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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 purpose of this paper is to comment on “Global implication of the indigenous epistemological system from the East: How to Apply yin-yang balancing to paradox management” by Li (2016). As a pioneer in developing indigenous Chinese management theories, Li has been focused on extracting essential principles of the Chinese yin-yang philosophy and applying them to organization and management phenomena within and outside China (Li, 1998, 2012, 2014a, b). In this paper (Li, 2016), Li sharpens his thinking on the unique attributes of the Chinese yin-yang balancing perspective so as to both distinguish it from and connect it to Western Aristotelian and Hegelian philosophies in regard to contradictions and paradoxes that are increasingly more prevalent in contemporary organizations. The author found Li’s paper thought provoking and highly relevant to cross-cultural management research. The author reflects on the yin and yang of the yin-yang perspective itself and discusses how it can be extended for theorizing about cross-cultural or inter-cultural management research.

Applying yin-yang dialectics on the East-West cultural differences, this commentary contends that the strengths and weaknesses of the cultural mindsets of the East and the West are relative and potentially complementary to each other, and seeks to balance and integrate Eastern and Western perspectives for theorizing and tackling cultural differences and conflicts in a globalized world.

On the basis of yin-yang dialectics on cultural differences, a communitarianism model is proposed for cross-cultural researchers to balance and integrate individualism and collectivism, a well-established East-West cultural difference.

The theoretical model of communitarianism builds upon but transcends either Eastern or Western cultural differences toward a viable global value system.

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).

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 explore how Chinese and Finnish managers in cross-cultural supply-chain relationships evaluate their business partners’ trustworthiness and distrustworthiness.

Representatives of two Finnish companies and their Chinese and Finnish suppliers were interviewed to collect qualitative data from 23 managers.

The Chinese managers emphasized relationship-specific, personalized trustworthiness. They highlighted personalized communication and benevolence, which manifested in respect and reciprocity, rooted in the Chinese notion of “guanxi” as personal ties. In contrast, the Finnish managers’ view of trustworthiness was more associated with depersonalized organizational attributes. They emphasized the dimension of integrity, especially promise-keeping. In addition, tentative signs of trust ambivalence, as a balance between trust- and distrust-related factors, were identified for both the Chinese and the Finns.

Due to the exploratory nature of this study the validity of the findings is limited to these data and context. Future studies could explore other national contexts as well as the effects of industry, market position, and position in the supply chain.

The findings of this study bring a valuable understanding of the potential pitfalls and unique challenges in cross-border inter-firm transactions. These can enhance inter-firm trust building in a cross-cultural context.

This study enriches the view of trust as a holistic process of simultaneous evaluation of both trustworthiness and distrustworthiness. In this process, trust ambivalence could serve as the intermediate construct between trust and distrust. These two contrary yet complementary opposites constitute a duality to be managed from the perspective of yin-yang balancing.

Welcome to the eighth volume of Research Methodology in Strategy and Management. The theme of this volume is West Meets East: Building Theoretical Bridges. It complements the seventh volume West Meets East: Toward Methodological Exchange. The two volumes together examine the relevance of Western theories and methods in the Eastern research context. In particular, this volume examines the key theoretical areas that strategic management research draws from to understand how managers can lead their companies to achieve competitive advantage in the increasingly globalised economy. We not only focus on the extent to which theories developed in the West can be applied in the understanding of business practice and performance in the East, but also explore methods for developing new insights and theories rooted in the Eastern business practice.

Grounded in Yijing, the wellspring of Chinese philosophies, this research aims to propose a novel interpretation of the indigenous Yin-Yang harmony cognitive framework, and to elaborate on how to use it as a meta-theorising tool to characterise the conflicting yet complementary dynamics of strategy, commonly seen as the prominent feature of Chinese strategic thinking.

Using the Yin-Yang harmony approach (i.e. Yin as the endogenous factors and Yang the exogenous factors), the authors first put forward eight paradoxical situations facing Chinese organisations as per the changing paradigm of Yijing. Then the authors use the thick description model as a roadmap to identify three evolving trajectories in Chinese higher education (HE) system. Finally, they raise four strategic propositions regarding how competing HE institutes handle the conflicting yet complementary dynamics in China.

Results show that the main strategic choices used by two different types of higher education institutes to cope with the current high-level uncertainty and competition could be described in terms of the two “Qian” and “Li” strategic situations, respectively. More details are discussed in the four propositions.

This research brings potentially valuable implications for global regulators, policymakers, providers and other stakeholders through better understanding of HE-related issues, as well as certain distinct conceptual complexities in terms of developing strategies in China. It implies potentially significant differences in cognition between East and West, and illustrates what may be their workings.

This indigenous eight-dimensional paradigm demonstrates the conflicting yet complementary dynamic gestalt of organisational strategic choices that may only be realised in Chinese terms, and that cannot be elucidated by theories purely derived from Western experience. It thus can foster the transfer of understanding between the East and West and open a new chapter for future research.

In the face of external paradoxical requirements, the cognitive framework of managers and employees use to perceive, interpret and reconstruct information is important to ease anxiety and improve job performance. The Yin-Yang balancing of eastern philosophical thought is particularly good at explaining and predicting changes and conflict environments. For this reason, this study aims to propose the eastern construction of the paradoxical cognitive framework based on the Yin-Yang balancing theory and its antecedent framework.

This paper contrasts the similarity and differences between Chinese and Western philosophy’s thoughts on paradoxes. On this basis, the eastern construction of the paradoxical cognitive framework is proposed. Then, the paper puts forward the antecedent framework of managers’ cognitive framework and employees’ paradoxical cognitive framework.

This paper proposes the eastern construction of the paradoxical cognitive framework includes the following three dimensions: the unity-in-diversity of paradoxical elements, the asymmetric balance of paradoxical elements and mutual transformation of paradoxical elements. In addition, this paper proposes an antecedent framework of the eastern construction of the paradoxical cognitive framework – the paradoxical requirement of organizational environment exerts a direct impact on managers’ and employees’ paradoxical cognitive framework; managers’ paradoxical cognitive framework has a positive impact on paradoxical leadership; paradoxical leadership exerts an indirect impact on employees’ paradoxical cognitive framework through the collective paradoxical cognitive framework; paradoxical leadership directly affects employees’ paradoxical cognitive framework.

This paper focuses on comparing the similarities and differences of the individual paradoxical cognitive framework in Chinese and Western cultures and proposes the eastern construction of the paradoxical cognitive framework and its antecedent framework. Future research needs to further verify the theoretical framework proposed in this paper.

This paper makes a detailed comparison of the paradox views in Chinese and Western philosophy. It is the first to propose the eastern construction of the paradoxical cognitive framework and its antecedent framework, laying a theoretical foundation for future empirical research.

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.