Since the mid 1990s the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) has emerged as a key institution governing firm ownership in China, but its impact on firm performance is understudied. Through an analysis of Chinese firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 1994-2003, we examine how the changing ownership patterns following the rise of SASAC influenced firm performance. We have three findings. First, contrary to the popular view that state ownership in China's listed firms has declined, we find that the state shares have been moved from the original state offices to the SASAC in the format of ‘state institutional shares’. Second, compared with the old state shares, the SASAC institutions affect firm performance more positively. Third, after controlling for state and SASAC ownership, ownership concentration is a strong positive factor in firm performance. Our findings fit squarely within a long tradition of agency theorists who argue that ownership concentration helps solve the free-rider problem and thus has positive effects on firm performance. However, we focus on the ways in which ownership concentration allows firm owners to monitor and stabilize firm behaviour, which has more important implications for emerging economies such as China's domestic capital markets.

The transformation of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) into efficient entities has been an important approach in transition economies. However, the transition literature reveals little about how control structure affects firm performance of transformed SOEs. Drawing on agency theory, we distinguish three modes of control in transformed SOEs: state-controlled, dispersedly controlled, and privately controlled modes and argue that actual control after transformation plays a critical role in determining performance. Examining the impact of different control modes in China, we find that the key is who controls the transformed firm. Non-state-controlled (dispersedly controlled and privately controlled) firms are more likely to have enhanced post-transformation performance and reduced agency costs than state-controlled firms.

Despite the rich set of theories that have developed on international joint ventures (IJVs), little is known about what theoretical criteria senior executives actually incorporate in their judgments of IJV opportunities and partners. Empirical studies have often applied individual theories in a particularistic fashion, rather than recognizing the different theoretical perspectives that boundedly-rational executives may incorporate into their decision models. In this article, we combine decision criteria associated with multiple theories rooted in organizational economics to investigate how top executives process information on IJV opportunities in China. Using an established experimental technique known as policy capturing, we examine how executives cognitively weigh criteria from four prominent theories when making initial assessments of IJVs (i.e., the resource-based view, transaction cost economics, information economics, and real options theory). Our arguments and findings on executives' IJV decision models contribute to decision-making research on alliances and IJVs in China.

This study seeks to resolve a puzzle of the coexistence of follower cooperative voice and cooperative silence (expressing/withholding work-related ideas, information, and opinions based on collective, cooperative motives) in the presence of transformational leadership. A sample of 193 bank employees under 52 managers revealed that in the presence of group-focused transformational leadership, both voice and silence based on cooperative motives increased through the mediation of value congruence between leaders and followers. However, cooperative voice was more likely to be the main response to a high level of value congruence when followers under the same leader perceived individual-focused transformational leadership uniformly. Under a high level of differentiated individual-focused transformational leadership, value congruence was likely to result in more cooperative silence. We discuss implications for future research on both leadership and employee voice.

In this article we seek to explore the contextual antecedents of organizational trust. In light of the complex links between organizational contexts and organizational behaviours, we focus on the effects of the three most critical contextual antecedents, i.e., leadership role, structural rule, and cultural norm at the organizational level, on organizational trust direcdy, and their behavioural outcomes at the individual level indirectly, using organizational trust as a cross-level mediator. The empirical results, based on a hierarchical linear model with a sample of 444 employees from 82 firms in China, lent support for our multidimensional cross-level model of context–trust–behaviour link. We extend the research on organizational trust by treating it as a cross-level phenomenon and by specifying its core contextual antecedents and behavioural consequences.

We examine the influence of social distance on levels of trust and reciprocity in China. Social distance, reflected in the indigenous concept of guanxi, is of central importance to Chinese culture. In Study 1, some participants participated in two financially salient trust games to measure behaviour, one with an anonymous classmate and the other with an anonymous, demographically identical non-classmate. Other participants, drawn from the same population, completed hypothetical surveys to gauge both hypothetical behaviour and expectations of others. Social distance effects on actual and hypothetical behaviour were statistically consistent. The results together corroborated the hypothesized negative relationship between trust and social distance. However, reciprocity was not responsive to social distance. Study 2 found that affect-based trust, but not cognition-based trust, played a mediating role in the relationship between social distance and interpersonal trust in a hypothetical scenario. We conclude that close guanxi ties in China engender affect-based trust, which is extended to shouren classmates. This is true despite the fact that no more cognition-based trust is placed nor reciprocity received or expected from classmates compared to demographically identical shengren non-classmates.

The expansive research on innovation in organizations has primarily followed a technological imperative, postulating that organizations organize their innovation efforts through research and development (R&D) activities. Theories of innovation are thus shaped mosdy from the studies of technology-based innovations in the manufacturing sector, yet are applied in all contexts. This article advocates research on managerial innovations - new approaches to devise strategy and structure of tasks and units, modify the organization's management processes and administrative systems, motivate and reward organizational members, and enable organizational adaptation and change. We examine the conceptual development, generation and adoption processes, antecedents, and influences of managerial innovation on organizational conduct. By increasing an understanding of managerial innovation, this article aims to complement existing theories of innovation derived from the studies of technological innovations and thus help extend and advance theory and research on innovation process and outcome in organizations.

In this article, we describe the development of cross-cultural research in organizational behaviour over the last few decades. Distinguishing four epochs of cross-cultural research, i.e., the Aristotelian, Linnean, Newtonian, and Einsteinian, we explain research questions, empirical approaches, and research designs that have guided contributions to each epoch. Based on this description, we outline a route for future research that takes Chinese indigenous constructs as points of departure to describe how individual outcomes of interest are embedded in their cultural environment. Finally, we provide concrete implications for future research in this area.