Search results

This paper aims to provide an overview of this special issue.

The guest editorial introduces the papers in this special issue, focusing on practical wisdom for management from the Chinese classical traditions.

Chinese culture increasingly will permeate international culture and move from peripheral to mainstream status. To ignore this in management education would be a grave oversight.

The issue offers insights into the value of practical wisdom from Confucianism, the origins of Chinese classical trditions and Daoism, and the various streams of thought within the classical Chinese traditions and their contemporary relevance.

This article aims at showing that the relationship between Chinese classical wisdoms and managerial practices should not be reduced to the establishment of an “art of war” applicable to management practices, but should rather be understood as an ever‐evolving work of critical reinterpretation, so as to liberate the creative and strategic potential that this tradition embodies.

It does so by critically deconstructing the question of the “relevance” of Chinese wisdom for managerial practices, by assessing the way contemporary Sinology understands and interprets the concept of “Chinese wisdom”, and by designing a strategy for applying these insights to managerial education.

It thus shows that only historical contextualization and textual studies can ground an understanding of Chinese tradition applicable to managerial education.

By doing so, it helps educators to re‐anchor managerial education into the field and methodologies of humanities studies.

It thus goes against the utilitarian and over‐simplified syntheses of Chinese thought that are currently dominant in the managerial literature about China, and proposes new ways for making the study of China a channel through which to develop in our students a sense of relativity, complexity and empathy applicable to an array of cultural contexts.

Practical wisdom from Chinese classical traditions is still an enlightening resource for contemporary management. Based in traditional Chinese perspectives, this paper aims to explore the influence of ethical leadership and social capital on customer relationship.

The authors conduct a survey of senior executives in 215 Chinese companies. Structural model testing and hierarchical regressions are used to analyze the data.

The empirical analysis affirms the authors' hypotheses that both ethical leadership and social capital have significant influence on customer relationship.

The results imply that traditional Chinese perspectives on contemporary management research have a potentially important impact.

It may also be valuable for Chinese firms to incorporate classical traditions into their daily practice: to enhance ethical leadership and obtain more social capital.

This study is a modest step towards an integration of traditional perspectives into research on the role of ethical leadership, and social capital, in maintaining good customer relationship in China.

This paper seeks to propose that practical wisdom originating within the Chinese classical traditions has been instrumental in China's ascendance to the world stage. Its purpose is to analyze biographical data across 200 Chinese business leaders in order to gauge the relative influence of two competing ideologies – Maoism and Confucianism.

This paper is based on a two‐step design process. First, modern day leadership archetypes characterizing Maoist and Confucian ideology were developed from the literature. Second, these archetypes were applied in the content analysis of biographical data on Chinese business leaders.

There was evidence of both Maoism and Confucianism in the practices of Chinese business leaders. An unintended, third cohort of leaders emerged, representative of the younger end of the biographical distribution, who appear to embrace paradox in their ideological orientation.

There were three practical implications for management and leadership development: the importance of integrating the concept of paradox into management and leadership development curricula; the provision of illustrative alternatives to western world leadership exemplars; and increased emphasis on global leadership as an emergent phenomenon with particular attention to the burgeoning internationalization of Chinese enterprise and its associated ideologies.

The current leadership literature is dominated by western world exemplars. This paper offers an alternative view; one rich with the wisdom and classical traditions of the Chinese culture.

The notion of compassion is a cornerstone in Chinese as well as western orientations for business practice. Spiritual and religious traditions, philosophical approaches and historical and present business practices outline this notion in a comparative perspective. This paper seeks to address this issue.

Interdisciplinary paper, summarizing social science, philosophical and business literature.

With its focus on compassion, business ethics in the Chinese tradition highlights a notion, which variously resonates within western traditions. Based on this, multiple lines or thought consequences for management development are derived.

In terms of management development the call for compassionate management can be held as a common denominator of different traditions. Therefore, it will be important to include this aspect in our management development, cultural management as well as international strategy courses.

In a broad interreligious and intercultural overview some basic characteristics of compassionate management can be identified.

This paper connects the notions of abstract and actual based on a reflection of the Chinese notions of xiangsheng (mutual arising) and xushi (abstract/actual, empty/full). These word pairs enable a conception of abstract and actual that shows an alternative to, and which complements, distinctions of the terms that are based in dualism and rationalism.

The author sidesteps methodological rigour as practiced in the West as the style of thought introduced here shows a picture of abstract and actual arising from mutual interdependence rather than attempting to describe and formally distinguish abstract and actual through an observer‐independent methodology.

Discussing the relationship of actual and abstract from the viewpoint of the Chinese cultural tradition, this paper shows how abstract and actual may be thought of as a mutually generating, dynamic and polar relationship. The discussion further provides a basis for understanding how perceptions of abstract and actual can be understood as choices made by observers.

This research is based on the limited personal experience of the author as a teacher of architectural design at one Taiwanese and one Chinese university.

This paper reflects on the relationship of abstract and actual from a non‐dualist viewpoint by introducing traditional Chinese ways of seeing and appreciating, and connecting this perspective to cybernetic and radical constructivist epistemologies. To show the relationship between abstract and actual as polar and mutually arising, the paper focuses particularly on making and experiencing in and through creative processes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which Chinese classical virtues act as a restraint on consumerist hedonic values and the associated priority on profit maximisation by managers.

The paper is based on a literature review and adopts a reflective approach to the topic.

The paper considers how Chinese classical virtues are related to contemporary relational or indigenous values and how a social tension is created between these values and the hedonic values now present in Chinese urban society. Implications for management and management education are reviewed in the light of this tension.

The social unrest created by the privatisation of SOEs can be mitigated by the promotion of management education sensitised to the cultural norms and expectations of the Chinese people in relation to the role and responsibilities of managers. The Junzi (gentleman‐leader) archetype and the virtues of ren‐yi‐li are offered as exemplary features of a management seeking to balance social responsibility with profitability.

The paper highlights the social turbulence created by the advent of market economics in China and the concomitant rise of consumerism and the privatisation of state‐owned enterprises.

This paper aims to inquire and argue for a renovated model of Confucian political leadership as a way of political governance rooted in a philosophy of humanity and its potential for development.

The paper is primarily critical and constructive through philosophical analysis and synthesis of ideas and insights into nature of man and political leadership in light of Confucian texts and practices.

Based on reflection and analysis, the classical model of political leadership is shown to consist of core values of virtues and visions in classical Confucianism. By conceptual reconstruction a new Confucian model is formulated in such a way in which ethics of utilities and ethics of justice and righteousness are incorporated. The author further shows how it can be realized in different functions of modernized political and economic leadership. The author finds that this move resulted in achieving an essential transformation toward a more realistic application and practice in a global world.

In so far as the new model deals with a process of normative harmonization in which it can be further enhanced by comprehensive considerations of intrinsic human values and future development of humanity as a whole, this model provides a practical method for meeting the urgent needs on different levels of leadership and management for creative and world‐oriented attitude‐building, policy‐making and strategic seminar‐course designing for graduate and executive training in contemporary business schools.

The author has innovatively constructed the new Confucian model and show how political leadership in this model has the capability and ability to persevere in seeking harmony and harmonization among traditions and nations in the global world. The author has also explained how and why morality when properly supported can be a global leading power for bringing harmony and harmonization to the world. The author has formed a new concept of political leadership force and named it the moral power in addition to but not separated in its persuasion from hard power, soft power and smart power of Joseph Nye. The author's formulation and argument for the new model with its moral power constitute a highly significant contribution to the understanding of Confucian political leadership in contemporary global contexts.