MOR and Me: Reflecting on the Wisdom (and the Harm?) in Harmony

The refined person seeks harmony but not sameness; the petty person seeks sameness but does not harmonize.–Confucius, Analects 13.23 Management and Organization Review (MOR) was launched in 2005 as the journal of the International Association for Chinese Management Research with the mission to ‘promote scholarly studies of organization and management of firms in the Chinese context’. This was an ambiguous message, with at least two distinct meanings. One goal was facilitating research impact by scholars in greater China, who had been largely excluded by the leading management journals. For example, Chinese researchers were often asked to justify using a sample from Shanghai or Hong Kong in ways that their Western counterparts were not asked to justify a sample from London or Chicago. Another goal was to further the management field's understanding of Chinese contexts. The journal sought to open management research to Chinese scholars and open China as a topic for management research.