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This paper aims to conceptualise a framework of “transnational human resource management” (HRM) and to demonstrate the validity of the model.

Evidence is drawn from survey of 93 large Japanese multinational companies (MNCs). Data are analysed through descriptive statistics, hierarchical multiple regression analyses and mediation effect analyses.

The analysis reveals that the practices for normative and systems integration are associated with increasing levels of social capital and geocentric staffing, respectively, and the social capital and geocentric staffing fully mediate the relationship between normative and systems integration and transnationality.

The research extends the integration theory in international HRM and demonstrates the validity of our framework for transnational HRM. The authors also shed light on the reality of the integration aspects of international HRM in Japanese MNCs.

Purpose – The author introduces the Eastern philosophy of wisdom, especially its epistemology of Yin-Yang Balancing as the Eastern cognitive frame, to shed light on the debates over the distinction and integration between research and practice as well as between qualitative and quantitative methods so as to solve the problems of relevance-rigor gap as well as complexity-simplicity gap. The author also applies the frame of Yin-Yang Balancing to the development of a novel method of case study.

Methodology/Approach – This is a conceptual article.

Central theme – The Eastern philosophy of wisdom is better at an open-minded exploration of open-ended issues by emphasizing relevance and complexity, while the Western philosophy of science is better at a closed-minded exploitation of close-ended issues by emphasizing rigor and simplicity. A geocentric integration of both Eastern and Western philosophies is needed.

Research and practical implications – Management research is far behind the need for theoretical insights into practical solutions largely due to the increasing gaps between relevance and rigor as well as between complex problems and simple solutions. The root cause of the two gaps lies in the overreliance on the Western philosophy of science, so a new light can be found in the Eastern philosophy of wisdom, and the ultimate solution is a geocentric integration of Eastern and Western philosophies. A novel method of case study can be built by applying the Eastern philosophy.

Originality/Value – The author highlights the urgent needs for the Eastern philosophy of wisdom and its integration with the Western philosophy of science toward a geocentric meta-paradigm. As a specific application of the geocentric meta-paradigm, the author proposes a novel method of case study called Yin-Yang Method.

The author argues and explains that the indigenous Eastern epistemological system of Yin-Yang balancing should be taken as a novel system or frame of thinking, which is deeply rooted in the indigenous Eastern culture traditions, but it has significant global implications, especially in the domain of paradox management. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to provide a detailed elaboration of the indigenous Eastern epistemological system of Yin-Yang balancing in contrast to the Western logic systems; and second, to provide a roadmap for applying the system of Yin-Yang balancing to complex issues in the area of management, in general, and paradoxical issues, in particular.

This is a conceptual paper with a focus on theory-building.

The author elaborates on the indigenous features of Yin-Yang balancing, in contrast to Aristotle’s formal logic and Hegel’s dialectical logic in the West, to further explore the former’s global implications for the increased attention to research on paradox management. In particular, the author posits that Yin-Yang balancing appears to be better suited for paradox management than the more commonly used logics available in the Western literature. Built upon the Yin-Yang balancing, a practical tool of Duality Map for paradox management is proposed.

The system of Yin-Yang balancing proposed in this paper has the potential to embrace logical systems available in the West into a geocentric (East-meeting-West) meta-system. This paper further shows how to apply Yin-Yang balancing with the tool of Duality Map to the most salient paradoxes in the domain of management, including value-profit balance (triple bottom lines), exploration-exploitation balance (ambidexterity), cooperation-competition balance (co-opetition), globalization-localization balance (glocalization), institution-agency balance (institutional entrepreneurship), simultaneously positive and negative attitudes toward an entity (ambivalence), and etic-emic balance (geocentric) across all domains of management research.

The primary challenge for management researchers is to find a way to achieve a geocentric integration between the West and the East at the fundamental level of philosophy. The hope is that the philosophical traditions in the East will facilitate such integration. In particular, the Eastern philosophy of wisdom has a unique capacity to reframe paradox from a negative problem (i.e. a problem of inconsistency to be resolved by dualism in terms of separating opposite elements) to a positive solution (i.e. a solution of completeness or holism to be achieved by duality in terms of partially separating and partially integrating opposite elements).

Purpose –– The aim of the present study was to shed light on the role of Western expatriates in knowledge transfer processes in foreign subsidiaries in Central and Eastern Europe and the impediments they face in these roles in the context of socio-economic transformation.

Methodology/approach –– The findings are based on qualitative data collected via in-depth telephone interviews with 18 Finnish expatriates across a range of firms and industries –– nine located in Estonia and nine in the Czech Republic.

Findings –– The expatriates performed a wide variety of roles reflecting their use as mechanisms of control, coordination and the transfer of knowledge; however, the extent of their knowledge transfer activities was largely influenced by the MNCs' desired level of subsidiary integration. Challenges in the knowledge transferor role were identified at all three levels –– social, organisational and relational –– with some noticeable similarities and differences across the two countries.

Research limitations/implications –– This study included the views of expatriates only and not the views of other key stakeholders such as host-country employees and managers at headquarters. In order to verify the accounts of expatriates as well as establish a picture of how effective the expatriates are in their knowledge mobilisation roles, future research should endeavour to include other key parties in the knowledge transfer process.

Drawing on Fang’s (2012) Yin Yang theory of culture while taking up the roadmap proposed by Li (2016) for applying the epistemological system of Yin Yang balancing to complex issues in management research, in general, and to paradoxical issues, in particular, the purpose of this paper is to explore how organizations and individuals in the West can balance cultural paradoxes and manage culture dilemmas through the lens of Yin Yang wisdom.

The paper is based on a qualitative case study. Data are gathered through interviews, documents, and field observations in four subsidiaries of an Italian insurance multinational corporation and were analyzed according to the three parameters, i.e., situation, context, and time (Fang, 2012).

The findings show how the integration and learning from seemingly opposite cultures and sets of values lead the organization and individuals to balancing cultural paradox and managing cultural dilemma effectively. With regard to situation, the authors find that both organizations and customers choose the most relevant value(s) to take advantage of specific events or circumstances, and that different value orientations can coexist. As for context, the authors show that organizations can adapt their values either through suppression and/or promotion, which can foster individuals to find new balancing within the paradox. In terms of time, the authors show that the process of learning from other cultures over time can play a role in the shift of people’s and organizations’ choices of attitudes and value orientations.

The paper suggests the relevance and usefulness of adopting Yin Yang wisdom to uncover the dynamic process of cultural learning in Western scenarios.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the theoretical contribution of Li’s (2016) “Yin-Yang balancing” approach of paradox management, as well as its future development to guide paradox management research across the east and west contexts.

It begins by recognizing the importance of paradox management research, especially the indigenous epistemological approach as Li (2016) has followed. The authors take “being” and “becoming” ontology toward social reality as the basic premise in this commentary, and summarize the knowledge that the study has contributed to existing literature.

The “Yin-Yang balancing” approach can extend the knowledge about paradox management phenomena at least from four aspects: the “either/and” frame to view a paradox system, the importance of “seed” or “threshold” in defining moderate rather than extreme groups, duality map as a novel tool for paradox management, and comparison of being and becoming ontology.

Based on the comparison of “being” and “becoming” ontological view, the authors suggest to further develop this “Yin-Yang balancing” approach by emphasizing the following issues: eastern culture does not have exclusive ownership of the “becoming” ontology toward the world, elaboration of alternative theoretical explanation to win out the identity approach about organizational existence, the linkage between the “Yin-Yang balancing” epistemological system and process research method, and boundary condition of the “Yin-Yang balancing” approach.

The purpose of this perspective article is to identify the developmental trajectory of human resource management (HRM) research in the Mainland China as well as the major research gaps to be filled in the future. In particular, the paper focuses on the current challenges as well as the emerging research trends by reviewing the literature in HRM research in the Mainland China.

The paper takes a geocentric perspective of HRM theory development to analyze the status quo as well as the emerging trends of the future HRM research in the Mainland China.

HRM research in the Mainland China exhibited an obvious tendency of adopting an etic approach at the early stage of research, but displaying an emerging trend toward an emic approach at a later stage. However, the current HRM research in the Mainland China, including both etic and the emic approaches, falls seriously short of meeting the high-quality standards of the international academic community.

Through analyzing the status quo of HRM research in the Mainland China, the paper identified an emerging trend toward an integration of both etic and emic approaches in which the two approaches constitute a yin-yang duality as a unity-in-opposites toward a geocentric HRM research framework with a holistic, dynamic and duality etic-emic balance.

The purpose of this paper is to study the case of one French multinational company which has undergone a process of radical restructuring and “internationalization” because of acquisitions of Anglo‐Saxon multinational companies. It examines how the organizational changes influenced the company's approach to the international human resource management (IHRM).

The methodology of this research is the single case study. Sources of evidences are direct participation and observation, interviews with top managers, and documentation.

The results show that the ethnocentric model, when French managers were placed on the top of the foreign subsidiaries, becomes non‐efficient in the company which doubled its size and the geographical spread of its activities. It is argued that the forces of globalization constrained this multinational company to change from an ethnocentric approach to a geocentric approach to its IHRM.

The case demonstrates that national and organizational cultures are important contextual factors which influence the company's approach to its IHRM. The paper outlines the interconnectedness of globalization and the geocentric approach to the IHRM.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&) are increasingly becoming a strategy of choice for companies attempting to achieve and sustain competitive advantage. However, not all M&As are a success. In this paper, we examine the three main reasons highlighted in the literature as major causes of M&A failure (clashing corporate cultures, absence of clear communication, and employee involvement) in three Indian pharmaceutical companies, and we analyze the role played by the HR function in addressing them. Also, we discuss the importance of gaining the commitment and focus of the workforce during the acquisition process through employee involvement.

This paper aims to present the problem of the integration of the global positioning system (GPS)/global navigation satellite system (GLONASS) data for the processing of aircraft position determination.

The aircraft coordinates were obtained based on GPS and GLONASS code observations for the single point positioning (SPP) method. The numerical computations were executed in the aircraft positioning software (APS) package. The mathematical scheme of equation observation of the SPP method was solved using least square estimation in stochastic processing. In the research experiment, the raw global navigation satellite system data from the Topcon HiperPro onboard receiver were applied.

In the paper, the mean errors of an aircraft position from APS were under 3 m. In addition, the accuracy of aircraft positioning was better than 6 m. The integrity term for horizontal protection level and vertical protection level parameters in the flight test was below 16 m.

The paper presents only the application of GPS/GLONASS observations in aviation, without satellite data from other navigation systems.

The presented research method can be used in an aircraft based augmentation system in Polish aviation.

The paper is addressed to persons who work in aviation and air transport.

The paper presents the SPP method as a satellite technique for the recovery of an aircraft position in an aviation test.