1. History and the Debate Over Intellectual Property

Mike W. Peng, David Ahlstrom, Shawn M. Carraher, and Weilei (Stone) Shi

ABSTRACT This article responds to recent calls for organizational research to address larger, more globally relevant questions and to pay attention to history, by analyzing the crucial debate over intellectual property rights (IPR) between the United States and China. Despite the recent US position, the United States has not always been a leading IPR advocate. Rather, it was a leading IPR violator during the nineteenth century. An institution-based view of IPR history suggests that both the US refusal to protect foreign IPR in the nineteenth century and the current Chinese lack of enthusiasm to meet US IPR demands represent rational choices. However, as cost-benefit considerations change institutional transitions are possible. We predict that to the same extent the United States voluntarily agreed to strengthen IPR protection when its economy became sufficiently innovation-driven, China will similarly improve its IPR protection.

KEYWORDS China, history, institution-based view, intellectual property rights (IPR), United States

2. Human Resource Development Investment in Chinese Private Firms: Strategic Choice and Institutional Perspectives

Jian Liang and Yaping Gong

ABSTRACT Integrating the strategic choice and the institutional perspectives, we provide a contextualized analysis of human resource (HR) development investment in Chinese private firms. Based on a nation-wide survey of domestic private firms, we found that strategic choice variables (i.e., private entrepreneurs’ education and governance team completeness) are positively related to HR development investment. Perceived government support for private business strengthened the positive relationships between strategic choice variables and HR development investment. Furthermore, institutional variables (i.e., owners’ political affiliation and firms’ former state ownership) explained additional variance in HR development investment above and beyond strategic choice variables. Perceived government support negatively moderated the relationship between former state ownership and HR development investment. Theoretical and policy implications were discussed at the end.

KEYWORDS Chinese private firms, emerging economies, HR development investment, institutional theory, strategic choice theory

3. What Determines the Establishment of Chinese Multinational Enterprises’ Asian Regional Headquarters?

Xufei Ma, Pengji Wang, and Donghong Li

ABSTRACT This study addresses why multinational enterprises (MNEs) in emerging economies establish regional headquarters outside their home countries but within their home regions – an important question that previous studies have largely ignored. We extend Rugman and Verbeke’s firm-specific assets (FSAs) framework in contemporary internalization theory and differentiate two firm-specific regional strategies (i.e., foreign direct investment (FDI) and export regionalization) to examine their effects on MNEs’ establishment of regional headquarters in the context of emerging economies. Using survey data from 226 Chinese MNEs, we find that intraregional FDI and interregional exports encourage MNEs to build Asian regional headquarters (ARHQ). Furthermore, we find that home-city regional integration moderates the relationship between interregional exports and ARHQ establishment and that MNEs’ international management capability moderates the relationship between intraregional FDI and ARHQ establishment. This study contributes to the regional strategy literature by clarifying the regional strategies, structures, and management of latecomer Chinese MNEs.

KEYWORDS Chinese MNEs, regional headquarters, regional strategy

4. Authoritarian Leadership and Extra-Role Behaviors: A Role-Perception Perspective

Yan Zhang and Yun-Hui Xie

ABSTRACT Authoritarian leaders make unilateral decisions and prevail over subordinates. Such leadership, as a style of exercising formal authority and position power, may inhibit employees’ extra-role behaviors in the hierarchical role structure. We explore employees’ role perceptions to better understand how supervisors’ authoritarian leadership decreases extra-role behaviors (OCBs). Authoritarian behavior is expected to generate subordinate perceptions of role conflict, role ambiguity, and role overload, with consequent negative effects on OCB. Hypotheses are tested using data from 613 subordinate – supervisor dyads. Empirical results indicate that authoritarian leadership increases subordinate role conflict and overload which then decreases OCB. Authoritarian behavior also increases role ambiguity, but role ambiguity is not associated with OCB. The article concludes with research suggestions and practical implications.

KEYWORDS authoritarian leadership, organizational citizenship behavior, role ambiguity, role conflict, role overload, supervisory behavior

5. The Role of Business Entertainment in Economic Exchanges: A Governance Perspective and Propositions

Francis Sun and Shih-Fen S. Chen

ABSTRACT While entertainment activities in private business settings (i.e., business entertainment) are widely seen all over the world, issues about their prevalence have remained unresolved in the literature. This study takes an institutional approach to elucidate (1) the governance role of business entertainment in economic exchanges, (2) the mechanism through which business entertainment plays this role, and (3) the conditions under which business entertainment plays a greater role to facilitate economic exchanges. Our starting point is that economic transactions are governed through a combination of market rules, legal restraints, and social norms. We argue that business entertainment plays a governance role by boosting the power of social norms to regulate the behaviors of economic actors. As such, business entertainment should be more prevalent under the conditions where social fabrics are dense but market and legal infrastructures are underdeveloped. This governance approach provides a common ground to accommodate the positive versus negative views on business entertainment advocated by two camps of researchers in management, economics, and sociology. It also offers useful guidelines for policymakers to regulate, and for executives to manage, this prevalent but often misunderstood business practice.

KEYWORDS business entertainment, cross-society management, transaction governance

6. State-Mediated Globalization Processes and the Adoption of Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting in China

Christopher Marquis, Juelin Yin, and Dongning Yang

ABSTRACT Despite the prevalence of global diffusion, little is known about the processes by which international practices are adopted and adapted within organizations around the world. Through our qualitative research on the introduction of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting at two leading Chinese companies, we identify a unique set of political mechanisms that we label state-mediated globalization, whereby powerful nation-state actors influence the ways in which corporations adopt and adapt global norms and practices. We find that businesses’ needs for political legitimacy from a key stakeholder, in this case the government, leads them to deviate systematically from the global practice in both form and content. These intentional practice adaptations are then legitimized by the government to create internationalization tools and localized standards to aid adoption by other organizations. Our findings illustrate previously unidentified mechanisms by which powerful stakeholders such as the Chinese government may mediate, and thereby direct, the ways in which corporations adopt and adapt global CSR practices. Contributions to understanding the political processes of institutional translation in the context of globalization are discussed.

KEYWORDS China, CST reporting, diffusion, globalization, government, stakeholders, state-mediation