We investigated how third party managers from China, Japan and the USA intervened in employees' disputes. Consistent with predictions, we found (using non-linear HLM analysis) that managers who were superiors to the disputants behaved autocratically and/or decided on conservative (e.g., contract adhering) outcomes; but managers who were peers (especially in China and the USA), generally involved disputants in decision-making and obtained integrative outcomes that went beyond initial contract related mandates. Our results extend prior research and theorizing using the dispositional and constructivist perspectives on culture by introducing norm complexity as an explanation for variations in third party conflict intervention behaviour within one culture.

Does CEO duality – the practice of one person serving both as a firm's CEO and board chair – contribute to or inhibit firm performance? Agency theory suggests that CEO duality is bad for performance because it compromises the monitoring and control of the CEO. Stewardship theory, in contrast, argues that CEO duality may be good for performance due to the unity of command it presents. The empirical evidence, largely from developed economies, is largely inconclusive. This article joins the debate by extending empirical work to the largely unexplored context of institutional transitions. Our findings, based on an archival database covering 403 publicly listed firms and 1,202 company-years in China, offer stronger support for stewardship theory and relatively little support for agency theory. Finally, we also call for a contingency perspective to specify the nature of conditions such as resource scarcity and environmental dynamism under which CEO duality may be especially valuable.

This study examines the determinants of the timing of Taiwanese firms' entry into China. Our empirical findings suggest that this strategic decision is influenced by both economic and institutional concerns. In particular, we found that Taiwanese firms that expected greater benefits from early entry tended to be early entrants in China, while those that were more sensitive to uncertainty chose to defer their entry. We also found a curvilinear relationship between firm size and timing of entry into China. Our findings further indicate that the negative relationship between investment irreversibility and early entry is weaker in the presence of substantial perceived first mover advantages.

In a cross-cultural experiment, we examined how task interdependence influences the importance of organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) in employee performance evaluations in China and the USA. A total of 150 graduate students in China and 154 in the USA (a total of 304), who serve as evaluators, participated in the experiment. Participants were exposed to a task interdependence manipulation and then rated the importance of OCB in their overall performance evaluations of employees. Results support the moderating effects of national culture (both using a country proxy and as a measure of collectivism) on the affects of task interdependence. Although among evaluators from the USA perceptions of the importance of OCB increased as task interdependence increased, the effects of task interdependence were significandy attenuated among evaluators from China. Implications of these results for research and practice are discussed.

International joint ventures (IJV) are an important organizational mode for expanding and sustaining global business and have been of special relevance for the emerging Chinese market for decades. While IJVs offer specific economic advantages they also present serious management problems that lead to high failure rates, especially in developing countries. Because of the strategic relevance of IJVs and corresponding management challenges, research on success factors for managing IJVs in China has received broad attention, resulting in a variety of studies. However, there are no conceptual syntheses of the literature to date and further development in the field is hampered by both a lack of consolidation of what is known and identification of viable avenues for future research. We address this gap by building on existing concepts in the field, developing them further and synthesizing them into an integrative, theory-based framework of IJV success factors. We use this framework to systematically depict the results of both empirical studies related to Sino-foreign IJVs and to IJVs in general. Finally, we draw important implications from the research and propose potential paths for future study.