MBA Building, Business School, Sun Yat-sen University

 CONFERENCE REGISTRATION

Regular Rates	RMB 1000
Student Rates	RMB 500

Those who are interested in participating in this seminar should register via the conference website in time. The deadline for registration is 31 May 2019. The registration fee includes all forums and meals listed in the meeting schedule.

Please visit the conference website http://en.hudongxuetang.com/m/STVSW for further information and registration. For queries, please contact the organizers at sysbs@mail.sysu.edu.cn, or +86-020-84112612, +86-020-84112678.

Guangzhou

Guangzhou is the capital of Guangdong Province. It is China’s southern gateway to the world. It is the central city of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau, the Pan Pearl River Delta economic zone and the hub city of “one belt and one road”.

Guangzhou is a famous historical and cultural city. Since the Qin Dynasty, Guangzhou has been the administrative center of government. It has been the political, military, economic, cultural and scientific and educational center of South China, and the birthplace and prosperity of Lingnan culture. Guangzhou has been the main port of the Marine Silk Road since the third century, the largest port in China in the Tang and Song Dynasties, and the world-famous Oriental port city. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Guangzhou was the only major foreign trade port in China and the only one in the world that has been prosperous for more than 2000 years.

Sun Yat-sen University

Sun Yat-sen University, founded by Dr. Sun Yat-sen and with an educational tradition spanning over 100 years, is a preeminent research, academic and cultural center and the premier location for talent development in South China. Under the direct supervision of the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, and strongly supported by both the Ministry and Guangdong Province, Sun Yat-sen University has developed into a modern comprehensive university that enjoys a reputation as a top-tier university nationally and a renowned university internationally. With five campuses in the three cities of Guangzhou, Zhuhai and Shenzhen, and ten affiliated hospitals, the University is striving to become a world-class university and global center of learning.

Business School, Sun Yat-sen University

Established in 1985, the Business School of Sun Yat-sen University (SYSBS) was instituted to offer a broad range of business degree programs. With the generous endowment of HK$20 million from the Ho’s Education Foundation (its chairman at the time, the late Mr. Ho Sin Hang, was chairman of Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Bank), SYSBS became the first business school in China to be instituted by an overseas foundation, and one of the first schools to be engaged in business education in Mainland China. Since its inception, SYSBS has not only continually received the support of the Ho’s Education Foundation, but it has also attracted donations from other noted overseas foundations such as the Fok Ying Tung Foundation, the Peihua Foundation, and the Xiangjiang Foundation.

Today, SYSBS is regarded as a leading business education institution and is one of the four prestigious institutions throughout China to be conferred the National Key Discipline for Business Administration and the National Discipline for Management Science. In 2017, SYSBS’s Business Administration discipline has been selected as “Double First-Class” discipline by the Ministry of Education of China (MOE), “Double First-Class” initiative is a Chinese government’s plan to make China an international higher education power. In the same year, SYSBS’s Business Administration has also been rated as one of the four A+ disciplines in China by MOE. In November 2018, ARWU ranked SYSBS’s Business Administration discipline in the top 2 position in China. Internationally, SYSBS has been triply accredited by AMBA, EQUIS, and AACSB. Its EMBA was ranked #11 (2012) and Master’s in Management #44 (2013) worldwide by FT. For three consecutive years since 2016, the world-renowned prestigious magazine The Economists ranked the school’s MBA program among the world’s top 100 list, the only one business school in mainland China.

1. Sun Yat-sen University Kaifeng Hotel
Price: 450 RMB
Address: 1/F Information Technology and Culture Center, North Gate of Sun Yat-sen University, Binjiang Road (E), Haizhu District, Guangzhou
Tel: 020-89222888

2. Gold Coast Marina Club Hotel
Price: 450 RMB
Address: No.81 East Binjiang Road, Haizhu District, Guangzhou
Tel: 020-34280123

3. Wing Kwong Hall
Price: 350 RMB
Address: In Sun Yat-sen University (About 30 meters from the business school)
Tel: 020-84112138

4. Ramada Pearl Hotel Guangzhou
Price: 680 RMB
Address: No.9 Mingyue Yi Road, Guangzhou Avenue, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou
Tel: 020-87372988

5. New Pearl River Hotel
Price: 558 RMB
Address: No.795 East Binjiang Road, Haizhu District, Guangzhou
Tel: 020-34255335

6. Guangzhou Rosedale Hotel
Price: 400 RMB
Address: No. 348 Jiangnan Avenue, Haizhu District, Guangzhou
Tel: 020-84418888