The Road More Popular versus the Road Less Travelled: An ‘Insider's’ Perspective of Advancing Chinese Management Research

Abstract

To complement Barney and Zhang's as well as Whetten's articles in this issue of Management and Organization Review, we offer ways to develop indigenous management theory to explain unique Chinese management phenomena. We first briefly review the imbalance of developing theories of Chinese management versus developing Chinese theories of management in Chinese research societies. We then describe a five‐step research process that uses an indigenous research approach to theory development: discovery of interesting phenomena, field observations, construction of the theoretical framework, empirical examination, and theory refinement. This process may be useful not only in the Chinese context, but also in any other context. We identify several challenges in both Chinese and international academic societies that must be overcome to facilitate learning across the two approaches proposed by Barney and Zhang: the need for high quality journals in the Chinese language, international journals' efforts to ease the imbalance between the two approaches, and collaboration between Chinese and Western management schools.

Indigenous Research Methods: A Systematic Review

“…A framework, however, does not dictate a specific technique for data collection or analysis. With the search criteria being "Indigenous research method" (and variations on this phrase), articles that used this exact phrase or a similar phrase as an explanation for their method were returned (Cameron, Plazas, Salas, Bearskin, & Hungler, 2014;Cheng, Wang, & Huang, 2009;Chinn, 2007;Cueva, Dignan, & Kuhnley, 2012;Dennis, 2014;Dyll-Myklebust, 2014;Evans, Hole, Berg, Hutchinson, & Sookraj, 2009;Le & Gobert, 2015;Makomenaw, 2012;Nakamura, 2013;Roe, Zeitz, & Fredericks, 2012;Russell-Mundine, 2007;Smithers-Graeme, 2013). For example, Dennis (2014) stated, "this study employed Indigenous Research Methodologies," (p. 34), and detailed the explicit methods including a qualitative approach and inductive data analysis.…”

“…This article represented one of few that came from an Indigenous Asian perspective and from a discipline outside of psychology or the health sciences-in this case, business. Cheng et al (2009) noted that they chose an Indigenous approach because bringing a Western theory into a Chinese context may prove challenging and ultimately futile, due to the required incorporation of Chinese traditions and social thought.…”

Leadership research in Asia: Taking the road less traveled?

“…However, as Cheng, Wang, and Huang (2009) vividly pointed out, conducting indigenous research is similar to taking the road less traveled-on the one hand, it is very fulfilling, but on the other hand, it is also challenging in terms of the extensive steps needed in making such journey successful. If researchers are interested in this route, we suggest they try to demonstrate how such indigenous styles enrich our current understanding of leadership using the methodological standards commonly adopted in the management and social science literature (e.g., construct validity, reliability, incremental explanation).…”

Understanding indigenous leadership research: Explication and Chinese examples

“…A compelling indigenous leadership theory should not only effectively and accurately describe the unique cultural, societal, and historical elements of a society's collective sub-consciousness (Cheng, Wang, & Huang, 2009), but it should also identify factors in social and cultural systems that shape and moderate the behaviors of individual leaders and explain how these factors influence leadership effectiveness in a particular context, thus providing global leaders implications that are relevant in a specific local context. The identification of paternalistic leadership is a good example.…”