Organization and management in the midst of societal transformation: The People's Republic of China

Twenty-five years of economic reform has propelled China to the center of the world's economic stage. Based on current trends, in the foreseeable future future China is likely to become the largest economy in the world. China's dramatic growth may be envied by other developing economies, but for management scholars it presents an exciting intellectucal puzzle. In this paper we describe the empirical context of China today, review contemporary research on Chinese management and organizations, and describe the nine papers in this special issue of Organization Science. The papers provide a close examination of how massive corporate transformation in China has influenced interfirm relationships, affected opportunity structures and social processes, and modified individual behaviors within firms. We identify the many paradoxes in this intellectual terrain and present a guide to the challenging research agenda ahead. We recommend that scholars of organizations think deeply about China as a context and consider China as an empirical setting where the boundaries of existing knowledge on organizations can be extended.