Knowledge Management in Global Competition

Guangzhou, December 3, 2017

Call for Papers or Abstracts

The Business School of Sun Yat-Sen University (SYSBS) is pleased to announce its 2017 annual international symposium on frontier management research in Guangzhou (SYSBS campus), China on December 3, 2017. This year’s theme is global knowledge management in businesses who are already competing internationally and those contemplating entering the international arena. Accelerated flows in trade, investment, capital, services, information, technology, data, and brainpower (projected to represent 50% of global GDP by 2025) are the new global normal. Firms need new strategies and policies to foster knowledge management under this new normal. We intend to provide a platform to discuss this theme, bringing together senior and early career scholars in the fields of strategic management, international business, organizational behavior, human resources management, entrepreneurship, marketing, and operations, from China and beyond. English will be the functional language of the symposium.

In today’s hyper-competitive yet closely connected global marketplace, it is pivotal for firms to organize, orchestrate and manage not only tangible resources but also intangibles, primarily knowledge. While global connectivity and an emerging knowledge marketplace provide tremendous opportunities for firms to build, acquire and leverage knowledge, generating returns from these opportunities is a daunting challenge, complicated not only by inherent difficulties in integrating disparate pockets of knowledge within a firm but also by sophisticated processes of knowledge sharing and diffusion with other organizations in the firm’s knowledge chain and its business eco-system. To make a multinational company superior in diffusing tacit and codified knowledge, intellectual capital and innovation within the firm, with other firms, and across borders, it is imperative for the firm to establish viable knowledge management policies that guide and foster knowledge generation, diffusion, utilization and upgrading.

An array of interesting questions awaits scholars (and practitioners). For example, some forms of knowledge can be externalized in an explicit or digital form, while others will remain tacit. How should a firm customize knowledge management for different types of knowledge? What should be done to mingle innovation with digital technologies or connectivity platforms? Given the somewhat diminishing role of home countries and the increasing significance of global hubs in building and diffusing global management, how should multinationals manage this new structure seamlessly and productively? Do knowledge codification, globalization and modularization, among other developments, alter the return on innovation versus imitation, and, if yes, how should firms react to this development?

We welcome full-fledged papers as well as abstracts/proposals that broadly deal with knowledge management in a competitive global setting. We encourage submissions that address motives, processes and policies involving global knowledge management. Global linkage economy nourishes global knowledge development through external communities such as strategic alliances, global freelance operators and entrepreneurs, open source communities, online innovation, crowd-sourcing, and the like. Will, and how, the firm build a potent competitive advantage in forging and improving such external communities? Complex interactive systems in global knowledge management now evolve in real time across units, organizations and locations. In what areas should the firm uniformly manage knowledge, and in what else areas should it differentiate and authorize? Cross-border knowledge sharing requires distinct yet interrelated elements such as codification, search, and access. How are such elements or processes affected by the firm’s differentiated or localized strategies in different countries or markets?

We also invite submissions that reveal knowledge management by emerging market firms. A two-way flow is common nowadays between Western multinationals and emerging market firms in global knowledge sharing and diffusion, including “reverse” knowledge transfer from emerging to developed country firms. For instance, Huawei licensed out 769 patents to Apple, and licensed in 98 patents from Apple, in 2015. Google and Samsung have a broad, long-term cross-licensing deal that covers their existing patents as well as those filed over the next 10 years. This opens a stream of research questions such as reverse innovation, reverse adaptation, reverse transfer, and innovation/ imitation hybridization, as well as new forms of loosely coupled cooperation even with global competitors.

This conference is intended to attract papers or abstracts/proposals that will lead the discourse on some fresh or new perspectives on global knowledge management in a new era of global competition. Submissions should extend and deepen our understanding of some new perspectives across multiple domains?innovation, organizational behavior, human resources management, international business, strategic management, entrepreneurship, and operations management, 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 (2-3 pages) relating to the conference theme. Only original, unpublished work is sought.

The conference is featured with several world-renowned keynote speakers who are the authority in the field. It will also recognize 2-3 best paper awards based on the quality of the paper submissions.

Please submit your papers or abstracts/proposals IN ENGLISH via Conference Maker. All submitters of the conference should create an account and then submit the documents at the website:

https://editorialexpress.com/cgi-bin/conference/conference.cgi?action=login&db_name=2017SYSBS.

IMPORTANT DATES

Paper and abstract/proposal submission deadline:  October 31, 2017

Author notification of accepted presentations:        November15, 2017

Conference registration deadline:                             November 20, 2017

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

This conference will be featured with keynote speeches by internationally recognized scholars in the area, such as Prof. Oded Shenkar, Prof. Jiatao Li, Prof. Tailan Chi, Prof. Jeffrey J. Reuer, and Prof. Yadong Luo.

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. Jiatao Li is the senior associate dean of HKUST Business School, the head of Department of Management, and the Lee Quo Wei Professor of Business, Chair Professor of Management. He is one of the most influential scholars in global business strategy. His research interests include organizational learning, strategic alliances, corporate governance, innovation, and entrepreneurship, with a focus on issues related to global firms and those from emerging economies. His work has appeared in leading academic journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Management, and Journal of International Business Studies. He has served as an Associate Editor of the Strategic Management Journal from 2009 to 2016, and currently is serving as Editor of the Journal of International Business Studies for 2016-2019. He is also on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Journal, Global Strategy Journal, Journal of Management, and Long Range Planning. Prof. Li was Program Chair of the Strategic Management Society’s special conference held in Hong Kong in December 2016 and will serve as Program Chair of the 2018 Academy of International Business annual conference in the US. He is an elected Fellow of the Academy of International Business (AIB).

Dr. Tailan Chi is a Professor of International Business & Strategy and holds Carl A. Scupin Professorship at University of Kansas Business School. He received his B.E. from the University of International Business & Economics, Beijing, China, his M.B.A. from University of San Francisco, and his M.A. in economics and Ph.D. in business administration from the University of Washington. His research conducts economic analysis under the constraints of information imperfections and potential cognitive biases and applies this approach to the study of international business. His current projects examine, inter alia, alternative motives for the formation of joint ventures, interfirm collaborations as dynamic games under uncertainty, and drivers of acquisitions by emerging economy firms in developed economies. He has published in journals such as Strategic Management Journal, Journal of International Business Studies, Management Science, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Global Strategy Journal, Journal of World Business, Decision Sciences, and IIE Transactions. He has co-authored a major textbook, International Business?3rd ed., Routledge?, with Oded Shenkar and Yadong Luo. He is an Area Editor at the Journal of International Business Studies, and serves on the editorial boards of Strategic Management Journal, Journal of World Business, Global Strategy Journal, Cross-Cultural and Strategic Management, and Journal of International Business & Economics. He is an elected Fellow of the Academy of International Business and a member of Academy of Management, and Strategic Management Society. He has taught a large variety of international business courses at the undergraduate, MBA and doctoral levels. His main teaching interests include the global regime of international business, international business strategy, and business in China. He worked as a business negotiator for a major Chinese trading company before coming to the United States. He has advised companies in the U.S. on doing business in China and Pacific Asia.

Dr. Jeffrey J. Reuer is the Guggenheim Endowed Chair and Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado. Professor Reuer serves as an Associate Editor for the Strategic Management Journal and as a Consulting Editor for the Journal of International Business Studies.  He has received five best reviewer awards for his service.  He is a Past Chair of the Business Policy and Strategy (BPS) Division of the Academy of Management, and has also served on that organization’s Executive Committee and Research Committee.  He was a program chair of the Strategic Management Society’s (SMS’) conferences in Washington, DC and in Guangzhou, China.  He is a co-founder of the SMS’ Cooperative Strategies Interest Group.  With colleagues at Northwestern he co-founded the Midwest Strategy Meetings, an annual conference geared towards paper and career development for junior faculty and doctoral students at a consortium of business schools.  He has guest-edited several special issues and has organized a number of specialty conferences, and he is currently co-editing a special issue of the Strategic Management Journal on the interplay between competition and cooperation (with Hoffmann, Lavie, and Shipilov).  He is also a co-editor of a Virtual Special Issue devoted to Alliance Governance (with Ari?o, Poppo, and Zenger).Professor Reuer has led courses and seminars on business and corporate strategy, strategic investment decisions, and collaborative strategy in many graduate degree programs and organizations (e.g., Areva, Eli Lilly, Ernst and Young, Euroforum, Kiewit, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, LG, McKinsey, NEC, Owens Corning, Pfizer, Philips International BV, and the World Bank). Professor Reuer’s research uses organizational economics to investigate firms’ external corporate development activities and growth options (e.g., strategic alliances, international joint ventures, acquisitions, and initial public offerings).

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 joint ventures, 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. Prof. Luo received his Ph.D. from Temple University. He currently is a consulting editor of JIBS, editor of JWB, senior editor of MOR, advisor of GSJ, guest editor of AMJ, and review board member of SMJ. He is the recipient of a dozen research and teaching awards at U. of Miami and U. of Hawaii where he taught before joining UM, including the Faculty Senate Distinguished Scholar Award in 2009 (first ever by UM business school faculty) and Regents’ Medal for Excellence in Research in 1999 (first ever by UH business school faculty).

VENUE

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

SCHEDULE

08:30-09:00 (30 min)

Registration

09:00-09:15 (15 min)

Opening Remark by SYSBS Dean, and Conference Convenors

09:15-09:45 (30 min)

Keynote Speech I by Professor Oded Shenkar

09:45-10:15 (30 min)

Keynote Speech II by Professor Jiatao Li

10:15-10:35 (20 min)

Coffee break and group photo

10:35-11:05 (30 min)

Keynote Speech III by Professor Tailan Chi

11:05-11:35 (30 min)

Keynote Speech IV by Professor Jeffrey J. Reuer

11:35-12:05 (30 min)

Keynote Speech V by Professor Yadong Luo

12:05-14:00 (115 min)

Lunch break

14:00-15:00 (60 min)

First set of parallel sessions (Venue: Classrooms in MBA Building)

15:00-15:10 (10 min)

Coffee Break

15:10-16:10 (60 min)

Second set of parallel sessions (Venue: Classrooms in MBA Building)

16:10-16:30 (20 min)

Coffee break

16:30-17:15 (45 min)

Meeting AIB fellows and keynote speakers ? Round table Q&As

17:15-17:30 (15 min)

Best paper award ceremony and concluding remark by conference convenors

REGISTRATION

Like previous symposiums hosted by SYSBS, there will be no registration fee for this year’s symposium, a commitment made by the School to support the academic community and frontier research on international management. Please fill in the form below and send it to sysbs@mail.sysu.edu.cn before November 20, 2017.

2017 SYSBS International Management Symposium Registration Form

Further information and updates is available at the website of Business School, Sun Yat-sen University: http://bus.sysu.edu.cn/EN/index.aspx