Writing and Organizing Your Paper for Asia Pacific Journal of Management (and other Mainstream Management Publication

1. David Ahlstrom Professor – The Chinese University of Hong Kong Editor-in-Chief, Asia Pacific Journal of Management ahlstrom@baf.msmail.cuhk.edu.hk Writing and Organizing Your Paper for Asia Pacific Journal of Management (and otherMainstream Management Publications)

2. ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT Official Journal of the Asia Academy of Management http://www.baf.cuhk.edu.hk/asia-aom/index.html David Ahlstrom Editor-in-Chief The Chinese University of Hong Kong ahlstrom@baf.msmail.cuhk.edu.hk

7. The paper organization and submission checklist – especially for empirical papers* Shorten your title (it’s not an abstract!) The Introduction is very important. Finish the Introduction section in about 2-3 pages (about 5-7 paragraphs) What is your research question? Frame research in terms of a question. (more on that later) Can you make the title into a question? Motivate / Situate your paper–the mini-lit review (in the Introduction) Brief method statement (in Introduction) What will the results of your paper contribute (briefly stated in the Introduction). Some authors finish the introduction with a list of what they will do next, space permitting. Literature review (Theory) should tell a story / progression of the literature’s development. A good literature review: It helps you to situate / locate / position (editors sometimes say “motivate”) your paper properly. It helps you to enter the research program (stream) in the ‘right place.’ 3. You convince reviewers and editors that you know the literature.

8. The paper organization and submission checklist* • If you have hypotheses, you usually need 1-2 paragraphs per hypothesis. Do not list hypotheses. Do not put them into a table only. • Try to start your Methods section no later than page 15 (for management papers). Some papers may require a separate ‘Research Design’ subsection. • Restate your hypotheses in the Results section (not word for word, but remind readers of them, and then give your results – one by one) • No new ideas and cites in Results (just your findings with very brief comment or clarification about them) • After the Results section, go right into the Discussion section.Try to start the Discussion section with the Contributions subsection. • If you need to explain more about your results, say it in the discussion section, in context of the Contributions(probably empirical contributions) • Limitations and future research should finish the discussion section(not at the end of the paper). • Have a 1-2 paragraph Conclusion (Don’t end with Limitations). Summarize for those readers that did not want to read the whole paper. No need to restate each finding, but give a summary of what you found (i.e. not linear but inverted U…) • The shorter your paper, the better! • (Adopted from Mike Peng; and Ahlstrom, 2010 APJM, issue, 2 and 2011 issues 2, 3 and 4 ) • Let’s Amplify and Expand on some of these…

9. Craft (and shorten) your title Easy to remember (and cite!) – Peng and Heath (1996 AMR): The growth of the firm in planned economies in transition: Organizations, institutions, and strategic choices (15 words) – Peng (2003 AMR): Institutional transitions and strategic choices (5 words). Sometimes a standout or substitute word can help (“iron cage”; seesaws; windmills, competing, etc – especially active words with -ing). --Consider: Speed, competitive strategy, and its relationship with firm performance (9 words, already a very good title, no subtitle) --Changed to: Competitive speed and firm performance (5 words) – Later, the author chose this title: Competing on speed (3 words—reducing 2/3 of previous length, and “competing” replaced both “strategy” and “performance”)

10. The Introduction is very important • One editor of AMJ said that he thought about half the papers he desk rejected were primarily due to the introduction. • Research question is important • Length is important (usually about 5-7 paragraphs, maybe 2+ pages – this is what is in AMJ also in recent years on average). • Motivating (situating, positioning) your paper in a summary of past literature – the mini-lit review. • Contributions

11. The Research Question-- Raise questions, preferably in the 1st sentence – Peng (2003 AMR): “How do organizations make strategic choices during the time of fundamental and comprehensive institutional transitions?” – Peng (2004 SMJ): “Do outside directors on corporate boards make a difference in firm performance?” – And especially see Meyer, Estrin, Bhaumik, & Peng (2009 SMJ): “What determines foreign market entry strategies?” Raise a question in the title if possible – Peng, Lee, & Wang (2005 AMR): “What determines the scope of the firm over time? A focus on institutional relatedness” Pay attention to the question word (What, why, how, when, where, who, and do). Usually ‘what’ is a common question word for a standard (hypothesis-driven) variance study, such as “what factors are related to Y.” ‘How’ is more associated with a process study, as in “how did this event occur (over time).”

12. Avoid ‘examine’; ‘investigate’; ‘explore’; ‘study about’ (unless really is an exploratory study) • Avoid “questions” such as: • “We are going to examine innovation in China.” Or “explore guanxi in China” • Or “We are going to look at the factors leading to good HR performance in India.” • Or “We will investigate how TQM leads to firm performance.” • These are overly broad and hard to ‘answer’ in the context of a paper (or they have already been answered by dozens of past studies and now researchers have to find some new area within this topic – usually some way of improving the theory (new mediator or moderator), but this must be carefully justified or motivated through the literature review of the paper.

13. Consider this (too-broad) topic • Too broad: What are the factors that lead to firm ‘success?’ • That is a better question than on the previous slides, but: • Focused enough? No - What are the factors that lead to firm success in China? Very broad and tough to really answer in a 30 page research paper. • We do need to know about this, but before a paper, or a review paper can be written about China firm performance in general, we need to understand more specifics about firm performance there. • For example, how much does the CEO (or Managing Director) matter to firm performance? Does changing the CEO in China impact firm performance?

14. See Entrepreneurship : Theory & Practice, (See Hayton, George & Zahra 2002) for a good set of sample research questions

15. Motivate / Situate your paper: mini-literature review (in Introduction) • The Introduction should contain a mini-literature review. Give a quick summary of the main relevant literature and its development. Do not go into detail (i.e. the results of those past studies) beyond what is necessary in the introduction (see Meyer et al., SMJ 2009) • Be careful about saying “little research has been done on this topic.” If you write that, try to be pretty certain it is correct.

16. Theory Contributions (mention in the introduction, then a longer subsection at the start of the Discussion section) Theory Contribution: Research question asked, “Is culture associated with differences in rates of new firm formation [i.e. do different countries have different levels of entrepreneurship] after controlling for economic/structural factors?” – Note that question suggests important moderators that were not included in earlier studies and thus represents an important extension (theory contributions) of previous research. Sometimes the theory contribution can be answering a simple question about theory, such as ‘what leads to firm growth in a transition economy?’ The condition of a transition economy suggests theory contributions, and further discussion in the introduction introduced institutions and their importance.

17. Empirical & Practice Contributions • Empirical Contribution:Usually some interesting empirical finding. Also relates to accurate and valid descriptions and measurements of the variables. • -- In the growth example above, an empirical contribution could be a finding about firm growth, particularly something new or underdetermined in previous research. • Empirical contributions also can include a new variable or direct effect on the dependent variable. New conditions seem to fall sometimes as empirical contributions or theory contributions. • Practice Contribution:Something that can be used or potentially used by practicing managers, supervisors, or consultants (or even government officials). • – For the growth example, it is relatively easy to give practical examples for managers about how firms grow and what factors and strategic actions are most likely to lead to growth.

18. State contributions directly • This is also why seemingly good papers get rejected. The problem is they fail to make any meaningful contribution to the literature. For example, a paper that studies work motivation using very traditional theory (e.g. Expectancy Theory) and variables would probably not be making any significant contribution over what is already known. At least it would have to work hard to show that contribution. • The first few papers on a topic provide a lot of contributions. The 50th paper on a topic probably will provide a lot less contribution; at least the author must work hard to show what that contribution is (and this leads into the literature review…). • One paper I received linked teams, feedback, and some leadership variables to performance. No theory structure – just a list of variables and their link to performance which is already well known • That is a little like sending a paper to medical journal about aspirin’s effect on headaches. • See my editorial in APJM on ‘Helpful sources’ (Ahlstrom, 2011 – issue 4) for more on ‘contributions.’

19. Literature review – Should be summarized very quickly in the Introduction and then a longer Literature Review section See Introduction of Meyer et al. (SMJ 2009) for a good example of a summary literature review – www.mikepeng.com After the Introduction section, you need some literature review or summary of theory and past research. Do not go directly to the methods section. Short, focused -- no need to cite 1,000 articles Your focus: Puzzles? Contradictions? Gaps? Some authors just provide a short write-up and then a table to list the papers. Not a good approach. – Show your figure (usually your research framework) before you start making complex arguments (end of Intro is a good place to position this figure) – Your figure becomes a road map . . . helping reviewers Also see ‘research program’ slides below

20. The Literature Review and the current Research Program (or research stream) Important: At what stage is the literature in now and how can I contribute? This is summarized in the introduction with a “mini literature review” To do this, you must know what literature came before. All Nobel Prize winners start off their talk by summarizing what work came before them, how they built off of that work, and where their work fits. So editors may be upset or worried to read “very little research has been done on this topic before.” Or just the skipping of the literature review. Try to tell a little story about the development of the literature and where you are entering the research program (stream). Are you redefining some weakly defined measures? Were all observations thrown into a ‘bin’ with the same or similar label (e.g. the work on corruption and bribery seems to have done this), when in fact they should be analytically separated. Is the literature “stuck” on more and more descriptive studies or bigger and bigger SEM models? and has failed to cross over the “chasm” to prescriptions for managers and firms?

21. Example -- a problem literature review • Example: “Different typologies of influence strategies exist, but this research distinguishes two general categories of influence strategies -- so says a 1980 article.” • First problem with this statement: What research? Past research? This paper’s research? – be careful of vague pronouns like “this, that, these, those” etc – be clear about what you are talking about (i.e. “This what…”). The author did not clearly distinguish between “the past research” and the “current research.” • Second problem: Huh? Is the author joking -- two categories of influence strategies? Has the author bothered to read what the social psychology literature says about influence and persuasion over the past sixty years? Influence and persuasion are not the same things; this paper has not recognized this. • In addition, there is about sixty years of past research. Why cite only a couple of papers from the 1980s? How about a fuller story of influence and what your paper can add to the sixty years of research (hint: it is certainly not “two general categories of influence strategies” – there are many more than that, both content of influence / persuasion, and process of influence).

22. Literature reviewexample - better: Factors leading to firm growth Consider the research program (stream of articles) on how /what factors lead to firm growth. • Traditional approach linked firm growth to simple characteristics of the firm. That is, smaller firms were more likely to grow, larger firms were less likely. And then in later research, these simple characteristic correlations were explained (theory-based mechanism) by risk-taking of small firms versus (risk-averse) large firms. • Research in IO economics (Penrose; Porter) and later strategy (Peng & Heath, AMR 1996) gradually showed other specific methods of firm growth (more sales and marketing intensity, acquisitions, share buybacks to boost share price and reduce cost of capital, government backed financing and loans, and other institutional factors etc).

23. Literature reviewexample: Factors leading to firm growth • While this IO and strategy research was going on, work from economics (Robert Solow, 1956, 1957; Schumpeter, 1942) suggested the importance of innovation and technology to firm growth. • This led to a line of research on innovation, and improving innovation, and later linking innovation to firm growth. • Another line of research on excellence in HR (High Performance HR Systems – HPHRS) also identified firm growth or firm performance and its connection to HR.

24. Any questions as yet?

25. Hypothesis Section See good empirical papers in APJM, SMJ, AMJ, etc. to see how hypotheses are justified (1-2 paragraphs before each hypothesis) and then worded. Do not just list hypotheses (i.e. H1, H2, H3 etc) Do not put hypotheses in the abstract Do not put hypotheses in the Methods section. Do not put hypotheses (for the first time) in the results section Generally do not hypothesize null (no effect) findingsby saying “there is no difference between these groups, etc”). But see Peng, 2004 SMJ – “Outside directors and firm performance during institutional transitions” – for a good discussion in the Methodology section on hypothesizing a null. It is seldom done, but it is possible, using power analysis (see Cohen et al. on this also, as cited by Peng). But you need a very specific research question rather than a very general ‘difference between groups’ study.

26. Results Section Restate your hypotheses in the Results section (not word for word, but remind readers of them), and then give your results – one by one. Do not just list out a table that says “supported” or “not supported.” This must be written in the paper, with some brief explanation if the results turned out differently. NO new ideas and few or no cites in Results. Just your findings with very brief comment or clarification about them.

27. Robustness tests • Many of the best journals now ask for robustness tests. Sometimes this may come at the end of the Results section. • A robustness test may be something like running the regression again with a different (but related) dependent variable, to see if the results are about the same. • For example, one paper on turnaround, I had to replace the dependent variable of firm decline with Z scores (bankruptcy risk) and run the regressions again to check the results. • Watch for different types of robustness tests in future articles. Sometimes will be in an appendix also.

28. Discussion section Start the Discussion section w/the Contributions subsection: Theory Empirical or case results Practice Other (research methods, government policy, etc) Additional discussion / explanation if needed. Limitations Future research

29. Conclusion Have a 1-2 paragraph Conclusion (Do not end with Limitations) Conclusion should be pretty good such that people who did not read your paper can learn the basics of the paper by reading both the introduction and the conclusion (introduction for the set-up of the paper and its organization, and conclusion to state results clearly). Tie everything together with an informative summary: “Learning does lead to higher performance—albeit not necessarily in a linear fashion” (Luo & Peng 1999 JIBS). Note, all the results are not there, but they are nicely summarized in this JIBS paper.

30. A Summary Checklist Reminder • 1) You need a research question. The title seems to suggest one, but then the paper rambles around for pages and pages without committing to a research question. Try not to "study"; "research about"; or "examine" topics. Ask and partially answer a research question in the introduction of the paper. • 2) Provide a mini-literature review in the Introduction section, which will be expanded upon in the fuller literature review. This serves to "motivate" and 'locate' the paper for readers immediately, so they don't have to guess about its position (see www.utd.edu/~mikepeng -- his paper in SMJ2009 for a very good model of this). • 3) Provide a 1-2 paragraph 'contributions' paragraph at or near the end of the introduction. Again see Meyer et al. 2009 in SMJ 2009 for a very good model of this. • 4) Get to the literature review quickly, after about 3 pages of introduction. Some papers get to the literature review around page 7 - much too late. The literature review is very important – see Ahlstrom, 2011 – APJM issue 4 for some comments and helpful resources (articles and books) on contributions, literature review, etc.

31. A Summary Checklist – 2 • 5) The hypotheses section should follow the lit review. Again see how Peng does it. Mike is our former editor and his work is exemplary. Now your hypotheses are coming too late in the paper and they are just listed. Never list hypotheses - you need 1-2 paragraph justifications for each hypothesis. Cut your hypos to about five. Do not use much more than that. • 6) You need a separate Results section that just gives the results. Also you may need a robustness test. Watch out for these in the newer empirical papers in SMJ, AMJ, JoM, etc. • 7) Discussion section should start with contributions - 1 paragraph per contribution (theory, empirical evidence, practice, other if necessary). • 8) Limitations and future research should follow. • 9) Conclude with 1-2 paragraphs, for readers that just read your introduction and conclusion only. They should be able to figure out what the paper is about without flipping back and forth.

32. The details are very important -- please, don’t make sloppy mistakes ! – Such as “in china research” (incorrect grammar and lack of capitalization for China) -- Definitely do not misspell words in your title (e.g. Chinnese) or in the references (e.g. David Ahlstorm or Asian Paciific Journal of Management). – Missing or very incomplete or inaccurate references (wrong pages, citing pages not in the citation’s page range, etc). Someone sent “XXX, 2010” as a key citation. – No Single spaced papers and include page numbers -- Avoid using bullet points in a formal paper. Also avoid (1)…(2)…(3), write “First…second…third”. -- Do not get major facts wrong such as a key date,. a key author’s name, the starting point of a major research stream, a major event. E.g – Edward Snow and JK Fairbanks in a China paper (should be Edgar Snow and John K Fairbank) -- For APJM (and most management journals – but check this), do not use 1.1, 1.2, 2, 2.1 with the headers. It shows the editor that you have not read APJM, or didn’t bother to pay much attention to the aims and scope.

33. Lists in your paper vs. having a theory structure • -- Avoid long lists that have no apparent organization. Anyone can make lists (e.g. macro vs. micro; conceptual vs. empirical, HR success factors, etc). • The list should have some purpose to its organization (some theory or logical framework). Otherwise, my list is as good as your list. • This is why theoretic structure is important. Otherwise papers will all just have long lists of variables. Frame and limit your paper (comes back to a good literature review)

34. Example – Social Influence and theoretic structure • There are several principles of influence (6 main ones, and several others less researched). • Many of these principles can be classified into groups (e.g. scarcity, consistency / commitment, social proof) all use decision shortcuts that are well-understood from decision making. • A paper that studied social influence would keep in mind this type of structure in studying influence, if multiple principles were to be studied.

35. The review process & increasing odds of success - Everybody gets rejections all the time – @ 90-95% rejection rates for the best journals. Even the B and B+ journals only accept 15-25% submissions. – Former editor of APJM, Mike Peng is about three times better than average in his acceptance rate, which means his A-journal submissions are still being rejected 70% of the time! – It is a numbers game, and even very good papers sometimes get submitted to multiple journals (not at the same time, of course). If you don’t receive rejections, you are probably not doing enough research. Most well-known authors like George Akerlof sent their eventual award-winning papers to multiple journals (e.g. Akerlof’s “Lemons” article). Rejections are very common in this field. – Gone with the Wind ( 亂世佳人 ). It took them more than a year to cast the role of Scarlet O’Hara in Gone With the Wind – perhaps the most coveted female role in film history. Many fine actresses were tried and rejected. Don’t get discouraged. Established actors are going to auditions all the time – sometimes 25 times before getting a new part. Writing papers is sometimes like going to auditions.

36. Realize reviewers and editors are rational (and quite human) • Our intellectual market for ideas is not perfect, but is rational, reasonable, and among the best in the world. • Be patient and keep trying -- research on the philosophy of science shows that good and empirically correct ideas usually do eventually win (though it may take a long time): • – e.g. limes / Vitamin C for Scurvy – 坏血病 ; • --Innovation and new business creation contributes to economic growth – took many years for this idea to be shown (i.e. the Solow residual -- part of growth not explicable by measurable changes in the amount of capital, K, and the number of workers, L, usually attributed to innovation and technology improvements.) • --IQ and Consciousness are the two most important predictors of job performance. • --Generals and schedules did not start WWI (Ahlstrom, Lamond & Ding, 2009). • --Institutions matter a lot (even economists accept this today, though it took a while for D. North, Mancur Olson and others to get recognized for this work.

37. Some final thoughts: The reviewer process - Reviewer’s perspective-1 I have served on the editorial boards of JIBS, APJM, and Journal of Small Business Management, and guest edited multiple issues of Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice and APJM Special Issues as well as reviewed for many years and also being an editor at various levels for more than 10 years. Is the story interesting? – Avoid very low value-added topics or just giving the readers a “tour” of well-established literature and hypotheses. Is the theory sound? – Topic- or data-driven versus theory-driven research – Building on previous theory? – Overlooking major aspects of previous work? – Citing authors correctly?

38. The reviewer perspective-2 Is the research design (approach + data) and formal methods reasonable? See John Creswell’s work on research design for some ideas on this. – Does it match your research objectives? – Does operationalization reasonably reflect the conceptual essence of your constructs? Is the writing goodor at least clear? – Don’t try to “sound academic.” Just tell the story. Get help later with the format and style if possible, but most important is to tell the research story – Logical flow of macro-structure – Consistent words throughout the paper (e.g., don’t mix up “organization culture” and “climate”, or developing markets, emerging economies, and transition economies – they are not the same. )

39. Good author tactics Anticipate the reviewers’ concerns Anticipate who your reviewers might be – Very hard; can never be proven – Your references provide a clue (for editors) Meet journal styles (asset-specificity investment) Tight editing (Have you tried research notes?) Be professional and cool – “Our results are interesting (surprising in some cases) ...” Offer to review for the journal also. . . Social capital matters

40. Dealing with reviewers Thoroughly address every point raised– Including disagreements, do not hide them! Remember, the reviewer is usually trying to help you to get your paper done, and done well. Work with the reviewer and listen to their points. What reviewers appreciate: Point-by-point responses Reviewer #1 – list out what the reviewer said, point by point (put in your own numbers for each of the reviewers’ points Our response is … Reviewer #2 -- also list out each point (adding your own numbers) Our response is … What reviewers dislike: #1: Done! #2: Done! You need to tell them what you did, do not just say “done.”

41. Some Additional Points (time permitting) – thinking up a topic • As noted before with the ‘literature review’ – know the literature!! • Understanding the current state of the research program (research stream / current literature) is very important when you start to write a paper on a topic that is new to you; especially when writing the literature review. • For example does the fieldneed an exploratory paper on your topic? Why? Is the field getting it ‘very wrong’ (e.g. why major firms seem to often fail at or near the peak of their success – the explanation was “lazy, crazy, greedy {for $ or power} stupid {especially ignoring tech. change}”). Christensen found all these explanations inadequate and went back to some exploratory work and then research on one industry (disk drives) and case work on the steel industry. • Exploratory study on Guanxi?? I’ve rejected quite a lot of these.

42. Thinking up a Topic– a few more points Does the field need a paper clarifying (adding to) an existing model? Why? Should the causal arrows run in a different direction? Was an interaction effect overlooked? Is there a key mediating variable that needs to be in the model? What is your theory contribution? Is the field “stuck” on building bigger and better models (i.e. lots of arrows and paths, mediators, moderators), but causation not clarified(sometimes a mediator can clarify a mechanism, but you also need to do that with your research and justification of the paper and the specific hypotheses)? Or are there no normative recommendations in this research program (stream of articles) – the model just describes what is going on with organizations, groups, or individuals, and cannot produce normative recommendations to organizations and managers. This may be an opportunity to link that work with some performance measures (financial, innovation, OB-HR type measure, etc). Then you can easily justify a new paper providing clearer mechanisms (mediator), causeation, and normative (prescriptive) results.

43. Entering an Established Research Program and Theory Improvement Has the current research been able to make accurate predictions in new studies in the same area? This suggests good internal validity (and good construct validity), though there are other tests for validity. But note: though accurate predictions are good, but not yet enough. The ancient astronomers could make good predictions about the movement of the sun and stars. But they could not explain why those movements occurred (Kaplan, 1964). That is, they did not know the (broad) mechanism by which the stars’ position relative to the earth moved (i.e. the movement of the earth, and Newtonian motion). Theory is improved when the mechanisms (potential mediators) behind the predictions (hypotheses) are discovered, and later, some conditions (moderators) are discovered and tested. In the case of astronomy, this would be theory of gravitation and stellar / planetary motion. Theory is also improved when you can establish external validity (i.e. your theory works in much different situations, such as expectancy theory working for factory workers and for high-level professions. This establishing of mechanisms is helpful in directing studies to build external validity of the model. Understanding the mechanisms takes the model to ‘far away’ settings where those mechanisms should still work. Thus gravity theory can work not only for planets, but even for the bending of light (further establishing external validity of gravitation theory, via General Relativity). Theory is also improved when normative (prescriptive) tests can be made from the predications and explanations of the theory? Usually this also introduces suitable conditions and making external validity tests of the theory. E.g. in Good to Great (Collins, 2001), noncharismatic leaders were better at turnarounds. How do they, and charismatic leaders do under other, non-turnaround conditions? And from that, we can give prescriptive advice about charisma and non-charisma (humble), and maybe even on the value of leadership itself.

44. Building a Case for Causality Donald Campbell and Julian Stanley, Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Research (1963)

45. Evidence about your topic… Starts with a good research question and thorough literature review. The literature review starts to “answer” your research question, but cannot answer it fully (e.g. “institutional change normally comes from inside, according to many papers on the subject. But what causes it to be encouraged from the outside?” – you can see how that literature review would work, but then in what direction your study would proceed with its hypotheses, or theory-building) Consensus in the literature is nice, but not evidence on its own (i.e. the story told by the stream of papers is important to describe). Just saying “The overwhelming majority of papers in peer-reviewed journals support this position” is not really evidence on its own. Your literature review should tell a story (institutional change has traditionally come from the inside {endogenous change}, but what leads to institutional change from outside {exogenous change). Where would this insistence about “scientific consensus have left Nicolaus Copernicus or Albert Einstein? What was the “scientific consensus” in those days? Remember that science historian Thomas Kuhn discussed how paradigms formed and how they are overturned. It is not by “consensus” (though consensus is a powerful influencer, by itself, it is not a substitute for careful theorizing of variables and mechanisms, improvement of theory through moderators and external validity, and predicting and explaining phenomena, and finally making prescriptions that “field practitioners” can actually use.

46. Other Useful Methods and Research Design Sources See: www.strategyresearch.net/ -- Current and Future editorial papers and commentary articles in Asia Pacific Journal of Management (and the References) --

47. Some more ideas on what APJM wants • It is good to contribute further indigenous research and the testing and extension of theory in the important context of ethnic Chinese firms. • Yet much more research is needed to build a better understanding of this important and growing industrial sector of the world’s economy.

48. Where can all this go? Research on ethnic Chinese business (or other developing economy firms) should seek to address at least three main concerns, which can also inform research in West. • The first concerns the better classification and specification of the context of ethnic Chinese business -- cultural understandings and institutional arrangements and resulting indigenous constructs such as supplication as an influence technique (putting yourself in a one-down position to encourage help). • Second, well-established constructs developed and tested primarily in an Anglo-American-based setting can be investigated in a Chinese environment to see how the constructs hold up in a significantly different setting and how they may require some different implementation approaches – such as with motivation or goal setting. I.e. – the Chinese institutional or cultural condition (moderator) • Third, additional study in the Chinese commercial context would also be also crucial to the identification and elaboration of context-free constructs and managerial techniques that can function everywhere -- e.g. social influence in China. See the Special Issue on Managing in ethnic Chinese communities in Asia Pacific Journal of Management, V27(3) – 2010.

49. Thus, potential areas for research on China and other Asia developing economies • Exploratory studies, particularly classification schemes. This means good qualitative work. • Need for stylized (Hambrickian) studies – identifying and classifying new concepts before counting them up. And where does guanxi fit? • Clarifying causal models. Building theory justifications and then identifying anomalies and boundary conditions (moderators). • Culture as a causal variable? Or moderator? • Mediators • Perspectives • Review papers • Commentaries

50. Some other useful references • Designing Research for Publication. Anne Sigismund Huff, 2008. • Writing for Scholarly Publication. Anne Sigismund Huff, 1998. • The Craft of Research. Booth, Colomb, and Williams, 1995. University of Chicago Press • Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Anne Lamott, 1995. First Anchor Books • Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article. Howard S. Becker, 1986. University of Chicago Press. • Publishing in the Organizational Sciences. Cummings and Frost, 1985 and 1995 (two different volumes). Sage Publications. • Engaged Scholarship. Andrew Van de Ven. Oxford University Press, 2007. • John Creswell – various books on research design and mixed methods. • Ahlstrom, David. 2010, 2011, APJM. Especially see issues 1, 2 and 4 in 2010 and issues 2, 3 and 4 in 2011. • The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Volume 1: Philosophical Papers by Imre Lakatos • And see www.mikepeng.comfor free downloads of helpful papers, especially from SMJ