Call for Papers
Management and Organization Review
Special Issue on 'Knowledge Search, Spillovers, and Creation in Emerging Markets'
Guest Editors:
Haiyang Li, Rice University, US
Yan Anthea Zhang, Rice University, US
Marjorie Lyles, Indiana University, US
Submission Deadline: April 15, 2011
Recent management research has paid increasing attention to knowledge search and spillovers. Knowledge search and spillovers enable firms to go beyond their internal knowledge stocks in order to search and use knowledge from other firms in order to create new knowledge. While knowledge search, spillovers, and creation may occur in many contexts, a better understanding of this process in emerging markets has become critical and urgent for management scholars. Emerging market countries refer to those that have low per capita income but with a rapid pace of economic development, and government policies favoring economic liberalization. They include countries in Latin America, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa, and also transition economies such as China, Central and Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union. Relative to firms in developed markets, emerging market firms typically lag behind in technology and management skills. Thus, great opportunities exist for emerging market firms to learn and benefit from developed country firms. Indeed, policy makers in many emerging markets have taken great efforts toward attracting foreign firms in order to help their domestic firms learn from the foreign firms. However, the rapid growth and development of emerging economies, while creating great growth opportunities for developed country firms, also force them to learn and adapt to the new competitive landscape. Particularly, over the past decade, many emerging market firms have become important players in global markets. In many aspects, these past students have become teachers to developed country firms. Therefore, knowledge search, spillovers, and creation in emerging markets are no longer one-way traffic from foreign firms to domestic firms, but become possible in every direction: from foreign firms to domestic firms, from domestic firms to foreign firms, from foreign firms to foreign firms, and from domestic firms to domestic firms. Thus, it becomes theoretically and practically important to examine how knowledge search, spillovers, and creation occur in emerging markets. This special issue provides an opportunity to advance our understanding of this important issue in the management, international business, and economics literatures.
Potential Research Topics
Both conceptual papers and empirical papers are welcome. We invite papers that offer new theoretical perspectives or provide fresh empirical insights on issues related to knowledge search, spillovers, and creation in emerging markets. We seek submissions that conduct rigorous research using either qualitative (case study, interview, grounded theory, or ethnographic methods, etc.) or quantitative approaches (survey and archival data, etc.). Potential research topics include but are not limited to:
a) Mechanisms through which knowledge search, spillovers, and creation occur in emerging markets;
b) Factors that facilitate or inhibit knowledge search, spillovers, and creation in emerging markets;
c) Institutional contexts (e.g., appropriability hazards and intellectual property protection) and knowledge search, spillovers, creation;
d) Cross-country comparison of knowledge search, spillovers, and creation between emerging markets and developed markets or within emerging markets;
e) Knowledge search and spillovers and domestic entrepreneurship in emerging markets;
f) Personnel migration (e.g., overseas returnees) and knowledge search, spillovers, and creation;
g) Effect of knowledge search, spillovers, and creation on both domestic firms' and foreign firms' strategies and outcomes;
h) Comparison of knowledge search, spillovers, and creation across different types of organizations (e.g., state-owned, foreign-owned, joint ventures, and private-owned);
i) The role of universities and research institutes, and technology clusters in knowledge search, spillovers, and creation in emerging markets.
Questions about the special issue should be directed to any of the guest editors, including Haiyang Li (haiyang@rice.edu), Yan Anthea Zhang (yanzh@rice.edu), or Marjorie Lyles (mlyles@iupui.edu). You are encouraged to submit your tentative topics to the guest editors for feedback in the early stage when conducting your studies or preparing your manuscripts. Papers for the special issue should be submitted electronically through MOR's ScholarOne Manuscripts site at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mor and identified as submissions to the 'Knowledge Search, Spillovers, and Creation' special issue. All submissions should follow the 'MOR Submission Guidelines', which are available on the MOR webpage (http://www.iacmr.org). Papers will be double-blind peer reviewed and acceptance decisions will be based on the peer reviews and the standards described in the MOR mission statement.
Guest Editors
Haiyang Li is associate professor of strategic management and innovation at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, Rice University. His research interests focus on technology entrepreneurship and innovation (particularly in China), knowledge spillovers and multinational firms' innovation in emerging markets, as well as the growth of China's technology clusters. He serves on the editorial boards of multiple journals including the Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of High Technology Management Research, Management and Organization Review, and Multinational Business Review.
Yan Zhang is Jones School Distinguished Associate Professor of Management at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, Rice University. Her areas of specialization include CEO succession, corporate governance, global strategic alliances, and multinational companies' operations in emerging markets. She currently serves on the editorial boards of Academy of Management Journal and Strategic Management Journal.
Marjorie Lyles is Professor of international strategic management at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business and holds the OneAmerica Chair in Business Administration. Her writings center on organizational learning, international strategies and cooperative alliances, and technology development particularly in emerging economies. She served on the editorial boards of the Journal of International Business Studies, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, and Journal of Management.