Aichia Chuang

Phenomenon-based research involves uncovering context-specific mechanisms underlying complex organizational realities and, when applied to Chinese contexts, offers valuable potential to extend and refine global management theories. Drawing on three illustrative studies on person–environment fit (Chuang, Hsu, Wang, & Judge, 2015), CEO humility (Ou, Waldman, & Peterson, 2014), and authoritarian leadership (Huang, Chiu, Lam, & Farh, 2015) respectively, this editorial highlights how each exemplifies different stages in the evolution of theories, from indigenous, middle-range insights to universal, general frameworks. In doing so, it addresses challenges and potential solutions for publishing phenomenon-based Chinese management research in premier journals. Across these cases, several recurring challenges emerge, including difficulties in positioning context-specific findings within existing theoretical frameworks, translating culturally embedded constructs for international audiences, and balancing cultural authenticity with global understanding. The authors also reflect on practical challenges such as building research partnerships and gaining organizational support within Chinese contexts. By comparing experiences across these studies, this editorial offers guidance on how phenomenon-based research can deepen theoretical innovation while maintaining methodological rigor and practical relevance. Lastly, it argues that Chinese management research plays a vital role in advancing universal management knowledge and offers opportunities for future research.

This study provides a neuropsychological examination of the conceptualization of perceived person-environment fit in relation to its cognitive and affective components. It addresses key challenges in the current fit literature through empirically clarifying the theoretical "black box" of how individuals cognitively compare themselves to their environment, fundamentally examining affective aspects of fit beyond correlational analysis, and exploring whether psychological and neural perspectives offer different conceptualizations of fit. Two functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, involving 62 and 41 working adults respectively, show that both lateral brain regions (associated with higher order cognition) and medial brain regions (associated with emotion processing) are activated when participants perceive fit. In addition, relational fit involves more emotion processing compared to rational fit, while misfit involves greater negative emotion processing than fit. An unexpected and illuminating finding is that perceived fit also engages social cognitive processing, related to theory of mind. As an additional part of the examination of perceived fit conceptualization, supplementary research indicates that, compared to job satisfaction, perceived fit engages more social brain regions (associated with social cognition), while job satisfaction exhibits greater activation in prefrontal cortex regions (linked to motivation and goal attainment). A third study, using a field survey with text analysis to examine the psychological processes underlying perceived fit and job satisfaction, replicates all hypothesized neurological findings from the two functional magnetic resonance imaging studies. Theoretical and managerial implications, as well as directions for future research, are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

In the present study, we propose the concept of team incentive composition that involves the average level of team members’ team incentive levels and the variability in the team members’ team incen...

We conducted a quasi-experimental field study of an organization-wide suggestion program and a follow-up laboratory experiment to examine the effects of choice of rewards on employee creativity. As hypothesized, the results of both studies showed that choice had positive, significant effects on the number of creative ideas employees generated and the creativity level of those ideas. Results of the quasi-experiment also showed that creative self-efficacy (CSE) mediated the effects of reward choice. Two general categories of rewards were examined in our studies-those that directly benefited the idea generator (Self) and those that directly benefited charities (Other). We explored the effects of these reward categories on employee creativity and whether employee creative personality interacted with the reward categories to affect employee creativity. Results showed that the reward categories did not have a significant impact on employee creativity. However, both studies demonstrated that in the Other reward condition, employees with a creative personality produced ideas higher in creativity than those with a less creative personality. The quasi-experiment also showed that CSE mediated the effects of the Reward × Creative Personality interaction. We discussed the implications of these results for the future research and practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Asia houses the largest population (International Energy Agency, 2012) and enjoys the highest nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of all continents (International Monetary Fund [IMF], 2013). Asian countries represent some of the world's largest economies: for example, China (2), Japan (3), India (10), South Korea (15), and Indonesia (16) (IMF, 2013). In terms of business interactions, four Asian cities top the list of global office destinations: Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, and Shanghai (CB Richard Ellis, 2011). Indicative of the progressive dependence of the world's business and economy on Asia, the Academy of Management, a leading management academic association, set ‘West Meets East: Enlightening, Balancing, Transcending’ as ...

While high performers contribute substantially to their workgroups and organizations, research has indicated that they incur social costs from peers. Drawing from theories of social comparison and conservation of resources, we advance a rational perspective to explain why high performers draw both intentional positive and negative reactions from peers and consider how cooperative work contexts moderate these effects. A multisource field study of 936 relationships among 350 stylists within 105 salons offered support for our model and an experiment with 204 management students constructively replicated our findings and ruled out alternative explanations. Results indicated that peers offered more support and also perpetrated more undermining to high performers. Paradoxical cognitive processes partly explain these behaviors, and cooperative contexts proved socially disadvantageous for high performers. Findings offer a more comprehensive view of the social consequences of high performance and highlight how peer behaviors toward high performers may be calculated and strategic rather than simply reactionary. (PsycINFO Database Record

The extant entrepreneurship literature tends to typify entrepreneurs as individuals seeking to create wealth by creating services and products to solve external problems. In contrast, our study focuses on entrepreneurs for meaning or those individuals who have become entrepreneurs as a means to solve an internal problem: their existential meaning crisis. Applying the grounded theory approach, we develop a theory of work tailoring that explains how it is designing work for the entrepreneurs themselves that frames the entrepreneurial processes and outcomes for entrepreneurs for meaning. The theory addresses why such entrepreneurs opt to create new work in the first place; describes entrepreneurial processes as a three-phase process of work tailoring; and identifies entrepreneurial outcomes as meaningful, realistic, and legitimate tailor-made work. Our study provides a better understanding of entrepreneurial work design, which broadens current literature to include work tailoring as another form of work design.