Abstract:This article searches the papers relevant to institutional theory in management field from 42 considered important kinds of management academic journals from 2000 to 2015, and defines 141 papers as the study samples. Based on the analytical framework of Chinese indigenous management research, we use content analysis to summarize the situation of indigenous management research based on institutional theory in domestic management research field. We find that although the number of papers based on institutional theory is increasing constantly, most of the papers are in the first stage and the second stage of following west research paradigm and few of them are indigenous studies with Chinese context. And then, this study builds up a “Capability-motivation” framework to investigate the reasons for this phenomenon. Finally, we propose three development suggestions based on the “Capability-motivation” framework for Chinese indigenous management research, namely, transformation of academic value orientation of researchers, establishment of three type of research capacity and revolution of academic evaluation mechanism.