The management paradigms in the West mainly rely on legal contracts and explicit rules (formality), while the management traditions in the East emphasize social relationships and implicit norms (informality). In an era of ‘West-meets-East’, balancing formality and informality is becoming critical for firms, especially those facing institutional differences in transnational contexts and institutional transitions. In this research, we conducted a comparative multicase study on returnee entrepreneurs and local entrepreneurs in China. We found that at the early stage of venturing, returnee entrepreneurs emphasized formality more than informality, while local entrepreneurs stressed informality more than formality. However, the formality-informality balance among both returnee and local entrepreneurs converged over time in line with the institutional transition in China. Returnee entrepreneurs increased the emphasis on informality (but kept the dominant position of formality), whereas local entrepreneurs gradually shifted from informality to formality. The spatial pattern of asymmetrical balancing and the temporal pattern of transitional balancing are both rooted in the Chinese philosophy of Yin-Yang balancing.

To examine the bribing behavior of firms, we developed a cross-level moderation model using agency theory at the firm level and anomie theory at the societal level to investigate the relationship between manager control of firms and firm bribery activity. The results of this cross-cultural analysis using a sample of 1,799 firms from 38 nations showed that at the firm level, manager-controlled firms (MCFs) have a higher propensity to bribe than shareholder-controlled firms. At the country level, bribery is higher in MCFs (relative to shareholder-controlled firms) in societies with a low level of institutional collectivism, a high level of uncertainty avoidance, economic change, and income inequality. Contrary to the hypothesis, the relationship between bribery and manager control is stronger rather than weaker in societies with press freedom. Implications for future research and practices are discussed.

This is a wide ranging call for papers addressing and extending Professor Kwok Leung's scholarship in cross-cultural research, psychology, and management (see below).

Questions about the special issue may be directed to any of the guest editors. Papers for the special issue should be submitted electronically through MOR's ScholarOne Manuscripts site at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mor and identified as submission to the ‘Scholarship of Kwok Leung’ special issue. All submissions should follow the ‘MOR Author Guidelines’, available online at http://journals.cambridge.org/images/fileUpload/documents/MOR_ifc.pdf

We are excited to announce the Second Management Organization Review (MOR) Research Frontiers Conference. This interdisciplinary Research Frontiers Conference serves as MOR exploration dialectic for advancing and opening new research directions of phenomena in the social sciences underlying management and organizations, globalization, and economic growth through boundary-crossing dialog and discourse with a focus on all transforming economies.