With the rapid changes in the social environment and the swift development of information technology, industrial regulations are constantly being overturned, and business' past management paradigms also face challenges. In this complex environment, besides seeking advancements by themselves, managers anticipate academia to grasp new management models through strategic and organization studies to broaden or develop new managerial thinking in order to integrate new and old viewpoints and propose original, rigoroustheoretical or empirical papers that provides suggestions or ideas to the real world. At the invitation of Prof. Tsai, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Management and Business Research, we openly called for papers that explore the theme of the “A New Paradigm for Strategy & Organization Research”.

The special issue has received warm support from scholars from all fields. We have received 47 manuscripts from a half year of calling for papers that ended on December 31, 2016. The topics discussed by the manuscripts are quite diverse, such as social enterprise operation, non-market strategies, various forms of business organization, platform innovation perspectives, business model exploration, and open innovation—all of which reflects today's important social and economic issues. The manuscripts have undergone a rigorous anonymous review process with each being reviewed by at least two experts and scholars. Five manuscripts were accepted and published with an acceptance rate of 10.6% for this special issue.

Five articles are published in this special issue. The first article, “Why do Firms Publish Sustainability Reports? A Nonmarket Perspective”, explores strategies firms employ for publishing sustainability reports from a non-market perspective. The purpose of firms publishing a sustainability report is to obtain legitimacy in the environment. However, the media is a non-market entity that exerts influence on the political society, which in turn may prompt firms to publish sustainability reports to refute rumors. The results of the study confirmed that the number of times firms had to make clarifications with the media is directly proportional to the subsequent sustainability reports published, and there is a positive relationship between younger, less profitable firms and the likelihood to publish sustainability reports. This article aids companies when considering strategies for publishing reports and the interaction with the non-market environment.

The second article, “Proactive Environmental Strategy and the Performance of Exporting Firms: Mediating and Moderated Roles of R&D Intensity and Sales Ratio in a Strict Environmental Regulation Market”, explores the paradoxical relationship between firms' proactive environmental strategies and performance from the perspectives of the natural-resource-based view and institutional theory. The results of the study indicate that proactive environmental strategies exert influence over manufacturers' performance through R&D intensity. In areas with strict environmental regulation, the sales ratio has a positive effect on the indirect relationship between proactive environmental strategies and performance.

The third article, “Organizational Familism, Managerial Professionalism, and Corporate Sustainability”, explores the implications of organizational familism and managerial professionalism in corporations, as well as the influence on growth and performance, to benefit corporations who apply these two invaluable ideologies properly and achieve the goal of sustainable development. The study indicated that a corporation's organizational familism contains the connotation of organizational identity, collectivism, and long-term orientation, while managerial professionalism contains the connotation of organizational ability, specialization, and accountability. The study further investigates the influence of different ideologies on corporations' sustainable development and proposed related propositions.

The fourth article, “A Co-Linking Service Model: Investigating Homekoo's Service Processes and their Essential Characteristics Based on the Perspective of Value Co-Creation”, aims to explore the fact that in the context of Service 4.0, corporations no longer just provide standardized services, but adopt service content according to consumer needs. The article applies value co-creation theory to conduct a practical case study on Homekoo. It explores the process by which a new co-linking service model is created by linking stakeholders and adjusting both parties' resources, whereby new resources are integrated and individual and mutual problems are solved, mutually benefiting both parties. Such a model provides great reference to both theory and practice.

A competitive-cooperative relationship has always been the focus of organizational strategy research in recent years. Using the A-Team, made up of the Taiwanese bicycle industry, as an example,the fifth article, “Forming a Learning Network across Transactional Networks: The Case of the A-Team in Taiwan Bicycle Industry”, explores a case by which a learning network was formed from a mutually competitive transactional network. It was originally hypothesized that opportunistic behavior and other risks will occur in a learning organization formed by groups with a mutually competitive relationship. However, the study found that learning interactionsgrew under the competitive atmosphere, enabling various manufacturers to enhance their core competencies, achieving industrial upgrading and gaining competitive advantage. This study provides an important reference for the developmental strategy of learning organizations in the industry.

We owe special thanks for the successful publication of this special issue to the support of Editor-in-Chief Prof. Tsai, the hard work of all contributors, and the reviewers' constructive suggestions given to the authors. Only through the efforts of everyone were we able to publish high-quality work.

Special Issue Editors
Hsueh-Liang Wu, Professor of International Business, National Taiwan University
 Bou-Wen Lin, Professor of Business Administration, National Taiwan University
September, 2017