At the Asia Academy of Management conference in Taipei in December 2008, the winner of the first APJM Best Paper Award was announced. As part of the celebrations for APJM’s successful entry into the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Springer, our publisher, graciously agreed upon my urging to sponsor an annual Best Paper Award, starting in 2008. The recipient would receive a plaque and a US$1,000 award.

The Selection Committee consisted of two Senior Editors (David Ahlstrom and Garry D. Bruton) and me. After going through 25 years of APJM publications, we decided to present the Best Paper Award to the following paper and author:

Klaus E. Meyer. 2006. Asian management research needs more self-confidence. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 23(2): 119–137.

In looking for a paper that best represented the spirit and caliber of Asia Pacific management research, the Committee found that Meyer (2006) addressed a central issue that concerns all members of the APJM and AAOM community. Specifically, the issue is how to assert our voice with sufficient confidence in the global community of management research. We believed this is the kind of paper that one can only find in APJM, and we were very impressed with the debates that this paper has already generated (e.g., Au, 2007; Meyer, 2007; Puffer & McCarthy, 2007; Ramaswamy, 2007; Wang, 2009; Yang & Terjesen, 2007).

I was the commissioning editor who recruited Klaus Meyer to publish this paper in APJM. I knew that based on his sabbatical experience in the early 2000s at National Chengchi University in Taiwan, Klaus had written an earlier draft of this paper. I was grateful to Klaus for agreeing to air his views in APJM, and to Andrew Delios (APJM’s previous Editor-in-Chief before my chief editorship) for agreeing to take on this unconventional (and somewhat controversial) paper.

Needless to say, I was very proud of this paper. I was especially pleased to present to Klaus this Award, which—speaking of a small world—took place at the first Taiwan-based AAOM conference, sponsored by National Chengchi University. Congratulations, Klaus!