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This paper was developed with the objective of unravelling the concepts and their applications in the broad areas of organizational learning (OL) and learning organization (LO). The same altogether was captured by the academic lens of Professor Eric Tsang. Through the interview, Prof Tsang helped in tracing the progressive path of his academic journey, understanding his ideas and perspectives from the space of OL and LO as well as his contributions related to those. Overall, this study aims to add to the ongoing knowledge-intensive process of redefining the ways in which organizations ‘learn’.

This paper is based on a detailed conversation with the distinguished academician, Prof. Eric Tsang.

How OL can follow the continuum of “purposeful organizational routines (ORs)” and that changes in such ORs will happen if shared work experiences of employees are put together. Also, organizational unlearning (OU) as a phenomenon is hard to ignore for successful organizations, especially large multinational companies.

The discussions with Prof Eric Tsang reflected his thoughts and critique pertaining to the core theme of OU and the significance of “purposeful organizational routines.” In the near future, other researchers and professionals can use the scope of verifying some of the assertions made in different contexts of conducting business across LOs.

The first purpose of this short essay is to respond to Howells and Scholderer’s (2016) harsh critique that organizational unlearning is a superfluous concept. The second purpose is to establish a relationship between organizational unlearning and the learning organization.

To respond to Howells and Scholderer’s critique, the author carefully examines their arguments – focusing on their comments on the author’s previous publications – and checks whether the arguments are logical and coherent. To establish a relationship between organizational unlearning and the learning organization, the author draws on his own research of international joint ventures in China.

Howells and Scholderer seriously miscited the ideas in one of the author’s publications, and their main arguments are blatantly flawed. Moreover, they are unaware that many of the faults they find in the organizational unlearning literature are also present in the organizational learning literature. As to the second part of this essay, the study of the acquisition type of joint ventures clearly indicates the presence of organizational unlearning. Moreover, for such ventures to be learning organizations, the unlearning step has to be well managed.

As mentioned, the author’s response to Howells and Scholderer’s critique focuses on their comments on the author’s publications. It is highly likely that they have made other erroneous arguments that this essay fails to capture. The author’s discussion of unlearning and learning organizations is constrained by the context of acquisition joint ventures.

This essay forcefully rebuts Howells and Scholderer’s critique, which can become an obstacle in the development of organizational unlearning research. The dynamics of knowledge transfer in acquisition joint ventures suggest that skills of unlearning, and not just learning, are essential to reaching the goal of being a learning organization.

This paper aims to provide some comments on the four papers, other than the author’s own, that were included in a recent special issue on organizational unlearning.

The author carefully reads these papers and identify problems that may hinder unlearning research.

While each paper has its own merits, a common problem shared by the papers is that the concept of organizational unlearning is unnecessarily eulogized, complicated or straitjacketed.

The author’s discussion focuses only on a problem related directly to the concept of unlearning, and does not cover other, though less serious, issues.

The author’s comments help readers better understand the concept of unlearning and so facilitate the further development of unlearning research.

Consciously or unconsciously, every management researcher adopts a certain philosophical perspective. In this chapter, I discuss the connection between philosophy and management research and show how philosophical perspectives affect the perception of empirical phenomena, choice of research methods, and interpretation of research results. The discussion indicates that the connection is far more crucial than what many management researchers may have thought. I then share my experience of studying philosophy and provide suggestions to those who are interested in enhancing their knowledge of the subject.

The purpose of this paper is to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

While we should not necessarily believe the people who tell us there has never been a better time to invest, to buy a new car, to become an entrepreneur or even to upgrade our central‐heating boiler, it may be true that there has never been a better time for organizational learning – whether that is within the organization itself or amongst the employees.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to digest format.

This study aims at providing exploratory insights into the initiative and capabilities of Chinese SMEs to develop and utilize diverse networks to support internationalization. Such network development and utilization efforts are fundamental to the analysis and explanation of Chinese firms’ internationalization patterns and outcomes. Extending from the existing network studies in the Chinese context that generally put emphasis on strong‐tie and ethnic‐oriented networks, this paper investigates and explains explicitly the use and effects of both strong‐ and weak‐tie networks in the international development of Chinese SMEs. Indepth case studies on four rapidly internationalized Chinese SMEs are conducted. The case findings demonstrate that weak‐tie networks are essential to the firms’ business development in foreign markets; and were proactively developed and utilized in the course of the firms’ development. The cases also provide alternative perspectives to the beliefs and values underpinning strong‐tie networks presumed in existing literature. The findings draw attention to the changing business values and approaches of the Chinese firms aiming at developing internationally. Managerial implications concerning the significant influence of effective networking on internationalization are pinpointed.

Sino‐foreign joint ventures have been the major form of foreign direct investment in China since the economic reform in late 1978. Among the many problems faced by the foreign partner of a joint venture, human resource management (HRM) is one of the most often cited. Offers a comprehensive review of the major HRM problems, namely recruitment, dismissal, remuneration, labour discipline, managerial skills, training and trade unions. In order to understand the nature of the problems better, an effort is made to trace the origin of these problems back to the former centrally planned economy and the Chinese culture. The discussion covers the entire Chinese workforce consisting of both workers and managers. Cites survey results and real life cases for illustration. In addition to analysing the problems, offers some practical solutions.

This paper presents a longitudinal study of corporate social disclosures by publicly‐listed Singapore‐based companies in the banking, food and beverages, and hotel industries from 1986 to 1995. Annual reports of all the 33 companies in the three industries were examined and it was found that 16 of them did not have any social responsibility disclosures throughout the ten‐year period. Sentence‐by‐sentence content analysis of the annual reports of the remaining 17 companies was then conducted. The companies mainly disclosed information on human resources and community involvement. Starting from a low level, there was a steady increase in the amount of social information presented in annual reports during the late 1980s. The amount of disclosures, however, has remained steady since 1993. The two tobacco companies in the sample did have significantly larger amounts of social information disclosed. This last result supports the arguments of legitimacy theory.

Many Sino‐foreign joint ventures are set up by acquiring existing state enterprises. Under this arrangement, the foreign partner normally has to restructure the original state enterprise by transferring its routines to China. More often than not, resistance to change is experienced during the transition period. This paper explores the factors affecting such resistance. A grounded theory approach using five cases is adopted. The major factors identified are: Chinese partner's perceived need for change, number of active foreign partners, deployment of experts by the foreign partner, age of the former state enterprise, and joint venture performance. Propositions are derived from the case evidence and relevant literature. A preliminary model linking up the propositions is developed.

This article is premised on the idea that social networks represent an important, but often overlooked, unit of analysis in management and entrepreneurship studies. The concept of embeddedness, emphasizing the significance of social relationships, is of particular relevance as more and more frequently minorities and immigrants engage in small businessownership. This article borrows from the ethnicity and social network traditions, and offers that an analysis of the ethnic homogeneity of an entrepreneur's strong and weak social ties would be fruitful in gauging entrepreneurial success.