The author argues and explains that the indigenous Eastern epistemological system of Yin-Yang balancing should be taken as a novel system or frame of thinking, which is deeply rooted in the indigenous Eastern culture traditions, but it has significant global implications, especially in the domain of paradox management. The purpose and contributions of this article are twofold: (1) to provide a detailed elaboration of the indigenous Eastern epistemological system of Yin-Yang balancing in contrast to the Western logic systems; and (2) to provide a roadmap for applying the system of Yin-Yang balancing to complex issues in the area of management, in general, and paradoxical issues, in particular.

Despite its increasing importance to the research and practice of organizational management, there is no consensus on how to describe, explain and prescribe network as an organizational form. Based upon the evidence of the Chinese network form within its institutional and cultural contexts, this paper seeks to make three contributions. First, it describes network as a unique form, different from other organizational forms and thus needing a new perspective. Second, it explains network form from a holistic, dynamic and paradoxical perspective by synthesizing economic, social and psychological rationalities. Third, it prescribes the ideal-typical network form by offering a geocentric framework of organizational form which is neither culture-blind (under-embedded) nor culture-bounded (over-embedded).

Integrating the typologies of trust dimensions and trust ideal-types with the new typologies of trust forms and trust bases, I propose a geocentric framework of trust in general and of organizational trust in particular. The typology of trust forms is built on the dimension of spatial strength to address the content of trust building from weak trust to strong trust and on the dimension of temporal stage to address the process of trust building from initial trust to mature trust. The typology of trust bases is built on the dimension of trust sources to address the bases of trust building from depersonalized sources to personalized sources and on the dimension of trust domains to address the bases of trust building from dyad domains to network domains. Together with its three pillars (trust-building mechanisms, leadership and trust-as-choice), the central theme of trust building connects all four trust typologies toward a geocentric framework that integrates and transcends the cultural values of the East and the West. This framework bears a special implication for theorizing about transaction cost and transaction value as a duality for interorganizational alliance.

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What is the unique nature of social capital that differentiates itself from other forms of capital? How should we conceptualize and operationalize social capital? What are the major drivers and outcomes of social capital? To address the three questions, I apply the duality lens—the perspective of regarding each entity as a paradox consisting of two contrasting yet interdependent components—to social capital for an integrative model of informal exchange. The focus of this paper is on the duality relationship between the content variables (social tie, social capital, social behavior along two basic dimensions: trust for tie strength and option for network structure) and the process variables (antecedent, content, process, and consequence) toward a geocentric framework of formal–informal exchange. I intend to make two contributions. First, the conceptualization and operationalization of social capital is developed from the duality lens of formal–informal exchange so as to identify the unique nature of social capital as an informal entity. Second, a holistic, dynamic, and dialectic model of social capital is provided to explore the causal links between various elements related to social capital. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007Social capital, Trust, Option, Tie strength, Network structure, Informal exchange,

Adopting a diversity‐in‐unity perspective that identifies all shared dimensions and typical delineations, both as structure‐similar yet content‐diverse configurations, this paper proposes an interdisciplinary conceptualization of trust with primary trust ideal‐types. This conceptualization contains three components: (i) a typology of four trust dimensions related to trust conditions and trust functions; (ii) a typology of four trust delineations derived from the four trust dimensions; and (iii) a typology of four trust ideal‐types built upon the first two typologies. These typologies jointly serve as a salient platform to unify the fragmented trust literature.

We attempt to provide a definition and a typology of indigenous research on Chinese management as well as outline the general methodological approaches for this type of research. We also present an integrative summary of the four articles included in this special issue and show how they illustrate our definition and typology of indigenous research on Chinese management, as well as the various methodological approaches we advocate. Further, we introduce a commentary on the four articles from the perspective of engaged scholarship, and also three additional articles included in this issue. Finally, we conclude with our suggestions for future indigenous research.