Family dynamics can significantly influence entrepreneurship, yet the temporal complexities of this relationship remain inadequately explored. This special issue addresses this gap by emphasizing the intricate interplay between internal family evolvability such as generational transitions and identity shifts, cultural continuity, and external adaptability to rapidly changing economic, institutional, and technological contexts in China. We introduce a dual tuning model that highlights how entrepreneurial and family firms (FFs) strategically synchronize their internal and external temporal rhythms to manage conflicts and optimize performance. This lead article reviews existing literature, articulates the dual tuning model, and synthesizes insights from the articles in this special issue to illuminate how Chinese FFs navigate tensions between evolving internal dynamics and external market demands. We conclude by identifying promising future research avenues that leverage this temporal perspective to deepen our understanding of family dynamics and entrepreneurship in China.

Chinese bureaucracy – the organizational apparatus of Chinese governments – has played a significant role in China’s economic development and political control in the post-Mao era. In this paper, we draw on research on Chinese bureaucracy in both English and Chinese to highlight major findings in three areas: agency problems and incentive provision, the use of guanxi in policy implementation, and variable coupling among different parts of the bureaucracy. These three aspects are interrelated: agency problems induce the prevalence of informal institutions as an organizational response, which leads to variable coupling in Chinese bureaucracy. We discuss the issues and implications this literature presents for the further development of organization theory and the emerging research agenda.

This editorial essay describes what is phenomenon-based research and why it is important to conduct indigenous Chinese management research. Grounded in the Chinese context, the author identifies emerging new organizational phenomena in the digital age that calls for new theoretical explanations and empirical validation. Adopting an evolution of theories perspective, the author outlines the various paths that can move a new theory explaining an indigenous phenomenon toward becoming a universal theory that can transcend time and space.

The literature shows that social media enhances individual stakeholders’ ability to directly influence firm behaviors, paying less attention to how it enables different stakeholder groups to influence firms collectively. Drawing on the stakeholder multiplicity perspective in stakeholder theory, this study theorizes and empirically demonstrates that social media can empower lower-salience stakeholders to drive the actions of higher-salience stakeholders to influence firm behaviors. By analyzing 506 consumer crises involving foreign and local companies in China from 2000 to 2020, we find that firms take more substantial responsibility when confronted with consumers’ social-media-based collective actions than when confronted with conventional channels of consumer complaints. This heightened responsibility stems mainly from collective actions’ tendency to spur law-enforcing agencies into addressing alleged firm misdeeds, demonstrating a stakeholder multiplicity effect of social media empowerment. We also identify the institutional contingency of this effect, showing that local governments’ bureaucratic capacity positively moderates collective actions’ effect on law-enforcing actions, whereas their intervention in firms’ operational decisions negatively moderates law-enforcing actions’ effect on firms’ responsibility assumption. This study extends the understanding of social media's relationship with stakeholder influence and consolidates the stakeholder multiplicity perspective in stakeholder theory.

Failure to attract external financing is a common puzzle for start-up firms and often leads to the use of entrepreneurs' personal funding, typically with the help of their family. With little entrepreneurial experience, nascent entrepreneurs will have no factual signals to show external investors, except their characteristics or those of their family. The literature mainly focuses on the net effects of entrepreneurs' personal capital endowments in isolation on start-up capital structure despite emerging appreciation of the importance of family-related factors. However, little is known about which combinations of capital endowments across capital dimensions (i.e., human, social, and financial capital) or generations (i.e., parent and child) will likely affect the level of external funding. Drawing on signaling theory, we adopt a configurational approach to examine the compositions of intergenerational capital endowments that are sufficient to shape external funding. Conducting a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis of Chinese privately owned enterprises of nascent entrepreneurs, we identify four typical family prototypes that feature intergenerational capital endowments for low external funding. Findings highlight the significance of family dynamics in China and their role in shaping new venture financing by displaying intergenerational signals.

The institutional logics perspective provides a powerful theoretical lens that emphasizes how meanings and practices are intertwined in relatively enduring configurations that can profoundly shape organizational behavior across space and time. In this article, we propose the need for a broader research agenda on the dynamics of institutional logics in the Chinese context, particularly in three aspects. We begin by elaborating on the distinct configuration of logics in China, where state logic is more dominant and often directs other logics, thus shaping organizational behavior differently than its Western counterpart. We then argue for the need to examine (1) the change of logics per se, leveraging China’ market transition, which provides a unique opportunity to observe how existing configurations of logics undergo transformational change and regain coherence; (2) the governance of logics, focusing on the influence of social evaluators and command posts; and (3) the diffusion of the China Model, a distinct configuration of logics and orders, to other countries through the Chinese state’s political and economic campaigns.

How does a CEO’s early-life poverty trauma exposure affect a firm’s involvement in poverty alleviation and the prioritization between generic and strategic involvement? We find that CEOs with such exposure are more likely to engage in both types of poverty alleviation initiatives. We further examine the asymmetry effect and find that these CEOs will prioritize strategic over generic involvement in poverty alleviation. We also conduct a post hoc analysis to test the mediating effect of emphasis on resource efficiency on the relationship between CEOs’ early-life exposure to poverty trauma and the relative emphasis on strategic over generic involvement in poverty alleviation. Using a sample of Chinese publicly listed firms from 2016 to 2021, we find strong support for our predictions. Our study contributes to the literature on CEOs’ early-life experiences and corporate poverty alleviation engagement.

This study investigates how institutional origin affects the dot tax haven (DTH) internationalization of Chinese family firms (FFs). Drawing on institutional theory and the mixed gamble perspective, we propose that restructured FFs (RFFs), originating from state-owned enterprises (SOEs), are more likely to engage in DTH internationalization than entrepreneurial FFs directly established by family founders. This propensity is attributed to the institutional legacies inherited from their SOE predecessors, which create a distinct potential gain-loss calculus. Our empirical analysis of publicly listed Chinese FFs from 2012 to 2021 demonstrates that restructured FFs are 30% more likely to use DTH and establish 43% more DTH subsidiaries than entrepreneurial FFs. This tendency, however, is mitigated by the firms’ economic ties to financial institutions. Our study enhances understanding of FFs’ global entrepreneurial decision-making, contributing to FF heterogeneity research. A novel aspect of our study is examining the impact of institutional legacies on FFs – a topic less explored in family business literature. Furthermore, our findings provide insights for policymakers and regulators, emphasizing the importance of tailored policies that consider the intricate interplay between institutional origin and contemporary entrepreneurial goals in FFs.

In the digital era, short videos have become a significant form of digital copyright, yet the debate over whether stronger copyright protection enhances their creation continues. To contribute to this discourse, we conducted an analysis based on a representative sample of short videos on a prominent Chinese short video platform, Douyin. Capitalizing on an external regulatory intervention, specifically the Campaign against Online Infringement and Piracy (COIP) implemented by the Chinese government, we employed the difference-in-differences (DID) method to assess the impact of reinforced copyright protection on the originality of short videos. Our findings reveal that strengthened copyright protection leads to a significant increase in the originality of short videos. Further research on creator heterogeneity shows that influencers exhibit a significantly more positive response to strengthened copyright protection than amateur creators. Finally, we present evidence explaining how external regulation works by enhancing intra-platform regulation. These results have rich implications for intellectual property protection, digital innovation management, and platform regulation.

The operating goals of family firms (FFs) typically include building both economic and socioemotional wealth. Innovation is increasingly recognized as a key source for the development and growth of family firms. From the multiple dimensions of socioemotional wealth (SEW), this research has focused on how family influences a particular type of innovation – green innovation – in family firms. Using 5,071 observations from among the listed firms in Taiwan over an eight-year period (2014–2021), we examined the relationships between FFs and green innovation. The results indicate that FFs are more likely to develop green innovation than their nonfamily counterparts. In particular, there are complicated effects within different types of FFs – control deviation family firms (CDFFs).

We theorize on how and when CEO humility positively shapes stakeholders’ evaluations of a firm. We posit that CEO humility has a positive effect on organizational virtuousness and, hence, on firm reputation in the eyes of the government in China when the firm is intensively connected to government intermediaries. Data for this study were collected from a large-scale on-site survey and archives of 195 firms in 32 Chinese industrial towns. Our 1,099 respondents included 975 top managers and 124 local government officers. Empirical analysis results support our theory. We also complemented our quantitative findings with qualitative evidence. We offer a new perspective for understanding humble CEOs’ influence and condition in shaping their firms’ reputational judgments.

On the basis of signaling and trust theories, we explore the impact of focal firms’ environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance on their collaborative innovation (co-innovation). We argue that high ESG performance serves as a positive signal that focal firms engage less in opportunistic behavior in the co-innovation process. This, in turn, makes it easier for focal firms to gain the trust of potential external innovation collaborators (collaborators) and ultimately increases the level of co-innovation in focal firms. Guided by signaling and trust theories, we further argue that heavy polluting firm attributes and historical co-innovation alter the impact of ESG signals on collaborators’ trust, which in turn leads to heterogeneity in the positive impact of ESG performance on firms’ co-innovation. Based on empirical data on A-share manufacturing companies listed in China from 2010 to 2021, we obtained empirical evidence to support the above theoretical arguments. This study provides new insights for a refined understanding of the innovation consequences of ESG performance and important implications for shareholders and policymakers to better encourage and guide firms in co-innovation.

Resilient enterprises thrive under adverse conditions given their preparedness for crises. This study proposes that executives’ vigilant managerial cognition is essential for enhancing enterprise resilience. To measure this cognition, the study developed a textual index using machine learning methods and analyzed a sample of Chinese enterprises to assess the impact of executives’ vigilant managerial cognition on enterprise resilience. The findings indicate that this cognition is positively related to enterprise resilience, where the relationship is stronger in enterprises with robust internal controls. The primary contribution of this study is the conceptualization of vigilant managerial cognition and its established positive relationship with enterprise resilience. Furthermore, by introducing a novel quantitative measure of managerial cognition through textual analysis and machine learning, the study paves the way for future research on managerial cognition within firms.

Parental mentoring plays a pivotal role in fostering intrafamily succession and entrepreneurial endeavors. Taking an identity-based perspective, we conducted an exploratory multiple case study involving nine Chinese family firms to investigate how successors perceive the influence of mentoring from their entrepreneurial parents on the development of their entrepreneurial identities. Our findings reveal that successors' entrepreneurial identity changes from ambiguous to clarified through four perceived parental mentoring strategies, namely laying foundations, painting bright futures, relating experiences, and leading by examples. In particular, we show how the unique Chinese family dynamics resulted in some paradoxical tensions influencing the successors' entrepreneurial identity. By taking a holistic view, we conceptualize parental mentoring as a crucial nurturing strategy for successors and connect it to the process of successor identity transformation. This research sheds light on the nexus of entrepreneurial identity, family dynamics, and the Chinese cultural context within the realm of family business research and practice.

With China’s economy transitioning into a post-industrial phase focused on knowledge and technology, there has been a notable shift in the patterns of Chinese Outward foreign direct investment (OFDI). This change has led to the emergence of new research perspectives, underscoring the importance of organizing them systematically. To address this, our research presents a thorough analysis of eighty-eight publications examining Chinese OFDI in natural resource-rich (NRR) and technology-intensive (TI) locations across various global regions and countries. Based on the geographical scope and comprehensive coverage of studies published between 1998 and 2023, we summarize the major themes, theories, and methodologies used in this research area. Identifying three elements related to Chinese investment (antecedents and motives, operational strategies, and investment outcomes), we develop a matrix based on the discussion of Chinese firms’ investment behavior in the foreign environment in which they operate. We describe the theoretical distinctions between investments in NRR global regions, such as Africa and Central Asia, and TI regions, such as Europe and North America, with regard to technology acquisition, creation, co-creation, and transfer. We identify several research sub-themes (e.g., control and learning mechanisms, technology transfer, intellectual property, etc.) that remain under-investigated and suggest future research opportunities.

How does family diversity affect the choice of hybrid entrepreneurship? The effect of family dynamics has received little attention in research on the mode of entry into entrepreneurship. Building on the family embeddedness perspective, we hypothesize that the diversity of family households at surface (i.e., age and gender) and deep (i.e., work experience and education background) levels impacts the entrepreneur's adoption of a full-time or hybrid mode to start a new business. We further theorize that the effects of family diversity on entrepreneurial entry decisions are moderated by income stratification, which largely determines the ways entrepreneurs deal with family diversity. Using a sample of 1,320 individual-wave observations from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), our findings demonstrate that the choice of hybrid entrepreneurship is affected more by deep-level diversity than surface-level diversity among family households. Moreover, being from a high-strata family strengthens the relationship between surface-level diversity and the choice of hybrid entry, while weakening the effects of deep-level diversity. This study contributes to the ongoing discussion about family dynamics and entrepreneurship variations and provides important theoretical and practical implications.