Towards East-West collaborative editorship

Citation

Foo, C.T. (2014), "Towards East-West collaborative editorship", Chinese Management Studies, Vol. 8 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/CMS-07-2014-0130

Towards East-West collaborative editorship

Article Type: Editorial From: Chinese Management Studies, Volume 8, Issue 2

In this editorial, I want to address a critical issue for the journal of Chinese Management Studies (CMS) fostering joint East-West collaborative editorship. Why in this particular issue? For this issue is the product a very interesting collaboration between two professors: Professor Wu Wei Wei from Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, Heilongjiang province, a leading university for space technology, China, and Professor McIntrye-Bhatty, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Bournemouth University, one of the most innovative of universities in England, UK. With these backgrounds, we can expect to get an issue that is probably one of the best collections in the world on research into technology management (Figures 1 and 2).

Figure 1. The joint Editorship of

Chinese Management Studies

. Thematic issue: Management of Technology

Figure 2. Perception from interactions at conferences

From my efforts, beginning in 2009 (CEIBS), to develop a community of management scholars in China, I began to realize there is a solution space: a possibility to work on. Our problem is a lack of senior professors in China with strong English skills. A member of the Editorial Board in chairing a session at the First Conference in Singapore remarked to me shocked, “[…] but I cannot understand what the professor is saying. And he can only deliver effectively in Mandarin”. The younger Chinese professors, fresh after their doctoral studies in the West, are relatively better able to handle a presentation in English.

The Bhatty–Wu collaboration yields some pointers. One is to the division of roles between East and West. The manuscripts are all put into a shortlist for a preliminary review. I put these papers broadly under the theme of “Management of Technology”. Wei Wei kicked off the review process. He was quick to spot a submission that already had appeared in a Chinese language journal. McIntyre reviewed the revised papers, and they both then made the final selection. Perhaps this could become a model for CMS.

Despite the lack of proficiency in personally presenting at a Conference in English, the older Chinese professors are, nevertheless, more conscious of history, culture, philosophy and society (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Perception from interactions at conferences: collaboration between young and old professors

A collaborative work between an older and a young professor may yield a far richer more insightful deeply meaningful piece. If it relates to a theory, there is at least a discussion of how it is embedded with the Chinese milieu. Maybe in future conferences, we may request a co-author (or colleague) to translate his delivery. A scholar from the West may benefit too from listening in to a Chinese presentation. I met many Chinese professors who declared to me reading and writing English is far less daunting than speaking the language. Like in Japan, for daily conversation, Chinese people hardly use any other languages.

Ultimately management is about managing people towards some purpose: a young doctoral candidate may just lack that mature state of mind. Indeed, I was disappointed to find young Chinese PhD’s tending to equate management research to be statistics, mathematics and computer modeling. These are just additional tools for elaborating, illustrating and further explicating a theory in management. For me personally, the core of management lies in concepts: means of simplifying, thus managing the complexity of world.

Perhaps to correct this misconception, we should explore the possibility of having another series. Maybe, it is time for a bilingual Chinese Management Perspectives. A journal that complements CMS through providing perspectives, viewpoints and insights. Through this we can feature some of the best writings in English. One stream of papers that I can anticipate for English readers are rich insights from the tradition of Guoxue (

) for better understanding of the dynamics of Chinese management (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Management

CMS is now at a cross-road. Yes, it is a regional journal but everything that is driven by central government in China and by her sheer population size must have unavoidable global impacts. The Conference, as organized by Sun Tzu Institute in Singapore, should be more of a global event. The idea is for professors from China and the USA to interact and generate new ideas. Also, the presentations, as documented via video for 2013 Conference, are comparatively of a high standard (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Speakers at 2013 Global CMS Conference

As a parallel development, we should let Guest Editors and/or Universities in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau organize thematic Conferences. This may be done under license from Sun Tzu Institute. It may be a one- or two-day event with presentations by authors with papers that relate to the theme. Also, the Guest Editor may then present, for doctoral students, a “Seminar on Publishing in Emerald (CMS as example) Journals”. Additionally, an open discussion related to the theme of the issue may be conducted. Even better still, his or her criteria in evaluating and thus selecting the best papers for the Issue (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Next level provincial focus for CMS

At the same time that we emphasize truly globalizing CMS Conference, there is a need to deepen our roots in China. How? One has to perhaps organize a CMS Guest Editors Conference: for professors, academics and authors who are keen to contribute in the editorial process. Next, CMS may through the Sun Tzu Institute implement an outreach strategy to organize Conferences within provincial cities. The literature has so far ignored the vast differences in managerial ideology, culture, policies, practices, beliefs, values and even systems between these provinces. There is very intense competition between provinces. Somehow, somewhere and sometime these inter-provincial differences should be reflected in the future papers on Chinese management!

Check Teck Foo

Founding Editor-in-Chief