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This paper sets out to explain the poor nature of industrial relations in Meiji Japan (1868-1911), especially the puzzling lack of Neo-Confucianist values.

This paper combines two approaches. First, it draws on and scrutinizes the major literature. Second, it uses a case approach.

First, we find that a widely accepted assumption used in many management (and other) studies on Japan, namely, that Neo-Confucianism was institutionalized in Tokugawa Japan (1603-1867), is distorted. Second, we find that the poor nature of labor relations in Meiji Japan can be explained by and is the product of a multitude of factors, both indigenous and imported from abroad.

First, this paper provides a novel explanation for the poor nature of labor relations in Meiji Japan. Second, this paper corrects a widely held assumption on Japan that is frequently used in management studies.

Explores Chinese culture and the problems foreign firms and governments encounter when dealing with China. Emphasizes Confucianism’s dominant cultural tradition in China and attempts to explain it to improve foreign firms’ chances of success. Describes Confucianism as a way of living, incorporating the principles of humanism and the notion of filial piety. Mentions the five cardinal relations, harmony and Neo‐Confucianism’s “Principle of universal truth, order, law, production and reproduction”. Assesses the implications of social inequality, social ritual, familism, guan xi (connections), face, and sun yung (mutual trust) for foreign firms. Concludes that foreign firms wishing to do business with China need to understand the labyrinth of Confucianism.

The purpose of this study is to identify and explore what leadership characteristics constitute humanistic leadership in the South Korean context. Moreover, this study examines how these leadership characteristics are connected to Korean culture.

Based on the information gathered from semi-structured interviews and other sources, including books, case study articles and news articles, this study captures a more comprehensive perspective of Mr. Kook-Hyun Moon, the former CEO of Yuhan–Kimberly.

The key characteristics of Mr. Moon's humanistic leadership that are identified in this study are: respect for all mankind, benevolence (seeking the greater good), sincerity (building trusting relationships with stakeholders) and continuous learning and innovation (developing self and others). These key characteristics set Mr. Moon apart from other leaders and are connected to the fundamental values and philosophies of Korean culture.

This study contributes to the current leadership literature by identifying and exploring Mr. Moon's humanistic leadership characteristics that enable him to gain respect and contribute to communities and society in the South Korean context. This study also finds that the humanistic leadership characteristics of Mr. Moon reflect three major attributes of Korean culture: the ideology of the Dangun mythology, the principle of Neo-Confucianism in Korea and jeong – an indigenous cultural concept in Korea (these attributes will be discussed in detail in the South Korean values and philosophies section). Such reflection suggests that investigating how humanistic leadership characteristics are connected to local cultural roots is important to enhance the understanding of humanistic leadership.

During the 1920s and 1930s in the colonial city of Seoul, a group of women called the New Women and the Modern Girls expressed their modern identities by wearing different clothing, hairstyles and make-up; visiting cafés; viewing Western movies; and consuming other foreign merchandise. While these women were admired by many women as being pioneers of modernity, they were severely criticized by others under the pretext that they indulged their vanity without considering the economy of their families and their colonized nation. These criticisms continue in twenty-first century Korea. Based on the striking similarity between the two eras, an understanding of the consumption and the criticisms of the Modern Girls could provide a historical context for understanding women's experiences in the consumer culture of twenty-first century Korea. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

As secondary sources, literature published in both English and Korean was included. Primary data were obtained from articles in Korean newspapers, magazines and print advertisements from the 1920s and 1930s.

The New Women and Modern Girls expressed their modern identities by consuming various fashion goods, including Western-style clothes, make-up and various accessories, adopting Western hairstyles and frequenting modern cafés, theaters and department stores. However, their behaviors escaped the boundaries of the “wise mother, good wife” ideology, and they were severely criticized by those adhering to the neo-Confucianism and Korean nationalist ideology that was deeply rooted in Korean society. Thus, the reputations of the Modern Girls were tainted and the individuals were stigmatized.

This research illuminates the negative aspects of self-expressive consumption, showing how individualistic, identity-driven consumption can be stigmatized in the collectivistic culture of Korea that is rooted in neo-Confucian nationalism.

From the sixteenth to eighteenth century, China underwent a commercial revolution similar to the one in contemporaneous Europe. The rise of market did foster the rise of a nascent bourgeois and the concomitant rise of a liberal, populist version of Confucianism, which advocated a more decentralized and less authoritarian political system in the last few decades of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). But after the collapse of the Ming Empire and the establishment of the Qing Empire (1644–1911) by the Manchu conquerors, the new rulers designated the late-Ming liberal ideologies as heretics, and they resurrected the most conservative form of Confucianism as the political orthodoxy. Under the principle of filial piety given by this orthodoxy, the whole empire was imagined as a fictitious family with the emperor as the grand patriarch and the civil bureaucrats and subjects as children or grandchildren. Under the highly centralized administrative and communicative apparatus of the Qing state, this ideology of the fictitious patrimonial state penetrated into the lowest level of the society. The subsequent paternalist, authoritarian, and moralizing politics of the Qing state contributed to China’s nontransition to capitalism despite its advanced market economy, and helped explain the peculiar form and trajectory of China’s popular contention in the eighteenth century. I also argue that this tradition of fictitious patrimonial politics continued to shape the state-making processes in twentieth-century China and beyond.

The purpose of this paper is to integrate cultural value management into the high level of human resource management to propose a new direction of strategic human resource management (SHRM) development through management by the values (MBV) concept.

The paper proposes an integrative MBV SHRM model for Chinese management, incorporating Neo‐Confucian values for responsible, pragmatic and humanistic management, as well as two dynamic SHRM elements: leadership and learning. First SHRM in China is described; then the MBV concept and model are introduced. At that point, the evolution of cultural studies and Chinese Neo‐Confucianism is introduced before proposing an integrative MBV SHRM model for Chinese management.

Instead of the economic approach most often adopted by SHRM researchers, a harmonious managerial approach is argued for, based on the MBV triaxial model: ethical, economic, and emotional values, to orient the operations of the organisation.

This integration of three angles in values, management, and performance is novel in the field of SHRM. It not only contributes to the further development of the field, but also implies healthier and more sustainable practices in management, both in China and in the rest of the world.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse international political economy (IPE) thought in Korea during its pre-modern and colonial eras.

It divides these eras into three periods. The first period is the eighteenth century, in which Silhak arose. The second is the mid- and late nineteenth century, a time characterised by conflicts between Wijeong-cheoksa and Gaehwa thoughts. The final period is that of colonial Korea under imperial Japan, and during this time economic nationalist movements were pursued while Marxist theories were also introduced to the country.

This research shows that IPE thoughts analogous to Western economic liberalism and economic nationalism did emerge endogenously in Korea when its environment was similar to those in which these Western thoughts arose, although in ways that reflected Korea’s peculiar situations of the times. This study also demonstrates that the “economic” thoughts of the Koreans in these periods were shaped largely by their political thoughts.

This research contributes to the building of a more “globalised” intellectual history of classical IPE thought.

This chapter examines the similarities and differences between the concepts of transformational leadership as developed within North America and the Confucian idea of transformation. It argues that Confucian tradition encompasses the essential elements embedded in the concept of transformational leadership. The former differentiates from the latter in its deeper degree of transformation, emphasis on morality and culture, and its focus on transformation from the inside outwards. The two greatest educators in Chinese history, Confucius and Cai Yuanpei, are evaluated in terms of their transformational leadership qualities in the Western sense. By looking at Confucius and Cai Yuanpei as successful transformational leaders, the chapter identifies four important factors from Chinese cases that may contribute to the success of this type of leadership. Implications of this comparison are discussed as they may inform the knowledge, research and practices of transformational leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the ideological foundation of open innovation strategies and the open business model, which are appearing as new industrial paradigms based on information technology (IT).

First, this paper examined the ideological foundation of Deleuze, Whitehead, and Popper. Next, Taoism was scrutinized to discover concrete bases for open innovation.

Here, it was found that Taoism completely coincides with the logical basis of open innovation. The theory “the supreme good is like water” of Taoism means to vacate oneself and fill the space with others to create paradoxes, thereby filling oneself with a more creative method.

Taoism provides a way to present paradoxes through the idea of vacating and opening to reach a creative stage of leaving nature as it is.