Chen recognized for career contribution to Chinese management research

Xiao-Ping Chen, a professor of management and the Philip M. Condit Endowed Chair in Business Administration at the University of Washington Foster School of Business, has received the 2016 Distinguished Scholarly Contribution Award from the International Association for Chinese Management Research (IACMR).

The IACMR is the premier scholarly association dedicated to the creation and dissemination of management knowledge with a focus on China.

“Professor Chen has devoted much of her career to the study of Chinese management and has made significant contributions to the field in theory, methodology and in explaining the workings of Chinese organizations,” says the IACMR in a statement. “She also has made contributions to the progress in Chinese management research and enhanced the visibility of the Chinese management research in the global research community, advanced the field, and blazed a path for future researchers.”

International trailblazer

The Chinese-born Chen is a founding member, long-term associate and past president of the IACMR.

As editor of the influential Chinese/English bilingual magazine Management Insights, she has interviewed the most prominent CEOs and founders of top Chinese companies, among them Jack Ma of Alibaba, Wang Shi of Vanke, Ma Weihua of China Merchant Bank, and Liang Xinjun of Fosun Group.

In addition to more than 50 scholarly publications in English, Chen is the author of eight Chinese books: Managing Across Cultures; Empirical Methods in Organization and Management Research; Solving Social Dilemmas: Psychological Mechanisms of Cooperation Induction; The Art of Balancing Work and Life; In Pursuit of Happiness; Simplifying Renqin; Still Seeing Mountains; and Follow Your Heart.

Cross-cultural excellence

Since joining the Foster faculty in 1999, Chen has been recognized with numerous awards for teaching, research and leadership, including the Andrew Smith Faculty Development Award, the Outstanding University of Washington Woman Award, the Dean’s International Research Award, the Charles E. Summer Outstanding Teacher Award, and the Outstanding PhD Mentor Award.

Chen is editor-in-chief of the premier journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Earlier this year she was named a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.

Her research explores cross-cultural management, entrepreneurial passion, leadership and creativity, and Chinese guanxi, the personalized networks of influence that are so central to the culture and commerce of her home nation.

Recent publications include findings that:

• entrepreneurial investors reward preparation over passion,
• motivational cultural intelligence can enhance the bottom line,
• workplace autonomy fosters passion which, in turn, fosters creativity, and
• mental fatigue doesn’t always make us more likely to act unethically.

Chen is one of only nine scholars to be honored with the Distinguished Scholarly Contribution Award in the past 10 years. She will receive the award at the 2016 IACMR conference in her hometown of Hangzhou, China.