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Organization and Management in the Midst of Societal Transformation: The People's Republic of China

Arizona State University, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Peking University
Graduate School of Management, University of California, Irvine, California 92697-3125
The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104
Faculty of Business Administration, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T.
Cornell University, (for correspondence: 31 Sea Colony Drive, Santa Monica, California 90405)
anne.tsui{at}asu.edu
kschoonh{at}uci.edu
meyer{at}wharton.upenn.edu
cmlau{at}cuhk.edu.hk

Twenty-five years of economic reform has propelled China to the center of the world's economic stage. Based on current trends, in the foreseeable future China is likely to become the largest economy in the world. China's dramatic growth may be envied by other developing economies, but for management scholars it presents an exciting intellectual puzzle. In this paper we describe the empirical context of China today, review contemporary research on Chinese management and organizations, and describe the nine papers in this special issue of Organization Science. The papers provide a close examination of how massive corporate transformation in China has influenced interfirm relationships, affected opportunity structures and social processes, and modified individual behaviors within firms. We identify the many paradoxes in this intellectual terrain and present a guide to the challenging research agenda ahead. We recommend that scholars of organizations think deeply about China as a context and consider China as an empirical setting where the boundaries of existing knowledge on organizations can be extended.

Key Words: China; PRC; management; organizations; economic transformation; transforming organizations

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