The beginning of 2026 marks a new era of artificial intelligence (AI), in the form of algorithms, ChatGPT, LLM, and robots, that permeates the boundaries of organizational functional areas and forces organizations to reinvent themselves to survive and thrive. The articles in this issue respond to how organizations deal with these unprecedent challenges, with strategies of technological diversification (Wu, Chen, & Li, 2025), paying attention to corporate social responsibility toward human employees (Lyu, Wang, & Hu, 2026), and leveraging top management team fault lines to reduce corporate fraud (Teng, Li, Chen, & Ai, 2025).

This issue also explores the role of leadership in influencing employee coping strategies and behaviors. For example, how transformational leadership may help reduce pro-group unethical behaviors by increasing employees’ perception of group potency (Huai, Pang, Zhang, Li, & Lam, 2026) and how abusive leadership may affect how abused employees engage in different coping strategies that lead to different interpersonal consequences (Ni, Zheng, Lin, Guo, & Liang, 2025). Furthermore, CEO’s social and structural ties with subordinate executives and board members are found to influence corporate carbon performance. Namely, the stronger the CEO’s internal alliances, the worse the firm’s carbon performance (Fang, Chen, Hu, & Luo, 2026).

Finally, I wanted to highlight the 4th editorial essay in this issue (Chuang, Hsu, Ou, & Huang, 2026), which discusses the challenges in publishing phenomenon-based Chinese management research in top-tier journals. The authors of the editorial have all successfully published Chinese management papers in top-tier journals and utilize their personal experiences to explore several recurring challenges, including difficulties in positioning context-specific findings within existing theoretical frameworks, translating culturally embedded constructs for international audiences, and balancing cultural authenticity with global understanding. More importantly, they offer guidance on how phenomenon-based research can deepen theoretical innovation while maintaining methodological rigor and practical relevance. I especially appreciate their conclusion, which is, Chinese management research plays a vital role in advancing universal management knowledge and offers opportunities for future research.

Have a remarkable year of the Horse!