Dear IACMR members, colleagues and friends,

As the year draws to a close, I am delighted to convey the warmest New Year greetings on behalf of the IACMR Executive Committee. May we all step into 2024 with renewed hope, joy, peace, and vibrant health.

Although our world today still faces many challenges such as conflicts, slow economic recovery, and de-globalization, as the President of IACMR and a scholar, I am filled with passion and expectation for the research in Chinese management. The IACMR Board of Governors, Executive Committee and our members continue to focus on promoting the mission of Chinese management research and teaching. As academic exchanges resume offline activities, we have restarted various onsite events: the 2023 IACMR Biennial Conference was successfully held on schedule at the campus of Hong Kong Baptist University; the third “Scholarship and Methods of Teaching” Workshop, originally scheduled for 2022, was also smoothly carried out in Wuhan this October. In addition, we have continued to launch three parallel online seminar series, allowing more members to conveniently access top worldwide scholars and cutting-edge research and ideas. We also continue to innovate by listening to our members, to better serve this academic community.

Thanks to all of you who have contributed to IACMR, including our staff in Beijing, our conference organizers, track chairs, volunteers, and host schools, our board and committee members, our reviewers for MOR and conferences, workshop faculty, seminar speakers, and our journal editors and staff. It takes so many people contributing their time and energy to make IACMR be the scholarly community that it is, and wants to be.

 I would like to briefly report some highlights of IACMR’s work in 2023.

The 2023 Hong Kong Conference. The Biennial Conference was successfully held from June 14th to 18th, 2023, at Hong Kong Baptist University, under the leadership of Professor Wei Shen, the Program Chair, and Professor Xu Huang, the Local Arrangement Committee Chair. The theme of the conference was “Globalization in Flux: China and the World,” featuring 5 keynote Panels, 10 symposiums, 95 paper presentations, 49 roundtable presentations, and 21 professional development workshops. It also included all-day university recruitment fairs and “School Nights” receptions. Over 1500 scholars and students from around the world gathered in this academic feast.

The Scholarship and Methods of Teaching Workshop The 3rd Teaching Workshop was successfully held in Wuhan from October 12th to 15th, 2023, hosted in Zhongnan University of Economics and Law. Professors Xuhong Li, Neng Liang, Xiaoyun Xie, Jia Lin Xie and Runtian Jing co-taught the workshop. Forty-one faculty members from 34 institutions gathered in Wuhan to participate in this workshop. Most of the participants had extensive teaching experience, with 21 of them having received university-level or above teaching awards. 

Teaching Seminar Series Revamp Under the leadership of Professor Neng Liang from China Europe International Business School, we have revamped our IACMR online teaching seminar series to form “Teaching Demonstration Classes.” This series has invited several excellent teachers (Chen Zhang, Tsinghua University; Wenhao Luo, North China University of Technology; Shengming Liu, Fudan University; Song Wang, Zhejiang University) to discuss teaching methods for different types of students, helping our members to learn from a variety of sources and to be better educators. 

On-Line Seminar series. This year, we continued to maintain close contact with our members through webinar series. These webinars not only provided members with access to high-quality management research but also offered them a platform for career development discussions. With the joint efforts of seminar committees, we successfully held 12 Research Seminars, 3 Young Scholar Development Seminars, and 4 Teaching Seminar Series this year.

Management and Organization Review. Under the leadership of Editor-in-Chief Professor Xiao-Ping Chen, MOR implemented a series of new initiatives this year, and the journal’s new mission is “to become a premier journal that provides ground-breaking insights about the organization and management in China and global comparable contexts”; the first MOR International Conference and Paper Development Workshop will be held in March 2024 at the University of Bath in the UK; “Lights On MOR!” hosted by Professor Ray Friedman continues to bring us exciting content with video interviews of authors. Keep an eye out for new issues, and be sure to submit your best papers!

Awards.  In addition to many authors receiving various Conference Paper Awards, Professor Jing Zhou from Rice University was honored with the 2023 IACMR Distinguished Scholarly Contribution Award. Also, five students (Yongchang Chen, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics; Kris Mikel-Hong, Tsinghua University; Fangwen Lin, National University of Singapore; Xin Lucy Liu, Columbia University; Mingyue Tang, Peking University) won Kwok Leung Memorial Dissertation Fund grants for 2023. Congratulations to all of these award winners!

Preparations for the 2025 Biennial Conference. Under the leadership of Program Chair Professor David Zhu, the Organizing Committee for the conference has been formed. The theme of this conference is “Empowering Sustainable Growth in A Digital Age,” and we have started calling for submissions. We sincerely invite you to submit your work to the conference. Get ready for a fun, engaging, and educational conference! 

I hope this holiday season gives you a chance to relax and get ready for an exciting year ahead!

Sincerely,

Runtian Jing
President of IACMR,
Professor of Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University,
On Behalf of the IACMR Executive Committee