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"Given the popular belief that China's comparative advantage is its low labour cost, The Source of Innovation in China argues that the fundamental source for Chinese economic growth is its innovation. Based on qualitative case studies and quantitative surveys of 600 firms, this research describes the competitive advantages of successful Chinese enterprises and builds a theoretical framework for innovative firms and empirically tests the resulting hypothesis. The authors explore the general features of Chinese enterprise and innovation, hypothesizing that the rapid economic development in China is based on innovation. This innovation is not only about technological innovation, but also process and strategy innovation. Cases are drawn from technological innovative firms and from traditional labour-intensive industries. Moreover, the underlying source of Chinese innovation is centred on its people, and the authors discuss this by looking at the philosophical, linguistic and culture influences. They take a broad stakeholder perspective and employ social network theory to explain that, by extension, innovative people surround the organization and create organizational values. At the organizational level, they propose a theoretical framework of a High-Innovative Human System, by integrating both Western and Chinese management systems. "--

Purpose– This paper aims to unfold the path of how the complexity of culture issues leads to a rising pressure for paradigm changes in the research on culture in international management. In terms of academic debate about culture, the crucial paradigm shift has not yet happened. Research and writing are still dominated by a mechanistic-rational approach which does not quite know to handle cultural phenomena which by nature are mutuable, often transient and invariably context-specific. Rising pressure is observed for paradigm changes through three main trends: integration of West-East dichotomy, coexistence of convergence and divergence; and dynamic vs static perspectives. It is argued that the unresolved debate on the culture construct and its measurement, the epistemological stance by researchers and associated methodological choices in culture studies reinforce these trends pressuring for a paradigm shift.Design/methodology/approach– This paper reviews the knowledge based on culture studies to establish the contributions of culture studies in international business and the foundation of its knowledge base. The conceptual foundation of culture, its multi-level and multi-dimensionality and critical issues in research epistemology and methodology are analyzed to discuss emerging trends in the process of an imminent paradigm change.Findings– By unfolding the nature of abstract and high-order definition of culture, the focus is on deciphering the complex construct and multi-level and multi-dimensionality in measurement, which, in turn, interact with the epistemology of culture researchers and the choice of methodology used to carry out culture studies. Eventually the interaction of the three studied elements drives the proposed three paradigmatic changes in the evolving business environment.Research limitations/implications– The identified trends in existing culture research keep the importance of culture studies in international business management thriving as we point to their relevance for the envisaged paradigm shift.Practical implications– The three paradoxes discussed challenge researchers who aim to contribute to the knowledge base of culture in international business. In addition, the debate cannot be ignored by international business managers as culture is a key informal institutional driver that influences international business performance.Originality/value– The review of the knowledge base on culture studies in management contributes to a better understanding of the envisaged paradigmatic shift of the discipline. The debate on the complexity of culture studies is extended to three tendencies for potential paradigmatic change, with implications discussed to suggest future research.

PurposeThe rapidly changing international business landscape, driven by dynamic factors such as technology, emerging markets, and unpredictable crises, demands that organizations innovate to survive while gaining and sustaining competitive advantages. Culture, an intricate multilevel construct, presents challenges for transnational enterprises and international business as a key "soft" element of organizational strategy.Design/methodology/approachThis paper employs a triangulated method combining a systematic literature search, machine learning, and qualitative thematic content analysis to explore the relationship between culture and innovation within the context of international business. The analysis involved scrutinizing 697 journal articles indexed in the Web of Science database.FindingsUsing k-means, which is an unsupervised machine-learning tool in Python, and hypertext preprocessor language scripting, we identified seven topic clusters and 94 keywords. Qualitative thematic content analysis facilitated the recognition of prevailing patterns in researchers' conceptualizations of the interplay between innovation and culture. We identified influential relationships between cultural configurations and innovation.Research limitations/implicationsOur analysis contributes to developing a comprehensive research field map encompassing international business, innovation, and culture.Originality/valueThis study significantly enhances our knowledge of culture and international innovation. Future research that recognizes culture as a dynamic configuration at multiple levels (e.g. national, organizational, professional, and individual) and employs more comprehensive measures of innovation and culture could substantially advance our understanding of the intersection of culture and innovation in international business.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to empirically identify two types of cultural perspective in cross‐cultural management studies: dynamic versus static perspectives, in particular their interaction in the international business of the firm.Design/methodology/approachThe paper adopts an exploratory approach using qualitative data. After two phases of data collection, the management by values concept is taken to identify both the manifested and latent levels of characteristics of these two different approaches to cross‐cultural management in international business.FindingsThe study results identify the characteristics of two cultural perspectives: dynamic versus static. Tables on static cultural comparison and the acculturation process illustrate their different natures and highlight their potential implications for further business and theoretical development.Originality/valueThe paper empirically identifies dynamic and static cultural perspectives in international business process, highlighting the relevance of distinguishing these two perspectives in the globalizing business world. The characteristics of dynamic and static culture illustrated build a base for further research in this line for international business and cross cultural management.

Two important hypotheses concerning the consequences of work-family conflict are matching-domain effect and cross-domain effect. However, neither of these has been explicitly tested in a Chinese context despite the increasing attention given by business and organization researchers
to the Chinese business world. Moreover, the extant evidence is less clear for performance outcomes than for attitudinal outcomes. In this study, we considered both economic and cultural characteristics of employees to examine the relationships between bidirectional work-family conflict and
work outcomes in China. We surveyed a sample of 241 supervisor-subordinate dyads employed at 3 hospitals in Beijing and Xi'an and found that, among our participants, family-to-work conflict was negatively related to affective and normative commitment to the organization that employed them,
and that family-to-work conflict, rather than work-to-family conflict, was negatively related to their task performance at work.

PurposeThis study tested a holistic model that investigated the interaction effect of negative mentoring experiences and moqi (pronounced "mò-chee") with a mentor—where moqi refers to a situated state between two parties in which one party understands and cooperates well with the other party without saying a word—on the protégés' turnover intention, along with the mediating role of protégés' harmonious work passion.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 281 protégés through a three-wave questionnaire survey with a 1-month lag between waves. We used a hierarchical multiple regression and bootstrapping analysis to test our hypotheses.FindingsOur results support the mediating effect of harmonious work passion on the positive relationship between protégés' negative mentoring experiences and turnover intention. In addition, our analysis confirmed that moqi with the mentor amplifies both the impact of protégés' negative mentoring experiences on harmonious work passion and the indirect effect of negative mentoring experiences on protégés' turnover intention via harmonious work passion.Originality/valueBy demonstrating the interaction effect of protégés' negative mentoring experiences and moqi with their mentor on turnover intention, as well as the mediating role of harmonious work passion, this study expands our understanding of the mechanism and boundary condition of the effect of negative mentoring experiences and provides inspiration and guidance for mentoring practices.

Servant leadership style has drawn much attention in the last decade to leadership studies on account of its focus on serving others first. Extant literature calls for a better understanding of the underlying mechanism for servant leadership to positively influence performance within an organization. We position servant leadership to contribute to firms' sustainable performance, by empirically studying the mediating mechanism of bi-dimensional trust, namely affective and cognitive trust, between servant leadership and individual performance. Our data comprised of dyadic samples of 233 pairs of subordinates and their supervisors. The results from hierarchical linear model (HLM) for clustered data showed that servant leadership strongly predicted affective trust, organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), and task performance of subordinates; affective trust fully mediated servant leadership's effect on task performance while partially mediates servant leadership's effect on subordinates' OCB. In contrast, cognitive trust did not mediate servant leadership's effect on either OCB or task performance. These findings reveal the relevance of affective trust as the underlying mechanism which mediates and deciphers servant leadership into positive individual performance.