Hostname: page-component-7f64f4797f-n5rmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-11-04T11:11:39.482Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Needham Question Today

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Gordon Redding
Gordon Redding*
Affiliation:
INSEAD, Singapore
*
Corresponding author: Gordon Redding (gordon.redding@gmail.com)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The Needham Puzzle is part of a larger and very complex historical enigma. What explains the slow-down in scientific innovation in China about five hundred years ago? Also, after a recent forty-year period of growth not heavily dependent on spontaneous innovation, are such inherited influences returning to the surface as significant obstacles at a time when innovativeness is becoming more strategic?

Information

Type
Commentaries
Information
Management and Organization Review , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 25 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © The International Association for Chinese Management Research 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Augier, M., Guo, J., & Rowen, H. 2016. The Needham puzzle reconsidered: Organizations, organizing, and innovation in China. Management and Organization Review, 12 (1): 5–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bergere, M. 2007. Capitalisme et capitalistes en Chine: Des origines a nos jours, XIXe–XXIe siecle. Paris: Perrin.Google Scholar
Boisot, M., Child, J., & Redding, G. 2011. Working the system: Toward a theory of cultural and institutional competence. International Studies of Management and Organization, 41 (1): 63–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braudel, F. 1982. The wheels of commerce. (Trans. S. Reynolds). London: Collins.Google Scholar
Diaz, & Foster, G. M. (Eds.), Peasant society. Boston, MA: Little Brown.Google Scholar
Eberhard, W. 1957. The political function of astronomy and astronomers in Han China. In Fairbanks, J. K. (Ed.), Chinese thought and institutions: 33–70. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Elvin, M. 1973. The pattern of the Chinese past. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Fairbank, J. K., Reischauer, E. O., & Craig, A. M. 1965. East Asia: The modern transformation. Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Fara, P. 2009. Science: A four thousand year history. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Feldman, S. P. 2013. Trouble in the middle: American-Chinese business relations, culture, conflict, and ethics. London, Routledge.Google Scholar
Foster, G. M. 1967. Peasant society and the image of limited good. In Potter, J. M., Diaz, M. N., & Foster, G. M. (Eds.), Peasant society. Boston, MA: Little Brown.Google Scholar
Gellner, E. 1992. Reason and culture. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Heilbroner, R. L. 1985. The nature and logic of capitalism. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Jones, E. L. 1981. The European miracle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Latour, B. 2012. We have never been modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
McCloskey, D. N. 2006. The bourgeois virtues: Ethics for an age of commerce. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCloskey, D. N. 2010. Bourgeois dignity: Why economics can't explain the modern world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McGregor, J. 2012. No ancient wisdom no followers: The challenge of Chinese authoritarian capitalism. Westport, CN: Prospecta Press.Google Scholar
Mokyr, J. 2009. The enlightened economy: An economic history of Britain 1700–1850. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Mote, F. W., & Twitchett, D. 1988. The Cambridge history of China–Volume 7: The Ming Dynasty 1368–1644: Part 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Slack, P. 2015. The invention of improvement: Information and material progress in seventeenth century England. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Shambaugh, D. 2013. China goes global: The partial power. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Twitchett, D., & Mote, F. W. 1998. Introduction. In Twitchett, D. T. & Mote, F. W. (Eds.), The Cambridge history of China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Weber, M. 1930. The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. London: Unwin.Google Scholar
Welzel, C. 2013. Freedom rising. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wilhelm, R. 1982. Chinese economic psychology. New York: Garland Publishing.Google Scholar
World Bank/China State Council. 2013. China 2030: Building a modern, harmonious, and creative society. Washington, DC: World Bank.Google Scholar