CALL FOR PROPOSALS：Chinese Technology Ventures in the Digital Era: Strategic Leadership, Decision Making Process, and Governance
Guest Editors
Tian Wei,Fudan University.
Li-Qun Wei,Hong Kong Baptist University
Franz W. Kellerman,University of North Carolina – Charlotte.
Taiyuan Wang,CEIBS
Igor Filatotchev,King’s College London
We are in the digital era. Big data, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technologies are transforming the nature of business and enabling new business models, new organizational structures, and new modes of entrepreneurship. These new forms of business practices generate great challenges for organizational leaders to develop successful strategies. Entrepreneurs face the speed and magnitude of change that technology brings, the significantly greater level of uncertainty, and the higher costs of failure.
A newly passed blueprint for China’s development in the next five to fifteen years has garnered wide attention as it offers a glimpse into the country’s innovation path and future new technology scenes. In the digital era, Chinese tech ventures are new business organizations that focus on frontier areas in the development and application of sciences and technologies, such as new-generation artificial intelligence, quantum information, integrated circuits, and brain sciences. These disruptive sciences and technologies create new rules and processes for entrepreneurs and business models. For example, “don’t fall too far behind or you will never catch up”. This rule makes entrepreneurs of Chinese tech ventures rush to their decisions and endure great risks of failure. Different from many other ventures, Chinese tech ventures tend to be “born global”, with global teams, global resources, and the global market. This global anchor will fundamentally change the decision making and governance of Chinese tech ventures. Meanwhile, the evolving institutional and industry environment shall dramatically change the landscape of these firms (Wei et al., 2015). For example, US-China tech collision pushes Chinese government and policies to facilitate the development of critical technologies in the global arena. The support of the Chinese government creates a friendly institutional environment for the growth of Chinese tech ventures. However, governmental scrutiny on anti-trust regulations and data privacy tend to set rules and constraints for booming Chinese tech ventures.
These new phenomena call for rethinking traditional research tracks on strategic leadership, decision making processes, and governance.
Scope of the Special Research Forum
We welcome a variety of topics and issues related to strategic leadership, decision-making processes, and governance of Chinese tech ventures in the digital era. Both quantitative and qualitative works are warmly welcomed. Due to the nascent nature of the research area, we strongly encourage a grounded theorizing approach to generate insights.
Example questions are listed below:
– How are entrepreneurs from Chinese tech ventures subject to institutional benefits or constraints?
– How do entrepreneurs of Chinese tech ventures make strategic decisions to address uncertainties related to social, cultural, and political constraints?
– How do strategic leaders with(out) a technology background make decisions differently in Chinese tech ventures? How do strategic leaders with a technology background learn managerial skills along with the growth of Chinese tech ventures?
– How do strategic leaders decide when facing privacy concerns regarding private info or customer info?
– How do strategic leaders in Chinese tech ventures initiate strategic change to cope with change in the technological environment?
– What are the opportunities/risks that strategic leaders of Chinese tech ventures face differently under technology acceleration?
– Do entrepreneurs of Chinese tech ventures consider the issues of misuse of data somewhat differently?
– Is there any new decision-making style for entrepreneurs of Chinese tech ventures? What are the key elements for these new forms of decision-making?
– What kinds of human or social capital matter to entrepreneurs’ decision-making and how do these influences take effect?
– Is there any uniqueness of strategic decisions made by sole entrepreneurs, relative to entrepreneurial teams, and how will this impact the operations of new ventures?
– How do Chinese tech ventures select their board members and generally organize their corporate governance mechanisms?
– How do society and governments affect the process of governance and decision-making of entrepreneurs?
In addition, we expect papers in the special issue to clearly state their contributions to literature on innovation and entrepreneurship. The authors need to explain how and why the predictions for the questions raised would differ in the China context vs. other contexts and be explicit about their contributions to innovation and entrepreneurship literature.
Schedule and Timeline
1.Preliminary Proposal (deadline March 31st, 2022): The preliminary proposal should specify the targeted data source, format, develop intended research questions, and justify the motivation. The initial proposal should be within five pages (single-spaced). Please submit proposals to Tian Wei (weitian@fudan.edu.cn) with the subject line: ‘MOR Chinese Tech Ventures in the Digital Era Proposal’.
2.Proposal Development Workshop (early June, location TBD): Accepted proposals will be invited to a developmental workshop to further refine the focused research questions based on the secured data source. At the end of the workshop, we will extend invitations to some promising proposals to submit a revised version of the proposal.
3.Pre-register your study/studies. All accepted proposals are requested to pre-register their studies via osf.io or other online platforms. If confirmatory studies are dropped in the data collection process, please don’t create a file drawer but add them to an (online) appendix, along with the data, syntax, and study materials for all your studies. For more information, see
https://www.cambridge.org/core…
4.Paper Submission Deadline (January 31st, 2023). Please submit full papers via the MOR submission website: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mor.
5.Paper Development Workshop for R&R papers (location TBD): Further revise the paper with known results and findings.
6.Publication of the special issue (TBD).
Guest Editors
Tian Wei is Professor and Vice Department Chair in School of Management, Fudan University in China. She obtained her PhD from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. Her research interests cover cross-border acquisitions and corporate social entrepreneurship. She has published in leading management journals, including Journal of Management Studies, British Journal of Management, Management and Organization Review, International Business Review, and Journal of International Management. She serves as a Deputy Editor for Management and Organization Review, and an Associate Editor for Asian Case Research Journal.
Li-Qun Wei is Professor of Management in the Department of Management and DBA Program Associate Director of Faculty of Business Administration, Hong Kong Baptist University. She received her PhD from Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2004. Her research interests are strategic human resource management (SHRM), top management teams (TMTs) and Chinese business strategy, with recent projects mainly focusing on the HRM system evolution and founding team effectiveness in entrepreneurial firms in China. With those published at premier academic journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Leadership Quarterly, Human Relations, and Human Resource Management, she has published over 30 articles in peer-reviewed, quality academic journals, plus some at the Best Paper proceedings of AoM and AIB annual conferences. She is actively involved in various executive trainings, has experience working in businesses and providing consultancy services to various kinds of firms, especially small- and medium-sized enterprises.
Franz W. Kellerman is the Addison H. & Gertrude C. Reese Endowed Chair in International Business and Professor of Management in the Belk College of Business at the University of North Carolina – Charlotte. He holds a joint appointment with the Center for Family Business at the WHU–Otto Beisheim School of Management (Germany). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut. In a world-wide study, he was ranked 13th amongst the leading contribution authors in entrepreneurship research (JSBM, 2018). His research interests include international business, strategy process and entrepreneurship with a focus on family business research. He is an editor of Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice and former associate editor of Family Business Review. He has published over 100 articles in peer reviewed journals, such as Organization Science, Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Business Venturing, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Family Business Review, Academy of Management Learning and Education, etc. He serves on the Editorial Boards of Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, Group and Organization Management, Family Business Review, Journal of Family Business Strategy, and Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal. His most recent co-edited books are Innovating Strategy Process and the Family Business Companion.
Taiyuan Wang is Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at CEIBS. His research has appeared in numerous journals, including Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Research Policy, and Human Relations. He received the Best Convention Paper Award from the Human Resources Division of the Academy of Management (2015) and was nominated for the Newman Award by the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management (2010). He also won a number of research grants from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He currently serves as an editorial board member of Journal of Business Ethics, and reviews for Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Research Policy, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Management Studies, and so forth.
Igor Filatotchev is Professor of Corporate Governance and Strategy at King’s Business School, King’s College London, and a Visiting Professor at Vienna University of Economics and Business. He received his PhD in Economics from the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Moscow, the Russian Federation. His research interests are focused on corporate governance effects on entrepreneurship and strategic decisions; sociology of capital markets. He has published more than 150 academic papers in the fields of corporate governance and strategy including publications in leading academic journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of International Business Studies, Organization Science, and Journal of Management. He served as an Editor in Journal of Management Studies, Corporate Governance: International Review and Journal of Management and Governance. Currently he is Senior Editor of Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Business and Management.
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