Chinese Firms’ Move to the Forefront in Digital Technologies

In the past two decades, China has achieved impressive progress and built competence in digital technology–enabled products, processes, business models, and hyperscale e-infrastructure. Driven by the globally largest internet user scale and fast catching up of information technologies, China’s strategy has been transformed from survival to growth and is transforming to market leadership. Now China has built its competence not only in telecommunication, consumer electronics, and PCs but also in some complex technology products like supercomputer systems. China has also witnessed the rise of hyperscale internet giants and the establishment of super e-commerce and mobile payment systems. However, there are still some great challenges that need to be overcome in some “bottleneck” technologies like the semiconductor and software sectors. China is thus seeking ways to move beyond the “global factory” model and cultivate its own technology-intensive industries and innovation capabilities. In the future, it is critical to maintain an open strategy among fierce global competition.

Pulled in all directions: Open strategy participation as an attention contest

In this article, we investigate a crucial factor in open strategy research: participation. By drawing on the attention-based view, we argue that the degree of participation in both analog and digital practices of open strategy is the result of “attention contests.” These attention contests arise as the attention structure of Open Strategy initiatives (as quasi-temporary organizations) and the attention structure of the main organization compete for actors’ limited attention. As these attention structures collide, four tensions emerge (process ambiguity, status transitions, time constraints, and identity shifts). We argue that the impact of these tensions is contingent on the type of Open Strategy practice; digital or analog forms of Open Strategy-making. Therefore, we offer a new theoretical understanding of why and how actors participate in Open Strategy initiatives. Based on this, we offer various mechanisms of how firms can facilitate meaningful participation in these different practices. This essay opens up promising avenues for future Open Strategy and participation research.

Open strategy: what is the impact of national culture?

Purpose This paper aims to argue that national cultural context variables influence open strategy formation processes. This study suggests that country-specific differences may influence open strategy, a form of strategic decision-making and present propositions linking national culture dimensions, national trust orientation and open strategy. Design/methodology/approach The conceptual framework links the literature on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions to the open strategy paradigm. This paper adopts a contingency approach linking national culture to open strategy. Findings The theoretical arguments demonstrate that uncertainty avoidance, time orientation, power distance, individualism versus collectivism and national trust culture all have a moderating influence on the antecedents and outcomes of open strategy. The findings extend the external validity of the open strategy paradigm and show that a culture-bound explanation of open strategy may be useful to the understanding of open strategy. Practical implications The findings highlight the challenges and opportunities that managers face when they adopt open strategy processes in multinational settings and across different cultures. Managers need to be aware that national cultural variables affect how employees behave and how they are likely to act when faced with opportunities for inclusion, shared decision-making and transparency. The findings suggest that training employees ahead of time on the cultural effects of their behavior may aid the successful adoption of open strategy in different cultures. Originality/value This manuscript to our knowledge, maybe one of the first to make a direct link between openness and national cultural values. In the process, the conceptual framework extends research on the role of context on openness, as well as research at the nexus of cross-cultural issues and strategic decision-making.