Chinese management academics’ English-medium scholarly experience: Comparative perspectives on overseas-trained and home-trained scholars

Abstract

In this paper we report a study which was aimed to find out how overseastrained Chinese management academics (CMAs) compare with their hometrained counterparts in English-medium scholarly experience. Our data were drawn from a web-based questionnaire distributed following the conclusion of the biennial conference of the International Association for Chinese Management Research (IACMR) held in 2014, the part of the conference program which featured English sessions, e-mail interviews with some questionnaire respondents, and observation at the conference site. Our findings comparatively illustrate the English-medium scholarly experience of the two cohorts of CMAs in terms of their participation in the English presentation sessions of IACMR2014, their use of English as university academics, and the relationship between English/Chinese-medium research productivity and self-perceived English abilities. Our study highlights heterogeneity among different groups of English as an Additional Language (EAL) scholars and calls for more contextualized investigation of the diverse experiences of EAL scholars across countries and disciplines in this Englishdominant academic world.