Citation
Foo, C.T. (2015), "Integrating Fan Li and Napoléon: Chinese and French", Chinese Management Studies, Vol. 9 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/CMS-04-2015-0079
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Integrating Fan Li and Napoléon: Chinese and French
Article Type: Editorial From: Chinese Management Studies, Volume 9, Issue 2
Personally, this is a very special issue for me. From here is where I hope Chinese Management Studies will evolve a distinct identity. Here, in an academic joint-venture (JV), Professor Lin Song from Beijing, the capital’s Central University of Economics and Finance, and Emeritus Professor Philippe Lasserre of INSEAD have collaborated to produce a splendid volume centered on entrepreneurship.
Time passes a wee bit too quickly.
It seems like only yesterday that I worked alongside Professor Lasserre when speaking at INSEAD’s workshops on China. During the 1990s, I was regularly invited to Fontainebleau in France. On one memorable occasion (the euro-Asia Conference: 1997, February), I developed a theory of coalescence in East – West joint-venturing. Ideally we should see ideas from both East and West coalescing into one in the future. After all, to my mind, there should only be one race in the world: the human race. As a joint East – West research effort, this issue of CMS is a step forward along that idealistic trail (Plate 1).
Plate 1. Phillippe Lasserre (left) and Foo Check Teck (right)
Among the Western Europeans (viz., the British, Germans, Italians, Spanish, Portuguese and Scandinavians), I daresay that the French are foremost in appreciating what is Chinese. Both the Chinese and the French are equally familiar with vastness, with empires. Early Qing emperors expanded the Chinese empire. Similarly, the French led by Napoléon Bonaparte died for his ideal of a European empire. Far less obvious is how the French bequeathed to exquisitely green Chinese ceramics a name that many have thought was English: celadon (Figure 1).
Figure 1. French, a romance titled L’Astrée and a collection of celadon in the Guimet Museum (in French: Musée national des arts asiatiques)
You should look up the etymological roots of that word “celadon” (perhaps at http://www.etymology.com). It is the name of a leading character, a shepherd, from the seventeenth-century novel (romance) L’Astrée (1627) (Figure 1) by Honoré d’Urfé. Celadon the shepherd wore a ribbon that was green. In my research on the romance, I am astounded by its super-colossal size: a romance (novel) in 5,399 pages! Structurally, it boasts 6 parts, 40 stories and 60 books.
Yet despite its tonnage, it was widely popular in its day. This brings to my mind a parallel with the Chinese classical novels: Romance of Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey West and Dream of the Red Chamber. Already centuries ago, the Chinese and French shared a common pastime: reading lengthy novels and perhaps they even had a common green aesthetic. Maybe someone should plan for a comprehensive study of comparative JVs in China.
It could become a portal to enable a massive, continuously updated database of EC – Chinese JVs. There should be as many subdivisions of the core work as there are countries in Western Europe for British, French, German, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Belgian JVs and those of all the other nationalities. For the British, should I suggest, having lived there, contrasting Chinese JVs separately with their English, Scots, Irish and Welsh partners? Yes, CMS should feature insightful, culturally rich studies. Ideally, it should be a Chinese – European joint research effort.
Perhaps, professors researching Chinese management would appreciate the value of looking up history as illustrated here, by my example of celadon. Here in this very issue, I have been working through a paper that emphasizes the business philosophy of Fan Li (范蠡) (Figure 2; see Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Astr%C3%A9e). A famous, Spring and Autumn period strategist as advisor to King Guo Jian, he retired from politics to do business. He even renamed himself Tao Zhu Gong (陶朱公) for the sake of his enterprise. You may read Fan Li’s insights in this issue in the article entitled: The Effect of Entrepreneurial Context on the Performance of New Ventures.
Figure 2. Fan Li
Very few entrepreneurial professors in the West know of Fan Li, yet in China, he is equally as well-known for his strategic brilliance as Sun Tzu (Sun Zi, pinyin). Indeed, his golden prescriptions (rules and safeguards) for doing business might well underpin an executive MBA nowadays. What he emphasized more than 2,500 years ago, are deeply rooted, timeless gems of business wisdom. Unlike Sun Tzu, Fan Li actually became a super-rich businessman by applying his business philosophy and strategic thinking. For example, he prescribed the need for CEOs to be able to analyze opportunities out in the marketplace and correlatively to recognize threats: a precursor of the typical MBA concept of SWOT analysis. Then from his insights into the dynamics of economics, Fan Li instructed firms to act in accordance with cyclical patterns in business.
Why is Napoléon Bonaparte in the title above?
He had a way of putting in simple words, deep truths about management. For example, a quote from the French Emperor on motivation is illustrative: “A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon”. Interestingly, the ribbon of the first French campaign award, the Saint Helena Medal, is green (Figure 3). Then there is Napoléon’s: “the secret of war lies in communication”. This quote is so relevant to our times where instantaneity rules and apps bring your customers wandering around in-situ to your doorstep!
Figure 3. Saint Helena medal
My personal favorite of Napoléon’ quotes is, “You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you teach him all your art of war”. That is exactly why Hannibal Barca lost to the Romans: he taught them his art of war. This is equally relevant for the intensely competitive game of football: vary your style of play otherwise your competitor will learn how to beat you. Perhaps that is why Brazil lost 7-1 to Germany in the 2014 World Cup final. Luiz Felipe Scolari, the Brazilian coach, being an admirer of Sun Tzu, ought to have grasped The Art of War’s major tenet better: never repeat your strategy! Similarly, entrepreneurs need to vary and continuously adapt their strategies.
Sun Tzu is already widely popular in the West. Perhaps there is scope for integrating Napoléon Bonaparte with Fan Li for management studies, and perhaps it could be done via a workshop led by Professor Phillippe Lasserre and Professor Lin Song (Plate 2, left). Thinking ahead, should we have a Workshop Editor to facilitate East – West-type meetings of minds: What might be better than a focused series of workshops to facilitate a coalescence of Chinese and Western ideas for managing globally?
Plate 2. Lin Song (left) and Foo Check Teck (right)
Check Teck Foo, Founding Editor-in-Chief