Abstract
While China has experienced an unprecedented growth over the past decades, sustainability has become a major concern for policymakers and management practitioners. Consideration has been given to the convergence of mass entrepreneurship and innovation as a new economic driver and sustainability as a long-term economic objective. The focus of China’s economic development has moved from a resource-based expansion to a more entrepreneurial and socially responsible one. This is a timely and critical topic that captures the increasing concerns over sustainability and Chinese firms’ increased responsibility under the new governmental initiatives in fulfilling their social mandates from stakeholders at different levels. It is also a rich area for academic research but still under studied in the Chinese context. More indigenous management research on corporate social responsibility is required to adopt Chinese perspectives in conceptualizing CSR-related problems and further formulating more contextualized CSR theories, the emergence of a new research horizon.
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Acknowledgements
We appreciate the great support from JBE editors and staff, in particular Prof. Arno Kourula for his kind and thoughtful guidance. We thank all the authors who have submitted their papers for consideration and all the reviewers whose services are an essential part of this issue. In addition, the guest editors are thankful for the joint support of research grants awarded through DFG and NSFC (#M-0018), the Science Foundation of Ministry of Education of China (#19YJA630002), and the Research Innovation Fund from the Odette School of Business (#37022), and a grant from the Centre for Asia-Pacific Studies (#816058), University of Windsor, Canada.
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Ma, Z., Bu, M. A New Research Horizon for Mass Entrepreneurship Policy and Chinese Firms’ CSR: Introduction to the Thematic Symposium. J Bus Ethics 169, 603–607 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-020-04549-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-020-04549-7