Remembering James March

On September 27, 2018, Professor James G. March, a giant in our field, passed away at the age of 90 (1928–2018), just one month after his wife and high school sweetheart, Jayne, passed away. March's impact on the field of organization studies and beyond is profound and long-lasting. The advancement of the field is truly indebted to March's brilliance and dedication to the search of truth as a great scholar. March wrote the inaugural article for Management and Organization Review (MOR) (2005), ‘Parochialism in the Evolution of a Research Community: The Case of Organization Studies’. This article not only provided a critical foundation underlying the editorial structure and philosophy of MOR but also argued eloquently for the salience of indigenous Chinese management studies as a necessary condition for building both contextualized and universal knowledge.
To remember, celebrate, and advance March's rich ideas on organizations, MOR and the IACMR held, in June 17–18, 2019, a special paper development workshop at the University of Nottingham Ningbo, China for a special issue of MOR. Following the workshop, invitations to submit revised manuscripts based on the feedback provided at the workshop were sent out for the final submissions before the due date of October 30, 2019. In total, we received eleven well-developed submissions, out of which five articles were accepted for publication in this special issue. Next, we will present synopses of the five articles, and then discuss critical implications for future research.