Diversity and inclusion scholarship addresses inequality at work across categories of difference marked with historical disadvantages such as gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, and class or categories meaningful for the industrial, organisational or local settings. This scholarship has not considered political ties to be a diversity strand. However, political ties are a considerable source of uneven power relations, unearned privileges, and unjust discrimination in many contexts. Similarly, political ties could be sources of disadvantage, exclusion and discrimination for individuals with weak, absent or oppositional political affiliations. Our paper focuses on the Asian context, where political ties are often a legitimate human and institutional resource that can shape individual choices and chances at work. By defining political ties as a diversity and inclusion strand, we critique the legitimacy of political ties as a dominant and desirable resource and present political tie discrimination as a wicked social problem that entrenches uneven relations of power and authority in workplaces. Highlighting how political affiliation manifests across different national contexts in Asia, we explore the utility of adding political ties to the Asian vernacular to regulate workplace diversity and inclusion. Asia provides an interesting context in which the interplay between political affiliation and workplace relations is often culturally endorsed, remains unregulated and unscrutinised through ethical and anti-discrimination regulations. Thus, Asia provides an ideal setting to explore the emergence of political tie diversity and inclusion at work. We illustrate this through country-specific examples, illustrating the cross-national varieties of political tie diversity in the Asian business context. We also suggest a roadmap to manage political tie diversity and inclusion for this context.

Following a call for actor-centric research in HRM, we look at the modes how HR managers acquire HR knowledge. Our interview study with HR managers of large established companies in Japan finds a clear preference for direct inter-corporate knowledge exchanges instead of the engagement of outside consultants. Discussing our findings, we explain the reasons for this preference. ing from the case of Japan, we then propose with reference to institutional theory and isomorphism that the way HR knowledge is spread is linked to the nature of employment systems. In external labour markets, HR knowledge has been reported to be predominantly spread through business consultants, educational institutions, and career changes of HR professionals, resulting in normative isomorphism. We propose that in internal labour markets, like Japan’s, companies resort to direct inter-corporate knowledge exchange, which leads to mimetic isomorphism.

In many countries, the government plays a regulative role in corporate social responsibility (CSR) as an external overseer of economic and public market sectors. However, owing to the politically embedded nature of extensive corporations in China, the government's influence over CSR is not only exogenous but may even endogenously shape the general scope of CSR of companies in comparison to the West. To date, this has not been extensively examined. We explore this from the standpoint of the scope of beneficiaries and CSR domains, which accurately depict the welfare effects of business in developing countries. Based on a resource dependence perspective, we conduct a quantitative content analysis on a sample of 160 Chinese listed companies and developed a two-level model of political embeddedness. The results show a complex interaction between politics and business, revealing the opposing influence of political embeddedness at different levels.

Prior research has shown that CEO narcissism can significantly impact firms’ strategic decision-making and performance. Additionally, studies on cross-boundary growth have demonstrated its positive effect on firms’ financial performance. However, little is known about the relationship between CEO narcissism and firms’ cross-boundary growth. In this study, we integrate upper echelon theory and agency theory and propose that CEO narcissism has a positive effect on a firms’ cross-boundary growth, both domestically and internationally. Furthermore, different types of corporate ownership and ownership concentration have varying effects on this relationship. Our research analyzed publicly listed manufacturing firms in China from 2005 to 2014 and found supportive evidence for our hypotheses. This study offers insight into how micro factors, such as CEO narcissism, can affect a firms’ growth strategy. Our study further sheds light on the differentiating role of corporate ownership and ownership concertation in affecting this relationship.

The need for a better understanding of radical uncertainty might have never been greater. Ill-preparedness for natural hazards, a resurgence of serious public health concerns or illusions of control over unruly technology question the extent to which we can ‘really’ shape the world around us. Human-made crises, too, test how we routinely do things. We ask how organisations and actors within them prepare for a collapse of meaning and practise radical uncertainty. Given the breadth and depth of the region’s energy (and, as some would argue, turbulences), Asia provides a fitting context for exploring accommodation to and learning from low-probability, high-impact incidents. By reviewing the business and management research on shocks in Asia, we find that there is a strong human side to dealing with the unknown. We argue that what organisations and actors within them do prior, during and after a shock event is substantially contingent upon cultural environments. To elaborate, we discuss the role of the uncertainty avoidance dimension of national culture in dealing with shock events. We further combine this dimension with the universalism-particularism dimension to discuss future research directions. Our exploration of resultant differences in preparedness, resourcefulness and learning offers a more rounded inquiry into how Asian business actors deal with shocks.

“Creating shared value” (CSV) appears on contemporary business agendas. But despite empirical evidence concerning its popularity, serious questions about the logic of CSV are raised by scholars. This paper focuses on CSV in the Asian context. Using in-depth interviews with key informants from Japan, Korea, and India, we employ a strategy-as-practice approach and develop propositions related to CSV in Asia. We identify three characteristics of Asian business practices that shape CSV in Asia: a survival sense, a strong ethical stance, and business-in-society dynamics. Finally, we introduce a preliminary framework for Asian CSV along with suggestions for future research and practice.