December 3, 2017, Guangzhou

The Business School of Sun Yat-Sen University (SYSBS) is pleased to announce its 2017 annual international symposium on frontier management research in Guangzhou (SYSBS campus), China on December 3, 2017. This year's theme is global knowledge management in businesses who are already competing internationally and those contemplating entering the international arena. Accelerated flows in trade, investment, capital, services, information, technology, data, and brainpower (projected to represent 50% of global GDP by 2025) are the new global normal. Firms need new strategies and policies to foster knowledge management under this new normal. We intend to provide a platform to discuss this theme, bringing together senior and early career scholars in the fields of strategic management, international business, organizational behavior, human resources management, entrepreneurship, marketing, and operations, from China and beyond. English will be the functional language of the symposium.

TOPICS: We welcome full-fledged papers as well as abstracts/proposals that broadly deal with knowledge management in a competitive global setting. We encourage submissions that address motives, processes and policies involving global knowledge management. Global linkage economy nourishes global knowledge development through external communities such as strategic alliances, global freelance operators and entrepreneurs, open source communities, online innovation, crowd-sourcing, and the like. Will, and how, the firm build a potent competitive advantage in forging and improving such external communities? Complex interactive systems in global knowledge management now evolve in real time across units, organizations and locations. In what areas should the firm uniformly manage knowledge, and in what else areas should it differentiate and authorize? Cross-border knowledge sharing requires distinct yet interrelated elements such as codification, search, and access. How are such elements or processes affected by the firm's differentiated or localized strategies in different countries or markets?

We also invite submissions that reveal knowledge management by emerging market firms. A two-way flow is common nowadays between Western multinationals and emerging market firms in global knowledge sharing and diffusion, including "reverse" knowledge transfer from emerging to developed country firms. For instance, Huawei licensed out 769 patents to Apple, and licensed in 98 patents from Apple, in 2015. Google and Samsung have a broad, long-term cross-licensing deal that covers their existing patents as well as those filed over the next 10 years. This opens a stream of research questions such as reverse innovation, reverse adaptation, reverse transfer, and innovation/ imitation hybridization, as well as new forms of loosely coupled cooperation even with global competitors.

This conference is intended to attract papers or abstracts/proposals that will lead the discourse on some fresh or new perspectives on global knowledge management in a new era of global competition. Submissions should extend and deepen our understanding of some new perspectives across multiple domains - innovation, organizational behavior, human resources management, international business, strategic management, entrepreneurship, and operations management, and the like - and at multiple levels of analysis, such as country, industry, organization, and group. To this end, we invite papers or abstracts/proposals (2-3 pages) relating to the conference theme. Only original, unpublished work is sought.

The conference is featured with several world-renowned keynote speakers who are the authority in the field. It will also recognize 2-3 best paper awards based on the quality of the paper submissions.

PAPER SUBMISSION PROCEDURE: Please submit your papers or abstracts/proposals IN ENGLISH via Conference Maker. All submitters of the conference should create an account and then submit the documents at the website: https://editorialexpress.com/cgi-bin/conference/conference.cgi?action=login&db_name=2017SYSBS

IMPORTANT DATES:
Paper and abstract/proposal submission deadline: October 31, 2017
Author notification of accepted presentations: November 15, 2017
Conference registration deadline: November 20, 2017

CONFERENCE CO-CONVENORS: Yadong Luo (University of Miami) & Oded Shenkar (Ohio State University)

SYSBS CONFERENCE COMMITTEE: Guangzhong Li, Weiwen Li, Xin Qin &Li Jiang

CONFERENCE SPEAKERS: This conference will be featured with keynote speeches by internationally recognized scholars in the area, such as Prof. Oded Shenkar, Prof. Jiatao Li, Prof. Tailan Chi, Prof. Jeffrey J. Reuer, and Prof. Yadong Luo.

VENUE: International Conference Hall, MBA Building, Business School, Sun Yat-Sen University

SCHEDULE:

08:30-09:00 (30 min) Registration

09:00-09:15 (15 min) Opening Remark by SYSBS Dean, and Conference Convenors

09:15-09:45 (30 min) Keynote Speech I by Professor Oded Shenkar

09:45-10:15 (30 min) Keynote Speech II by Professor Jiatao Li

10:15-10:35 (20 min) Coffee break and group photo

10:35-11:05 (30 min) Keynote Speech III by Professor Tailan Chi

11:05-11:35 (30 min) Keynote Speech IV by Professor Jeffrey J. Reuer

11:35-12:05 (30 min) Keynote Speech V by Professor Yadong Luo

12:05-14:00 (115 min) Lunch break

14:00-15:00 (60 min) First set of parallel sessions (Venue: Classrooms in MBA Building)

15:00-15:10 (10 min) Coffee Break

15:10-16:10 (60 min) Second set of parallel sessions (Venue: Classrooms in MBA Building)

16:10-16:30 (20 min) Coffee break

16:30-17:30 (60 min) Meeting AIB fellows and keynote speakers - Round table Q&As

17:30-18:00 (30 min) Best paper award ceremony and concluding remark by Conference Convenors

REGISTRATION: Like previous symposiums hosted by SYSBS, there will be no registration fee for this year's symposium, a commitment made by the School to support the academic community and frontier research on international management. Please fill in the form: 2017 SYSBS International Management Symposium Registration Form (http://bus.sysu.edu.cn/uploads/2017%20SYSBS%20International%20Management%20Symposium%20Registration%20Form.docx) and send it to sysbs@mail.sysu.edu.cn before November 20, 2017.

FURTHER INFORMATION: Further information and updates are available at the website of Business School, Sun Yat-sen University: http://bus.sysu.edu.cn/EN/index.aspx