While digital product innovation offers unprecedented opportunities for incumbent firms to create competitive advantages, its fluid and iterative nature presents distinctive cognitive challenges. There is limited empirical literature explaining the role of constructive cognitive characteristics of executives in differentiating the successful pursuit of digital product innovation. Drawing on upper echelons theory and the attention-based view, we examine how chief executive officer (CEO) cognitive flexibility enables incumbent firms to pursue digital product innovation. Through a mixed-methods approach combining a field survey of 178 machine-building firms and a scenario-based experiment with 134 participants, we demonstrate that CEOs with higher cognitive flexibility achieve superior digital product innovation outcomes by facilitating insightful information acquisition and processing. This relationship is strengthened when CEOs engage in more boundary spanning activities and when firms possess greater social capital. Our study contributes to strategic leadership research by demonstrating how CEO cognitive flexibility enables incumbent firms to navigate the cognitive demands of digital product innovation, while enriching our understanding of how adaptive attention patterns shape strategic adaptation in increasingly digitized environments.

Interest in qualitative research in Chinese contexts has grown rapidly, yet publishing such work in leading management journals remains challenging. Reviewers often recognize the empirical originality of China-based studies while questioning their theoretical generalizability. In response, this editorial develops a front-end framework for theoretically justifying qualitative research in Chinese contexts. We articulate three complementary justificatory modes – contrastive framing, extreme focusing, and indigenous exploring – that help authors explain how Chinese empirical settings can serve as sources of theoretical insight rather than merely as distinctive backdrops. We define each mode, illustrate them with published exemplars, and offer practical guidance on when to use each approach alone or in combination. In doing so, we show how contextual distinctiveness can be converted into analytic leverage: by revealing blind spots in dominant theories, surfacing mechanisms that are otherwise difficult to observe, or generating novel concepts from locally emergent phenomena. Beyond supporting authors studying China, the framework also offers a broader vocabulary for theorizing from underexamined contexts in qualitative management and organization research.

Time has long been recognized as a foundational lens in management research, yet most theories draw on Western linear assumptions that overlook alternative temporal logics. This introduction to the special issue on Advancing Temporal Research in Chinese Management situates China as a unique context where rapid economic transformation intersects with enduring cultural traditions. We develop a 3C framework, compressing, cyclic, and continuing, that captures an understudied Chinese temporal lens. Compressing reflects the urgency of accelerated growth and time scarcity; cyclic emphasizes recurring rhythms rooted in agrarian heritage, cultural practices, and institutional cycles; continuing highlights persistence and long-term orientation embedded in Confucian values and historical endurance. By applying this framework, we synthesize insights from the eight accepted articles and demonstrate how temporal dynamics shape organizational identity, entrepreneurial reentry, innovation, ESG strategies, and performance persistence. The 3C framework not only enriches the two dominant streams of temporal research, activity mapping and actors’ temporal orientations, but also broadens their global relevance by integrating culturally infused perspectives. In doing so, this special issue advances comparative temporal research and positions time as a central construct for understanding Chinese management and its wider implications.

Over the past few decades, entrepreneurial scholars have conducted extensive research on the issue of poverty alleviation. However, there has not yet been much research with respect to the emerging category of digitally driven entrepreneurship and, more specifically, the role and impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on poverty reduction. In recent years, with the emergence of new and increasingly accessible digital technologies and AI, scholars have devoted significant amounts of energy to exploring a series of digital poverty reduction issues to leverage such technologies. This introductory essay of the Management and Organization Review special issue on digital poverty reduction presents several perspectives on digital poverty reduction, including the digital poverty reduction perspective, the digital platform empowerment perspective, the plight behavior perspective, the digital indigenous entrepreneurship perspective, and the technological and policy perspective. It further explores the approaches and mechanisms of digital technology in alleviating poverty through a literature review, employing a multi-faceted analysis of digital poverty reduction. This comprehensive exploration aims to offer research contributions that hold both theoretical and practical significance in the field of digital poverty reduction.

Phenomenon-based research involves uncovering context-specific mechanisms underlying complex organizational realities and, when applied to Chinese contexts, offers valuable potential to extend and refine global management theories. Drawing on three illustrative studies on person–environment fit (Chuang, Hsu, Wang, & Judge, 2015), CEO humility (Ou, Waldman, & Peterson, 2014), and authoritarian leadership (Huang, Chiu, Lam, & Farh, 2015) respectively, this editorial highlights how each exemplifies different stages in the evolution of theories, from indigenous, middle-range insights to universal, general frameworks. In doing so, it addresses challenges and potential solutions for publishing phenomenon-based Chinese management research in premier journals. Across these cases, several recurring challenges emerge, 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. The authors also reflect on practical challenges such as building research partnerships and gaining organizational support within Chinese contexts. By comparing experiences across these studies, this editorial offers guidance on how phenomenon-based research can deepen theoretical innovation while maintaining methodological rigor and practical relevance. Lastly, it argues that Chinese management research plays a vital role in advancing universal management knowledge and offers opportunities for future research.

This study investigates how resource-constrained small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) develop and apply digital capabilities across value chain activities for internationalization, addressing a gap in the existing literature. Using six Taiwanese manufacturing SME case studies, and an integrated theoretical lens (Uppsala Internationalization Model, Porter’s Value Chain Framework, and Resource Orchestration Theory), the study explores how digital capabilities embedded in primary and support activities shape internationalization outcomes. Findings show that SMEs prioritize digital investments in primary and downstream activities to enhance foreign market delivery, responsiveness, trust, and visibility. Digital upgrades in support functions primarily enable internal coordination and subsidiary replication. The study identifies three mechanisms – inter-firm value enhancement, inter-firm relationship enhancement, and intra-firm management enhancement – that explain how activity-specific digital capabilities facilitate international expansion. This research offers a detailed understanding of digital capabilities deployment in SMEs and provides practical implications for leaders and policymakers on strategic, phased digital internationalization approaches.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the way firms pursue technological diversification (TD), yet its distinct effects on related and unrelated diversification remain insufficiently explored. Based on the knowledge-based view, this study examines the distinct effects of AI on related and unrelated TD to elucidate AI’s specific role in facilitating both the optimization of existing knowledge and the exploration of new domains. Using a multi-period difference-in-differences model and panel data from China’s listed manufacturing firms (2013–2022), our empirical analysis demonstrates that AI significantly promotes firm TD, particularly in unrelated TD. Additionally, we identify that core-technology competence strengthens the positive effect of AI on unrelated TD, while knowledge stocks weaken it. These results contribute to the literature on TD by underscoring the role of AI. Practically, the study offers actionable insights for managers to harness AI in balancing exploration and exploitation within their TD strategies.

Prior research on technology entrepreneurship has been grounded almost exclusively in capitalist frameworks developed in the Global North. We argue that context matters, and that scholars should examine technology entrepreneurship in the roughly half of the world where socialism provides the economic foundation. As a step in this direction, we investigate how the principle of common prosperity shapes technology entrepreneurship in socialist contexts. Focusing first on China – a global technological leader and one of the world’s largest generators of patents – we show through two cases that concern for the poor is not incidental but integral to technology entrepreneurship under socialism. We then extend the analysis to a second socialist context outside China, demonstrating the broader relevance of common prosperity for understanding the relationship between technology entrepreneurship and poverty alleviation. Taken together, these cases suggest that research on technology entrepreneurship should move beyond Global North capitalist assumptions and instead account for societal context, particularly the socialist emphasis on common prosperity. Incorporating such perspectives invites scholars to reconsider the role of technology and entrepreneurship in advancing the common good and reducing poverty.

As emerging markets rise, some incumbent firms that once occupied follower positions are now striving for industry leadership, surpassing competitors to become new frontrunners. These firms must overcome both competitive barriers and organizational identity (OI) challenges, constructing a leading organizational identity (LOI) that aligns with their new roles. This study delves into these transformations through the temporality lens of OI, using a comparative analysis of two Chinese firms, and identifies two distinct modes: progressive evolution and radical change. The progressive evolution mode adopts a more gradual, layer-by-layer iterative transition, whereas the radical change mode follows a ‘break and (re)build’ logic to identity structure. Both modes demonstrate a ripple effect of OI’s three structural layers, radiating outward from the core. Temporal dynamics play a pivotal role: the progressive evolution mode aligns with a more stable environment and a future-oriented, long-term temporal perspective, while the radical change mode is linked to a dynamic, unstable environment and a past-oriented, short- and long- term interactive temporal pattern. This study highlights how temporal orientation and temporal horizon shape the construction of an LOI, advancing research on OI construction and its temporal dynamics while providing insights into high-position leaps in emerging markets.

Indigenous management theories often seek to evolve from context-specific explanations to broader theoretical contributions. Yet such expansion is frequently undermined by two recurring problems: meaning drift, where construct labels travel while their underlying meaning or measurement shifts, and mechanism slippage, where theories are stretched through post hoc moderators or rotating mediators rather than coherent causal explanations. This paper introduces a Gate-and-Expand framework that builds on Chen’s (2025) theory-evolution map and specifies two checkpoints for credible theoretical expansion. Gate 1 (Construct Portability) evaluates whether a focal construct retains comparable latent meaning and measurement across contexts. Gate 2 (Mechanism Transportability) examines whether a compact, pre-specified causal mechanism continues to explain outcomes and outperforms plausible rival explanations when the theory is extended. By clarifying evidentiary standards for expanding contextual and explanatory scope, the framework helps distinguish credible theoretical extension from overreach and supports more cumulative indigenous management research.

Network ties are crucial sources of organizational learning. Different types of networks, however, embody different types of resources and may relate to exploitative and exploratory learning differently. Drawing on social network theory and organizational learning, we differentiate overseas business and overseas ethnic ties of exporting small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and examine their relationship with exploitative and exploratory learning, respectively. Our results based on survey data of exporting SMEs in China find that overseas business ties are positively related to exploitative learning, whereas overseas ethnic ties are positively related to exploratory learning. Furthermore, slack resources strengthen the positive relationship between overseas ethnic ties and exploratory learning. Our study provides new theoretical and managerial insights for the utilization of business and ethnic ties to achieve exploratory and exploitative learning, particularly in the context of exporting SMEs.

The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) has profoundly reconfigured the contemporary workplace, redefining the interactions among human employees, AI systems, and organizational processes. Yet, most research adopts a tool-centric view, overlooking how AI’s emergence as an alternative working agent reshapes managerial attention and employee welfare. Drawing on the attention-based view (ABV) and a dual-agent model, we theorize that AI adoption activates two opposing mechanisms: a human attention gain mechanism, where collaboration needs heightened focus on employees and increased employee-related corporate social responsibility (ECSR), and an AI attention shift mechanism, where deep AI embedding redirects attention toward AI, suppressing ECSR. Using panel data from 2575 Chinese listed firms (2013–2023), we find an inverted U-shaped relationship between AI adoption and ECSR. Moreover, industry AI substitution risk sharpens and left-shifts this curve, while top management team (TMT) functional diversity and employee stock ownership flattens and right-shifts it. These findings advance research on AI adoption, managerial attention, and employee-focused CSR by illuminating how attention allocation in dual-agent contexts shapes ethical and strategic outcomes, offering actionable insights for balancing human–AI integration with sustained employee welfare.

This study examines how CEOs’ hobby of reading fiction reinforces empathy and, in turn, is associated with higher corporate philanthropy. Grounded in the Empathy–Altruism Hypothesis, we propose that fiction-reading sustains and deepens a multidimensional yet integrated empathic capacity, which motivates prosocial organizational decisions. With a large dataset of CEOs from non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) listed in China’s A-share market from 2001 to 2018, we show robust evidence that firms led by fiction-reading CEOs engage more in corporate philanthropy; additionally, we confirm that empathy mediates this positive relationship. Furthermore, a difference-in-differences analysis with CEO transition data reveals a significant increase in corporate philanthropy with a newly appointed fiction-reading CEO. Supplementary results show that fiction-reading CEOs promote broader prosocial practices, including employee welfare and ethical governance. By introducing fiction-reading as an unobtrusive, verifiable measure of empathy, this study offers a novel methodological approach for tracing the micro-foundations of corporate social responsibility.

Women entrepreneurs face distinct gender-specific challenges, including restricted access to venture capital, work–life conflicts driven by stereotypes, and competing demands from their roles as business owners, caregivers, and community leaders. These pressures often foster polychronicity – a temporal orientation favoring simultaneous task management. Grounded in role accumulation theory, we conduct a two-stage survey of 129 Chinese women entrepreneurs to investigate the relationship between polychronicity and resilience. We further examine three moderators – frequent interruptions, entrepreneurial experience, and emotional intelligence – that amplify polychronicity’ s resilience-building effects. This study highlights the positive association between polychronicity and women entrepreneurs’ resilience, offering new insights into temporal dynamics in entrepreneurship. It also provides women entrepreneurs with practical strategies to help them navigate multiple role challenges and thrive amid adversity by leveraging their preference for multitasking.

Despite substantial digital investment and stakeholder initiatives, billions in the Global South remain excluded from digital participation. This systematic literature review synthesizes 122 empirical studies published between 2003 and 2024 in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Oceania to analyze key stakeholders, their challenges, and the strategies employed to foster sustainable digital inclusion. Drawing on stakeholder theory and digital ecosystems theory, the study identifies ecosystem fragmentation as a central bottleneck. We advance stakeholder theory by introducing the concept of Ecosystem Coordination Stakeholders (ECS), a role-based stakeholder group whose salience derives from coordination capability alongside power, legitimacy, and urgency. The findings highlight the need for policy frameworks that develop and strengthen institutional capacity for coordination, extend ecosystems theory by recognizing coordination as an architectural developmental need, and highlight the importance of design strategies responsive to specific fragmentation patterns in diverse regional contexts. Our study also reveals that work remains concentrated in Asia and Africa, with continued Global North–Global South inequities in authorship and journal visibility. This study offers management and policy insights on digital poverty that may also apply to other complex challenges requiring effective and sustained multi-stakeholder collaboration.