Every year, IACMR takes the opportunity of scholars gathering at the AOM annual meeting to hold the IACMR Board meeting, business meeting and a reception. This year saw the events held as usual and added with a memorial service for Prof. Kwok Leung who passed away on May 25. Here are the reports on the events held at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver on Sunday Aug. 9.

I. Report from President
At both the IACMR Board Meeting and IACMR Highlights (previously “IACMR Business Meeting”), Prof. Jiing-Lih Larry Farh, IACMR President, reviewed the following key activities in the past year.

a. Implementation of the revised Bylaws
The Executive Committee (six members of Past President, President, President Elect and Vice President, Executive Director and Secretary/Treasurer) had the monthly online meeting to talk about key issues for development of the association, and discuss and approve on key projects.

b. Management Insights (previously Chinese Management Insights)
IACMR joined hands with the School of Management, Fudan University last year to jointly publish a unique bilingual journal of Management Insights (MI). With Xiaoping Chen as the Editor-in-Chief, the MI retains the well-received sections of CMI: “research highlights” of published articles in MOR and “executive perspectives” based on interview reports with leading executives. In addition, MI has additional columns by distinguished scholars and book reviews and reflections on best-selling books, and “no boundary” essays. The first issue came out in March 2015. The hard copies of the first and second issues were displayed to the audience.

c. New Officer Election, May 2015
Prof. Farh introduced both the current officers and the new officers elected by membership voting by May 15. Lead by the incoming Vice President Prof. Zhixue Zhang from Peking University, the new team of four Representatives-at-Large are quite international: Christopher Marquis from Cornell University, Samuel Aryee from King’s College London, Jian Liang from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Aichai Chuang from the National Taiwan University.

d. Research Methods Workshop, July 2015 
The workshop hosted by Tianjin University is of the largest one in the 12 workshops ever held. 135 participants from 53 universities were divided into 14 groups for the 4-day intensive lectures and group discussions. Prof. Farh displayed the photos of the 14 faculty advisors and thanked for their contribution and efforts which made the workshop a great success: excellent feedback was received from participants for all aspects of the workshop; the faculty also enjoyed and praised the workshop; two schools have expressed interest in sponsoring future research method workshops.

II. Updates on Operations from China Office
Following the President’s remarks, Zhijun Yao, Executive Director, gave updates on the operation side, mainly on website revamping and new approaches in communicating with membership. The website revamping project is being undertaken by Global Well Ltd., a Hong Kong based IT company. The project was started in March and currently two parts of the conference system (the reviewer sign-up system and paper submission system) has been finished and the new appearance of the website has been designed. To cater for the new communication trend, the website will be more compatible with mobile devices such as iPads and smart phones.

In addition to the mass emails frequently sent to the membership and the Bimonthly Briefing in even months, IACMR China Office has developed new ways to strengthen communications with the membership: the IACMR official WeChat account and WeChat community. When WeChat has become a popular social medium with 549 million monthly active users scattering in 200 plus countries in over 20 languages, IACMR would also take advantage of this new communication approach. The IACMR official WeChat account IACMR2002 was created in January 2014 and now enjoys nearly 2000 subscribers. Each week two to three postings are released with IACMR news updates, MOR abstracts, selected articles from MI and job openings from business schools as well as weekly digest. Some articles were very well received with each being read by over 1000 people. In addition, the WeChat groups of IACMR, OB and IACMR Workshop enjoy growing active members sharing news and exchanging academic views.

III. MOR Updates
Arie Lewin, Editor-in-Chief of MOR, shared the latest news from MOR and his plans to further enhance the influence of the journal.
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– Transfer to Cambridge University Press is complete and IACMR fee-paying members have free online access to MOR backlog;
– Five MOR papers (published in 2012) have been awarded Emerald Citation of Excellence Winners in 2015;
– MOR has recently been added to the UK’s Association of Business Schools’ Academic Journal Guide;
– MOR is now rated as a category ‘A’ journal from the Australian Business Deans Council
– MOR Dialogue, Debate, and Discussion Section was added in volume 11 to inspire new ideas and passionate discussion.

a. Some figures about MOR:
– Submissions are up 25% so far in 2015
– Starting in 2014 time to publication has decreased from 2 years to 12–18 months (from submission to online publication)
– Desk reject rate (2014): 33%
– Acceptance rate (2014): 10% 
– Average days under review – 79 days 

b. MOR Research Frontiers Conference
The purpose of the annual MOR Research Frontiers Conference is to serve as the exploration mode of the journal to stimulate investigation and knowledge creation of phenomena in the social sciences underlying management and organizations and globalizations through boundary-crossing dialog and discourse.

The inaugural conference on ‘Globalization of Knowledge Creation and Innovation in the Context of Emerging Economies’ was held in Hong Kong on December 4-7, 2014. The overall theme of the inaugural conference recognizes the national aspirations and priorities that emerging economies are placing on knowledge creation as a new lever of economic development and a new arena of competition between nations in the sphere of knowledge creation.

The second conference will be on an area that nobody has explored systematically, ‘Ecology of SMEs, Knowledge Creation, Innovation and Economic Growth in Context of Transforming Economies’. As output of the conference, one or two MOR Special Issues and a CUP edited book are expected.

c. Celebrating Kwok Leung 
MOR will release a special Issue to commemorate Kwok and celebrate his achievements. Guest Editors of Michael Morris, George Chen and Yaping Gong have been invited to compile the issue. The call for papers will be announced in September 2015 and a conference, sponsored by Fudan School of Management, will be held in June 2016 and the special issue will be in publication in late 2017.

IV. 2016 Biennial Conference Update
Ray Friedman, 2016 Conference Program Chair and Xiaobo Wu, LAC Chair and Dean of Zhejiang U. School of Business, gave updates about the conference preparations. The program track chairs are as follows.

• Zhen Zhang, Arizona State U. (Micro, English)
• Lynda Song, Renmin U. of China (Micro, Chinese)
• Haibin Yang, City U. of Hong Kong (Macro, English)
• Runtian Jing, Shanghai Jiaotong U. (Macro, Chinese)
• Xu Huang, HK Poly U. (Micro, Chinese & English)
• Tony Fang, Stockholm U. (PDW Workshops)

Up to now, Zhejiang U. of Technology, Zhejiang U. of Finance & Economics, Zhejiang Gongshang U., Zhejiang Sci-Tech U., Ningbo U., Ningbo Institute of Technology and Hangzhou Dianzi U. have joined the LAC and will be working with Zhejiang U. in the course of preparations.

In his speech, Dean Wu particularly shared his observations and views about Zhejiang Province, particularly Hangzhou where Alibaba, Wahaha and Gily are headquartered, as the pioneer in developing the private economy in China and the role of entrepreneurship in shaping the local economy and ZJU School of Management’s strength in the research areas of family business, innovation and entrepreneurship. A short video about the history and current development of Hangzhou is shown, with the West Lake as the center of the beautiful scenery and with Zhejiang U. as the talent and technology source being irreplaceable components of the introduction. “Hangzhou is the right place to hold the IACMR conference and Zhejiang U. is the right host for such a conference.” Dean Wu concluded.

V. Invited Speech by Adrian Micu, President and CEO, Haier America 
Mr. Adrian Micu, President and CEO, Haier America, was invited to give a speech on ‘Reflection on My Experience with Changing Careers from Whirlpool Corporation to Haier, a Chinese Icon’ at the session of IACMR Highlights and Keynote Speech.

Adrian Micu joined Haier America as President and CEO in February of 2014 and is responsible for overseeing the company’s businesses in North and South America. Before that, he was Vice President of Engineering with the Whirlpool Corporation. Mr. Micu shared with the audience about his ‘cultural shocks’ after taking the position… Take decision-making for example, in his previous experience, it took years to explore and discuss about a project/policy, but once the decision was made, everyone should stick to it. In Haier, however, it’s very quick both to make decisions and to undo decisions… Having realized the problems existing, he has to write ‘white papers’ like ‘how to set your goals in USA’ to introduce the different culture and customer behaviors in the US and also to negotiate for changes and improve the effectiveness of Haier America… So he has been learning and adapting the culture of Haier. The audience was very interested to listen in person to the vivid cases of cultural differences.

VI. Memorial Service for Kwok Leung
A memorial service to remember and honor Kwok Leung was held at 4:00-5:00 pm on Aug. 9 at the AOM conference site. Over 100 scholars attended the service. After a moment of silence, Kwok’s wife, Yumi Inoue, recalled her memories of Kwok as a husband and a father of their kids in his daily life, followed by a video of Kwok’s photos from their family album, from his childhood to a university student and to a scholar. Many wept for losing their great friend, mentor and colleague. Professors Jia Lin Xie, Xiaoping Chen, Arie Lewin, Ying-yi Hong, Chao C. Chen and Michael Morris recalled their past contacts and interactions with Kwok and all this again brought sorrow to those present… For photos and speech scripts, please visit here.

In the end, Prof. Ray Friedman, MC of the memorial service, announced the establishment of Kwok Leung Memorial Dissertation Support Fund to ‘preserve our memory of Kwok by continuing his efforts to support young scholars, in his name’.

Kwok Leung Memorial Dissertation Grant:
• Goal: a RMB fund of 1 million yuan, providing 50,000 yuan/year in support to doctoral student; already raised 650,000 yuan.
• If you would like to contribute, e-mail Zhijun Yao (Zhijun.yao@gsm.pku.edu.cn), or Ray Friedman (Ray.Friedman@owen.vanderbilt.edu), or Xiaoping Chen (xpchen@uw.edu), indicating your pledge amount (in USD or RMB) and we will let you know when account set-up is finalized, and how to send.

VII. IACMR-Zhejiang University Joint Reception

Sponsored by the School of Management, Zhejiang University, a fascinating reception was held in Saturna Island Room of the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver at 7:00-8:30pm, August 9th. After IACMR President Larry Farh’s opening, Dean Xiaobo Wu gave a brief speech about his school and the 2016 conference in Hangzhou. In face of the participants who started to chat excitedly, Dean Wu cut his speech short and concluded by inviting those present to attend the 2016 conference in Hangzhou and tour in the beautiful West Lake next year.A reception is always a good place to meet old friends and get to know new friends. With tempt of tasty food, more people joined the reception – nearly 200 people attended the reception though some coming and going. Either saying ‘hello’ to a new friend or talking on academic topics in depth, many people kept on chatting excitedly. They had an enjoyable evening at the reception.