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Dear Tunga, Please find attached a Call for Papers for a Research Handbook on the Globalization of Chinese Firms. I would be grateful if you could post this publishing opportunity to the AIB List Serve. In anticipation, many thanks. Regards,Craig 

CALL FOR PAPERS – RESEARCH
HANDBOOK ON GLOBALIZATION OF CHINESE FIRMS

The globalization of
Chinese business enterprises, in the wake of the rapid ascent of the Chinese
economy, has increased substantially. With it comes the question of how to
explain Chinese corporate behaviour as an essential component of China's new status as a leading world
economic actor. Multiple reasons can be adduced to explain this global ascent:
China's enormous growth has fuelled its need for resources, both strategic and
natural, resulting in differing choices and patterns of investment. China's
globalization has been driven, in large measure, by its outbound and inbound
FDI activities which have evolved rapidly in the past 20 years and have
implied varying explanatory frameworks. Once Premier Wen Jaibao announced in
2004 that ‘the Chinese government encourages more enterprises to go global’,
the pace of Chinese outbound investment began to accelerate, with foreign
acquisitions doubling from 40 in 2003 to 82 in 2006 and reaching a high of 298
in 2009 or some $73.20 billion, anticipated to account for roughly 8% to 9% of
global merger and acquisition activity in 2011 (Williamson & Raman, 2011).
The Chinese government openly encourages Chinese investment abroad, supported
by a vast pool of savings and export surplus earnings, in addition to
relatively cheap labour.

China is seeking the
development of world-class multinational companies with a full range of
competences to explore and exploit opportunities around the world, yielding enhanced
technical know-how and access to distant foreign markets (Alon & McIntyre,
2008). The globalization of Chinese firms, in particular, has generated
increasing attention in the professional literature (e.g., Williamson &
Raman, 2011). With rapid economic growth in China and the societies with Chinese
heritage social science researchers have been debating an important question:
whether existing theories, which are primarily developed in the setting of the
mature economies in the West, are nonetheless relevant and capable of
explaining the economic miracles in Chinese societies? Or whether new theories
based on the Chinese experience need to be developed (Barney & Zhang,
2009)? This debate has sharpened in the late 1990s and into the new century as
China became the world's manufacturing base.

Some scholars (e.g., Alon
et al., 2009) believe that existing
theories can satisfactorily explain the globalization of Chinese enterprises.
Applying institutional (macro, external), resource-based, and internalization
(micro, internal) theories to explain internationalization is now commonplace,
but studies which seek to combine multiple theoretical approaches can offer a
richer explanatory terrain. Scholars who assert that China's firm behaviour does not need uniquely Chinese
theories argue that, by definition, a theory should be generalizable to
different observations across countries. There may be variations in how a
theory manifests itself in various settings but a theory such as agency theory,
resource-based theory, or institutional theory should be universal.

On the other hand,
researchers have called for more indigenous research to account for
context-sensitive research. Tsui (2004) suggested that the North American bias
of Chinese management research has hampered our understanding by focusing on
context-free conceptualization, where in fact, as Child (2000, 2009) noted,
high context cultures such as China's stress national difference. 

Global management
knowledge can be gained through either context-embedded, context-bounded, or
context-specific conceptualization (Tsui, 2004). Indeed, the rapid political,
economic, and cultural transformations in emerging markets, such as China,
present unprecedented opportunities to apply general theories and develop new
ones grounded in a new social context. Whether context-specific or
context-embedded, the inclusion of context requires indigenization (Tsui, 2004,
2009). There is an opportunity to investigate the validity of mainstream
Western theories in China, while maintaining sensitivity to local specifics, in
order to broaden the range and applicability of these theories. The
resource-based view, industry and institutional theories can be combined to
achieve a better understanding of Chinese firms' behaviours. 

This Call for Papers is designed to
encourage all those who are currently researching in the field of Chinese
Management Studies to submit a paper to be included in this ‘Research Handbook
of the Globalization of Chinese Firms.’ The intention is for the handbook to be
as comprehensive as possible and to include a broad cross-section of papers
from the different theoretical frameworks used in the Globalization of Chinese
Firms. As a result, we are looking for as many papers as possible using the
different theoretical frameworks. We are especially
interested in conceptual studies, empirical investigations and state of the art
reviews in the following areas: 
 Identify how the specific attributes of
     Chinese business groups help in developing multinational advantages which,
     in turn, lead to either asset exploitation in developing countries or
     asset augmentation in developed countries. 
 At the organization level, examine the
     relationship between internal capital markets, scope economies, vertical
     and horizontal linkages and internalized capabilities. 
 Examine the Inter-organizational
     attributes that constitute a location advantage as well as a linkage to
     learning. 
 Assess the relationship between
     institutional support, location advantages and learning. 
 Use resource-based, industry-based, and institution-based
     explanations to explain strategic- and market-seeking motivations for FDI.
 Explain the role of family ownership in
     the international involvement of Chinese firms. 
 Evaluate the
     relationship between scope
     economies, vertical and horizontal linkages, internalization,
     technology-based competitive advantage, export experience,
     diversification, family ownership, excess family control, and high
     discretionary slack. 
 Assess the role of Industry variables like
     inter-organizational linkages, industry competition, and industry R&D
     intensity. 
 When Chinese firms go to a country with a
     different institutional environment explain how they adjust their
     organization to operate efficiently? 
 Explain the significance of Institutional variables like
     government support and regulations.
 Describe how Chinese firms manage organizational
     learning.
 Evaluate the role of culture distance, as well as
     capital requirements, for Chinese firms as they globalize.
 Explain the role mergers and acquisitions
     play in diminishing the impact of potential corporate and national
     cultural clashes. 


 Deadline for receipt of manuscripts is November
30 2012. 

 Papers should be submitted via e-mail to one of the
Editors, Dr. Craig Julian, at the following e-mail address: [log in to unmask]


Research Handbook on the
Globalization of Chinese Firms Editors includes Craig C. Julian, Zafar U. Ahmed
and Junqian Xu. 		 	   		  
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