“China: Why Western B-Schools are leaving?”- Business Week

The latest article in Business Week reported some Western B-school exit from their joint ventures or collaborative programs with local B-Schools in China, and discussed some possible reasons.

For example, those Western B-schools considered language skill those local students have can’t match the requirement for having an all English program. Those Western B-Schools also face competition from other Chinese program from local prestigious universities, for competing the small market size that beyond what those Western B-Schools’ expectation on the executive education in China.

Again, one can’t find any B-Schools in Taiwan have been mentioned in such a discussion or concern. I believe if Western-B schools already concern the competition from local counterparts in China market, why B-Schools in Taiwan, that have no serious language gap in delivering courses, can away from such a marketplace? Does that because B-Schools in Taiwan ignore China market, or just consider they can do better than those Western B-Schools in executive education business in China?

Reference

China: Why Western B-Schools are leaving, May 15, 2008, Business Week

Evolutonary Economics

Blumer, L. E. & Durlauf, S. N. (Eds.). 2006. The economy as an evolving complex, III. NY: Oxford University Press.

Dopfer, K. (Ed.) 2001. Evolutionary economics: program and scope. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Dopfer, K. (Ed.). 2005. The evolutionary foundation of economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lesourne, J. & Orlean, A. (Eds.). 1998. Advances in self-organization & evolutionary economics. London: Economica Ltd.

Leydesdorff, L. & Van den Besselaar, P. (Eds.). 1994. Evolutionary economics and chaos theory. NY: St. Martin’s Press.

Nelson, R. R. & Winter, S. G. 1982. An evolutionary thoery of economic change. Cambridge: Bellknap Press.

Neloson, R. R. & Winetr, S. G. 2002. Evolutionary theorizing in economics. Journal of Economic Perspective, 16(2), 23-40.

Pyka, A. & Hanusch, H. (Eds.) 2006. Applied evolutionary economics and the knowledge-based economy. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

Giants from emerging markets

Reference:

Khanna, T. 2008. Billions of entrepreneurs: How China and India are reshaping their futures-and yours. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Khanna, T., Palepu, K. G., & Jayant Sinha, J. 2005. Strategies that fit emerging markets. Harvard Business Review, June, 63-76.

Khanna, T., Palepu, K. G. 2006. Emerging giants: Building world-class companies in developing countries. Harvard Business Review, October, 60-69.

London, T. & Hart, S. L. 2004. Reinventing strategies for emerging markets: Beyond the transnational model. Journal of International Business Studies, 1-21.

Mesquita, L. F. & Lazzarini S. G. 2008. Horizontal and vertical relationships in developing economies: Implications for SMEs’ access to global markets. Academy of Management Journal, 51(2), 359-280.

Peng, M. W. 1999. Business strategies in the transition economies. London: Sage Publications, Inc

van Agtmael, A. 2007. The emerging market century. New York: Free Press.

Sources:

Thunderbird International Business Review, including cases and articles cover different industries and markets.

One big questions?

Hambrick & Chen (2008) shows how strategic management become a new academic field, that deliver a well theoretical arguments about how an new academic field is emerge.

I don’t doubt the exist of strategic management as an academic field in Taiwan or elsewhere, but believe Hambrick & Chen (2008) could be one of fundamental work for me to use in the studies about why management education/research in Taiwan can’t take the lead in the Chinese academic community?

Based on the conceptual model proposed by Hambrick & Chen (2008), if we consider the development of management education/research in Taiwan, I believe there is not short of the existence of an “aspiring community” over there. Nevertheless, could we consider that intentionality of leading figureheads and/or members in the aspiring community and the institutional boundary are main reasons to influence Taiwan’s leading position in Chinese academic community?

Except that, I wonder whether all those phenomenal inquiries could direct to one BIG question- “Does the professionalism work well in Chinese/ non-Western context? why and why not ?”, if we examine what happens in Chinese/non-Western societies, in terms of their political, societal, and academic/professional fields.

Reference

Hambrick, D. C., & Chen, M.-J., 2008. New academic fields as admittance-seeking social movements: The case of strategic management, Academy of Management Review, 33(1), 32-54.

Fashion as an isomorphism process

People may read those fashion magazines to get ideas for their clothing and styling. However, I think that it’s actually a kind of isomorphism process, especially while most people may decorate in the same way.

In that sense, information disclosed in those fashion magazines are directive/reference guidelines to inform you what are  mainstream styles in coming seasons, that works as carriers to tell people what you may dress for matching or grasping so called fashion trend.

I consider this is also a result of collective actions, but be manipulated by single or a group  of people,  or those work in fashion business. Then, many people dress in similar styles, that you may say that is a imitation among people or isomorphism process for people’s dressing and styling.

Therefore, to run a fashion business can be explained to execute a isomorphism mechanism to make a mimic isomorphism to the their target segments.

Whether a business professor could be a good exeutive?

Whether a business school professor could be a good executive is a classical question, Jiang & Murphy (2007) has delivered some empirical evidence about this debate.

What’s next is whether their findings and arguments could be supported in different contexts, that arise a lots of interesting topics in the field of comparative management.

Reference

Jiang, B. & Murphy, P. J. 2007. Do business school professors make  good executive managers? Academy of Management Perspectives, 21(3): 29-50.

AMLE, 2007, 6(3)

This is a special issue about executive education.

Arguments and discussions in this issue can be used for doing replicated researches in different countries (markets).

Reference

Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2007, 6(3)

Phronetic social science

By reading Harmon’s (2007) article, he cited the idea of ” phronetic social science from Flyvbjerg (2001) as a solution to fix the debate between research and relevance.

Phronetic social science is “problem-driven, eclectic in its choice of methods, pragmatic, and action-oriented…… its fusion of heretofore dichotomous notions of thought and action, ends and means, and above all, the moral and practical.”(Harmon, 2006: 241)

Reference

Flyvbjerg, B. 2001. Making social science matter: Why social inquiry fails and how it can succeed again. (Steven Sampson Trans.) Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Harmon, M. M. 2006. Business research and Chinese patriotic poetry: How competition for status distorts the priority between business research and teaching in U.S. business schools. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 5(2): 234-243

Data independence

I left a message on Professor Phil Rosenzweig’s website (http://www.the-halo-effect.com) to appreciate how I like his book (The Half Effect) and inquiries about the book that I posted here.

Professor Rosenzweig kindly replied me and said  the most important issue is about data independence whether it’s qualitative or quantitative.

As we know, differences perceptions and memories in informant, it’s really difficult to maintain the data independence for doing research works, especially those done by qualitative approaches. However, it does not mean the public data can warrant the data independence. For example, Enron did show good performance in various criteria before going into collapse.

Therefore, the question in academic is how to sustain and maintain data independence without losing rich information we may learn from informants and public data.

Don’t assue old frameworks are always right and complete

Did you ever claim some old frameworks and arguments are sustainable in spite of any possible changes or adjustment derived from the contextual variations?

I read McGahan (2007: 751) that argue one reason for papers didn’t offer managers integrative solutions is “papers sometimes failed [to offer managers integrative solutions, I added] because they argued old frameworks were complete, comprehensive, and timeless”

I am not sure whether I will make this kind of mistake in the future, but I do know a few scholars do have this kind of attitude. They argued research used the old framework is meaningless and can’t bring some thing new, even the one who proposed this critics may not really have the experience to do that kind of research or familiar with those topics.

This kind of attitude is really bad for promoting the progress of our research. This attitude seems assume there is some specific principles or laws like what natural science has. Actually, we all know it’s almost impossible in the field of social science, such as business administration, to have so much similar laws. And it may even imply that replication research is nonsense or useless to be one of research approaches to verify others’ arguments.

Personally, I don’t agree that kind of attitude, but surprised that people around me had faced amusements with this wrong attitude. At least, such a attitude doesn’t express an open mind toward inquiries from different perspectives and in different contexts.

I hope I don’t make this mistake if I have the opportunity to stay in the academic field.

Reference

McGahan, A. M. 2007. Academic research that matters to managers: On zebras, lemmings, hammers, and turnips. Academy of Management Journal, 50(4): 748-753.