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Academic contention occurs when research evidence is amenable to more than one interpretation. China has a long tradition of Shang Que (商榷), in which authors argue for their preferred interpretation. The modern form of this tradition is the Shang Que article, which often takes the form of research papers in Chinese-language journals and which tends to be question-oriented. Shang Que articles usually take the views of a particular author or article as the focus of independent and complete criticism by another, independent, academic. This paper explains the role of Shang Que articles in Chinese scholarship and their influence on international academia.

A bibliometric analysis was used to explore the characteristics and evolution of Chinese Shang Que articles using 30,577 articles published between 1979 and 2018. Microsoft Excel and Gephi were used for data analysis and visualization.

Findings suggest a decline in the number of Shang Que articles and an increase in the number of co-authors. Shang Que articles remained particularly prominent in Philosophy and Humanities and Social Sciences, where they focused on local issues such as classical Chinese, the Sinicization of Marxism and Chinese literature. This suggests that the number of Shang Que articles is related to the degree of internationalization of a research field.

Shang Que articles, which have been influenced by academic paradigms in English, are a fusion of China's Shang Que tradition and of the modern academic system. Through considering Shang Que articles, this paper explores the benefits of local academic traditions in non-English-speaking cultures.

This article aims at showing that the relationship between Chinese classical wisdoms and managerial practices should not be reduced to the establishment of an “art of war” applicable to management practices, but should rather be understood as an ever‐evolving work of critical reinterpretation, so as to liberate the creative and strategic potential that this tradition embodies.

It does so by critically deconstructing the question of the “relevance” of Chinese wisdom for managerial practices, by assessing the way contemporary Sinology understands and interprets the concept of “Chinese wisdom”, and by designing a strategy for applying these insights to managerial education.

It thus shows that only historical contextualization and textual studies can ground an understanding of Chinese tradition applicable to managerial education.

By doing so, it helps educators to re‐anchor managerial education into the field and methodologies of humanities studies.

It thus goes against the utilitarian and over‐simplified syntheses of Chinese thought that are currently dominant in the managerial literature about China, and proposes new ways for making the study of China a channel through which to develop in our students a sense of relativity, complexity and empathy applicable to an array of cultural contexts.

This paper aims to compare the Greek and Chinese rhetorical traditions and explore their influences on today’s business and marketing communication across relevant cultures. In particular, it uses the Aristotelian persuasive orientations as reference points to introduce the Chinese rhetoric, and interpret cultural differences in persuasion from a historical and sociocultural perspective. It has been found that Greek and Chinese rhetoric and persuasion were developed to meet the needs of the social and cultural environments and this rule still applies to today’s business communication. The logical approach has been emphasised in the English rhetorical tradition while both qing (emotional approach) and li (logical approach) are the focus of persuasion in the Chinese tradition. This difference is also the root of cultural differences in modern business communication. Findings from both English and Chinese texts and data are examined to substantiate our focal argument.

This paper aims to provide an overview of this special issue.

The guest editorial introduces the papers in this special issue, focusing on practical wisdom for management from the Chinese classical traditions.

Chinese culture increasingly will permeate international culture and move from peripheral to mainstream status. To ignore this in management education would be a grave oversight.

The issue offers insights into the value of practical wisdom from Confucianism, the origins of Chinese classical trditions and Daoism, and the various streams of thought within the classical Chinese traditions and their contemporary relevance.

The purpose of this paper is to recover the identity of Chinese intellectual discourse, arguing for the necessity of a Chinese methodology in educational research to be constructed on the basis of the Chinese philosophical traditions and the Chinese social norms for the aim of solving Chinese educational issues within the Chinese cultural context.

The paper is a theoretical paper, arguing for the ontological, epistemological and methodological basis for a Chinese methodology in educational research.

The major ontological issue of Chinese social and educational research, also the ultimate goal of the Chinese governance, is social harmony through harmonious personal relationships. The key to social harmony has been seen in the Chinese philosophical tradition as residing in people’s personal morality and obligation, which constitutes the epistemology of Chinese research. And the golden mean of moderation by synthesizing and balancing the dualist extremes of views and actions should be adopted as the methodological paradigm to researching social and educational issues in China.

The elaboration of these three entities holds promises in the construction of the Chinese methodological system on Chinese social terms and merits.

The author has long sensed that the extensive methodological borrowing from the West by Chinese scholars in educational research might be problematic, given the vast structural differences in the two social worlds that the author and other scholars have observed. A paper in English to argue for the necessity of constructing a uniquely Chinese methodology for educational research in China is an absolute necessity.

The notion of compassion is a cornerstone in Chinese as well as western orientations for business practice. Spiritual and religious traditions, philosophical approaches and historical and present business practices outline this notion in a comparative perspective. This paper seeks to address this issue.

Interdisciplinary paper, summarizing social science, philosophical and business literature.

With its focus on compassion, business ethics in the Chinese tradition highlights a notion, which variously resonates within western traditions. Based on this, multiple lines or thought consequences for management development are derived.

In terms of management development the call for compassionate management can be held as a common denominator of different traditions. Therefore, it will be important to include this aspect in our management development, cultural management as well as international strategy courses.

In a broad interreligious and intercultural overview some basic characteristics of compassionate management can be identified.

The focus of human resource management has shifted from traditional topics to concepts such as globalization and international strategy. Management styles of Chinese‐Japanese and Chinese‐foreign joint ventures have been important areas of HRM research. Modern Chinese HRM practices and thinking are rooted in the cultural traditions of the country. Japanese cultural and geographical history has affected its business practices. Discusses Chinese and Japanese cultural characteristics in relation to business management and reviews the research literature. Presents the research study of Chinese‐Japanese joint venture management on which other articles by the same authors are based.

The unprecedented economic development and increase in the number of global corporations in the Greater China region, comprising the Chinese mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong, have led to more emphasis on corporate leader-stakeholder communication. Bilingual web-based messages posted on corporate websites, which aim to strategically cultivate positive relationships between leaders and stakeholders, have emerged as a primary mode of communication for Chinese corporations. However, a research study investigating the prominent themes and underlying cultural values depicted in leaders’ messages intended for different groups of stakeholders is lacking. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the themes and cultural values expressed through corporate leaders’ web-based messages in a non-western context.

Using an inductive approach, open coding and a categorization system, this study analyzed the web-based messages of leading corporations with WordSmith 6.0.

Six prominent themes in leaders’ communication were identified. These themes included, in order of importance: company development, operating philosophy, company profile, business environment, performance, and products and services. It was found that leaders strategically selected certain themes such as focusing on progress and the business environment but omitted others depending on how they wanted to strategically influence their stakeholders’ attitudes. Differences between the cultural values depicted in Chinese and the corresponding English messages could be attributed to leaders’ cultural adaptation of the messages intended for non-domestic stakeholders.

Since this study provides insights into the major themes preferred by leaders of corporations operating in Greater China, it will enable existing stakeholders to understand the main business focus of leaders and offer leaders more information about commonly accepted themes. These possibilities for enhanced knowledge on the part of stakeholders and business leaders, in turn, may potentially increase academic appreciation of the complexities involved in corporate communication. It also informs stakeholders about the variations in the values reflected in the English and Chinese messages of leaders, and, therefore, has a potential to offer value to academics and practitioners.

China is a fast‐growing economy, and many multinational companies (MNCs) have found their ways to infiltrate that market. The competition among the MNCs has generated human resource management (HRM) problems. When formulating approaches in dealing with these problems, the expatriate management of the MNCs often “speak for” their local employees, as if the latter has no voice of its own. It is suspected that MNCs know partly what their local employees value. With such limited understanding, the former may be ineffective in managing their local staff. The purpose of this paper is to report a study that explores the HRM problems from local employees' perspectives. To understand Chinese employees, the conceptual lens, stemmed from Chinese philosophical traditions instead of that derived from western experience, is used.

Data were collected through semi‐structured interviews with Chinese employees working in MNCs.

The findings suggest that “asymmetrical understanding” exists between expatriate managers and their Chinese employees, and that the former may know much less about the latter than it is normally assumed.

The findings, illustrated through interviews, have shed light on how MNCs could manage their Chinese employees, and how a meaningful dialogue could take place: understanding the other (Chinese employees) on their own intellectual ground to overcome “asymmetrical understanding”.

By allowing the voice of the other to come forth rather than to keep it in the background as, at best, a whisper, the study helps create a platform for a meaningful cross‐cultural dialogue between voices from the west and the other.

This paper seeks to propose that practical wisdom originating within the Chinese classical traditions has been instrumental in China's ascendance to the world stage. Its purpose is to analyze biographical data across 200 Chinese business leaders in order to gauge the relative influence of two competing ideologies – Maoism and Confucianism.

This paper is based on a two‐step design process. First, modern day leadership archetypes characterizing Maoist and Confucian ideology were developed from the literature. Second, these archetypes were applied in the content analysis of biographical data on Chinese business leaders.

There was evidence of both Maoism and Confucianism in the practices of Chinese business leaders. An unintended, third cohort of leaders emerged, representative of the younger end of the biographical distribution, who appear to embrace paradox in their ideological orientation.

There were three practical implications for management and leadership development: the importance of integrating the concept of paradox into management and leadership development curricula; the provision of illustrative alternatives to western world leadership exemplars; and increased emphasis on global leadership as an emergent phenomenon with particular attention to the burgeoning internationalization of Chinese enterprise and its associated ideologies.

The current leadership literature is dominated by western world exemplars. This paper offers an alternative view; one rich with the wisdom and classical traditions of the Chinese culture.