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The purpose of this paper is to focus on the cultural cognition of Chinese Zhong-yong thinking, which is deeply rooted in Chinese Confucius culture, and to examine how entrepreneurs’ Zhong-yong thinking is related to new venture performance through guanxi network, and also examine how environmental turbulence affects the influencing mechanism.

This paper follows an empirical design. Data are collected from a survey administered to entrepreneurs in new ventures of China. Regression analysis is used to test the hypothesis.

Results show that entrepreneurs’ Zhong-yong thinking is positively related to guanxi and new venture performance, and guanxi mediates the relationship between entrepreneurs’ Zhong-yong thinking and new venture performance. In addition, environmental turbulence moderates the relationship between entrepreneurs’ Zhong-yong thinking and guanxi such that the relationship is stronger under higher technological turbulence or lower market turbulence.

This research uses cross-sectional data, so causal conclusions cannot be made. In addition, more moderators should be considered.

The present study enriches the understanding of how entrepreneurs’ Zhong-yong thinking affects new ventures, which helps entrepreneur understand how to strategize according to external environment and develop what kind of cognitive style to deal with complex situation of their own venture.

This study is a pioneer in exploring non-Western cognitive style–Zhong-yong thinking in entrepreneurial context. It not only enriches the understanding of how Chinese wisdom affects organizational strategy and organizational performance but also advances the cognition research in the field of entrepreneurship.

Zhong-yong thinking is a code of conduct of the Chinese people. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship among Zhong-yong thinking, social capital, knowledge sharing behavior, and employee survival ability.

Zhong-yong thinking including multi-thinking, integration and harmony, taking a case study of private enterprise in Guangxi of China. Based on the literature, the establishment of the theoretical model and hierarchical regression analysis are explored.

The multi-thinking, integration and harmony of Zhong-yong thinking have a significant positive effect on social capital and employee survival ability. In addition, employee survival ability is positively affected by social capital. Moreover, knowledge sharing behavior has a positive moderating between the multi-thinking dimension of Zhong-yong thinking and social capital, and the remaining dimensions have no moderating effect. Knowledge sharing behavior has no moderating effect on the relationship between social capital and employee survival ability.

Zhong-yong thinking and social capital are actively affecting employee survival ability. Therefore, companies need to work harder to improve their employees' Zhong-yong thinking and social capital.

The paper extends Zhong-yong thinking, social capital and employee survival ability literature to fill gaps in how China people require to both access employee survival ability. The policy value of the work is in suggesting ways to facilitate employee survival ability of China.

This study aims to integrate conservation of resources theory discus the antecedents and consequences of cyberloafing as well as the boundary effect between cyberloafing and mental health.

The authors collected 431 valid questionnaires in four months. Each questionnaire was divided into two parts that had to be distributed. The interval between the first distribution and the second distribution was 15 days.

The research study revealed that employees’ Zhong-Yong thinking and cyberloafing promote mental health, and cyberloafing has a mediating effect. Mindfulness weakens the positive impact of cyberloafing on mental health.

The research study’s results break the stereotype that cyberloafing is not good for organizations. When managers allow employees to engage in cyberloafing at work, this is conducive to employees’ mental health, which can ensure the company’s sustainable development.

This study investigates the direct influence of ambidextrous leadership on employees’ innovation behaviour, the mediating role of innovative self-efficacy and harmonious work passion, and the moderating role of Zhong-Yong thinking.

The authors conducted a series of questionnaire surveys to collect data in three time periods and from multiple sources; 332 supervisor–subordinate matched samples were obtained. The hypothesised relationships were tested using structural equation modelling and ProClin.

Ambidextrous leadership is positively associated with employees’ innovation behaviour, while innovative self-efficacy and harmonious work passion play mediating roles. The analysis further confirms that innovative self-efficacy and harmonious work passion play a chained double-mediating role between ambidextrous leadership and employees’ innovation behaviour, while Zhong-Yong thinking plays moderating roles between ambidextrous leadership and innovative self-efficacy and between ambidextrous leadership and harmonious work passion.

This study demonstrates the influence of ambidextrous leadership on employees’ innovation behaviour, specifically the role of ambidextrous leadership, and extends the relationship’s theoretical foundation. It is also expected to provide inspiration and serve as a reference for local Chinese management.

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 propose an alternative perspective on Zhong-Yong that is different from the notion of “Yin-Yang balancing” and apply it to understand the issue of balancing the top-down and bottom-up processes in strategy making.

The authors adopt a “West meets East” mindset and approach to develop an alternative perspective on Zhong-Yong, and then apply this perspective to understand the issue of balancing the top-down and bottom-up processes in strategy making. There are three steps in the process of developing the alternative perspective. First, the authors argue that the essence of “Yin-Yang balancing” is a ratio-based solution to paradoxical balancing, which is in fact equivalent to Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean and compatible with some western management scholars’ approaches to solving paradox. Second, the authors identify a different generic solution to paradoxical balancing implicit in the western management literature. Third, the authors find in the original text of Zhong-Yong equivalent ideas to the identified different generic solution and then propose an alternative perspective on Zhong-Yong that is fundamentally different from the notion of “Yin-Yang balancing.”

Applied to the issue of balancing the top-down and bottom-up processes in strategy making, the new perspective on Zhong-Yong provides us with the following prescriptive insights from the life-wisdom of eastern philosophy: first, top management (e.g. Shun as the sage-king) must listen to various views and opinions also from employees and low-level managers at the bottom of the organization to be better informed about complex issues. Second, top management must analyze the diverse elements of the various views and opinions they collect and synthesize by taking the good from the bad to find smarter solutions and make decisions with better outcomes. Third, abiding by a set of (more or less) cohesive values help top managers be open and receptive to information and insights from low-level organizational members and enhancing unbiased information.

This paper is mainly a theoretical perspective. Empirical work is needed to test the prescriptions offered in this paper.

Practitioners may learn new perspectives from ancient Chinese philosophies on how to balance.

This paper applies a new perspective on Zhong-Yong to an important paradox in strategic management.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate cultural and individual differences in newsvendor decision making.

The online experiment, programmed in the PHP scripting language, had 107 participants: local managers of four large, well-known and supply chain–intensive firms in China (Lenovo, Shenhua, CMST and GM).

The authors find that, as compared with American subjects, Chinese subjects engage in more demand chasing, order quantities that are closer to the mean demand, have a lower expected profit and exhibit greater variance in order quantities. However, these observations may not hold when the cross-cultural comparison is conducted for each pair of ethnic subgroups whose members have the same cognitive reflection test score, a measure of individual differences. Moreover, cultural differences also affect how individual differences manifest in newsvendor decisions.

The authors findings have important implications for employee selection, training and management in any cross-cultural business environment.

Little attention has been paid, in the behavioural operations literature, to individual differences and how they interact with culture. This paper is the first to examine the interaction effects of cultural and individual differences in newsvendor decisions, and it highlights an important research area that is currently understudied in operations management.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how leader humility affects the engagement of employees in creative processes, using perceived organizational support (POS) as a mediator and leader competence as a moderator.

Data were collected from a two-wave sampling of 113 dyads of leaders and subordinates in China.

A curvilinear relationship was found between leader humility and employee engagement in creative processes. Further, POS partially mediates this relationship, and leader competence positively moderates the relationship between leader humility and POS.

First, organizations should select and train leaders who show humility as a character trait and foster a supportive organizational climate. Second, managers should study the benefits of moderate and harms of superfluous humility, especially in the Chinese cultural context. Third, competent leaders are more effective as humble leaders.

Few studies have concentrated on leader humility in the eastern cultural context. The results challenge traditional views of the impact of leader humility and shed light on its mechanism and the conditions under which it promotes employee engagement in creation. This study also clarifies the nonlinear influence of leader humility, building a fine-grained theoretical framework integrating the motivation-opportunities-abilities model and Chinese Zhong-Yong theory.

This paper aims to carry out a study on the combined effects of leadership styles and human resource management (HRM) practices on employee performance. Based on configurational theory, this study integrates task-oriented leadership, relations-oriented leadership, change-oriented leadership and human resource hygiene practices (HRHPs) and human resource motivation practices (HRMPs) to detect distinct configurations of leadership styles and HRM practices that may lead to high and not-high employee performance.

Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was adopted to identify the configurations of conditions associated with the outcome, with data obtained from 108 employees and 32 line-managers in China through structured interview and questionnaire survey.

The results show that there are five sufficient configurations for the presence of high employee performance and three for performance's absence. Relation-oriented leadership, HRMPs and enterprise property are more important conditions to employee performance than others. Furthermore, no single condition constitutes a necessary condition for causing the high or not-high employee performance.

Compared to previous studies that mainly focused on linear relationships, this study applies the fsQCA method to explore how matching different leadership styles and HRM practices could bring about high and not-high employee performance, which provides evidence for the three propositions of “multiple conjunctural causation,” “equifinality” and “asymmetry.”

Employee voice behavior is an important source of corporate competitiveness but employees often face difficulties in voicing their opinions. This research analyzes how authentic leadership may increase psychological safety perceived by employees, consequently encouraging employees to actively share their ideas. In addition, the authors explore the unique concept of Zhongyong thinking, a way of thinking that is common in cultures rooted in Confucianism. The authors analyze how Zhongyong thinking may affect the relationship between psychological safety and employee voice behavior.

For the empirical analysis of authentic leadership and employee voice behavior in the Chinese context, the authors distributed surveys to employees working in various different industries in various provinces in China. The authors distributed 250 surveys in total and 213 surveys were used for analyses.

The authors' empirical analyzes illustrate that authentic leadership increases employee voice behavior, partially mediated by psychological safety. The authors also analyzed how psychological safety's effect on employee voice behavior could be moderated by Zhongyong thinking. The results demonstrate that the effect of psychological safety on voice behavior is weaker when employees are capable of exercising Zhongyong thinking.

Zhongyong thinking is still a relatively new concept that has not been studied thoroughly, and to the authors' knowledge, Zhongyong thinking has never been studied as a moderator in the relationship between psychological safety and employee voice behavior.