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Balanced leadership is attracting increasing attention from academia and practitioners. In this rapidly changing world, maintaining balance while moving ahead is becoming a challenge for organizational leaders concerned with effective leadership. The traditional concept of balancing, theoretically, has been frequently re‐visited by researchers, while new concepts of balancing are being developed by researchers and practitioners, in order to effectively guide the practice in the real institutional settings. The purpose of this paper is to examine the classic Chinese perspectives from Wu Xing, I Ching and Tao Te Ching. Some western perspectives (e.g. Waters and Leithwood) on balanced leadership are also examined, to reach a hybrid model in an effort to decipher the meanings of balancing, and to address their applicability in modern organizational lives.

This paper provides analyses of the perspectives in the Chinese classics Wu Xing, I Ching and Tao Te Ching, and presents insights on the principles for organizational leaders to apply in dealing with changes.

There is a philosophical base for balanced leadership. It is becoming imperative for leaders to practice balanced leadership in the following aspects of organizational lives: Leaders' steady dispositions; Harmonious human relations; Categorization of the magnitudes of change for improvement; and a hybrid model integrating both eastern and western concepts of balanced leadership.

This paper focuses on one domain of leadership – balancing in the interactions between the leaders and their people. It is relevant for those who have interest in, and are concerned for, the vertical, lateral relations, organizational development and improvement.

This paper reflects the researchers' deep insight into the Chinese classics, their expertise, and their empirical practices in organizational leadership. The paper will help those with similar interests in this area to better understand the implications of the Chinese perspectives.

The concept of “servant leadership” becomes increasingly relevant in organizations while the “authoritative leadership” style continues to be in place as one of the effective styles. The purpose of this paper is to explore which leadership style is perceived a preferred one in the public sector in Singapore. Empirical data come from a survey with school leaders in several school clusters in Singapore, with instruments designed by the researchers.

The paper is written up on the data drawn from the authors' research project. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis approaches were applied to analyzing the preference between “Servant leadership” and “Authoritative leadership” styles.

It was found in the study that servant leadership is more acceptable than authoritative leadership and that servant leadership is more effective because it reflects a better use of leaders' power. The findings are displayed in this paper to demonstrate comparisons in the acceptability of servant and authoritative styles.

The paper demonstrates the perceptions of organizational members towards the leadership styles with positive impact on their professional life. Drawing on the insights from the analyses, the paper provides organizational leaders with insights on the relevance and effectiveness of their leadership styles.

The paper is original and is the product of empirical research, with instruments designed by the researchers.

Badaracco of Harvard Business School suggests a “nudge‐test‐escalate” (NTE) approach in influencing and implementing change. In The Book of Changes (I‐Ching), the most archaic and authoritative works of the Chinese classics, it adopts a “test‐accelerate‐forge” (TAF) approach instead. The purpose of this paper is to examine the similarities and differences between these two models, and addresses the effectiveness of influential leadership when the models are used in the western and eastern settings, respectively. It also looks at the fundamental concepts that underlie the models and discusses the characteristics and virtues that an influential leader must possess in order to make change happen.

The paper reviews the Harvard model by Badaracco and extracts taken from I‐Ching. It makes comparisons between the Chinese and Western perspectives.

The paper provides a discussion on the NTE and the TAF three‐step approaches in their leadership style to understand how western and Chinese leaders exert their power of influence. This paper argues that although each adopts a three‐step approach in its leadership style, the differences lie in the philosophies that are used to guide the leader in influencing others. From the Western perspective, there are three pertinent virtues of “restraint, modesty, and tenacity” in pushing through change, while the Chinese adopt the three virtues of “prudence, balance, and authority” as their essential guide in leadership and by exercising self‐restraint and patience, resonance, and balancing.

The paper presents the pertinence and applicability of the Harvard model and the Chinese model since there is an increase of frequency of cross‐cultural communication in government, business, education, and other organisations. One of the trends in research on leadership is on leaders' quality in relation to organisational ethics and competencies of effective communication.

This paper presents a high level of comparative analyses between two influential models. It points out the need for leaders in both the western and Asian organisations to be aware of the two models so as to enhance their competencies and capacities in maximising change. This paper argues that Harvard model is well designed and highly applicable; and that the Chinese classics on influential leaders are still relevant in today's contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate the extant literature on ethics of employment relations in China. Toward that goal, a meta‐analytic approach is employed to conclude the business ethical issues from different results and lay foundation for further research by deeply understanding ethics of employment relation in China.

A systematic literature review procedure is developed to identify all relevant articles and meta‐analytic procedures are used to identify issues related to ethics of employment relations in China.

The results suggest there are not many researches on business ethics, especially ethics of employment relations in China. The authors examine the researches about business ethics in research methodology, research perspective, ethical dimensions of employment relations and relationship between variables and find some disadvantages. The authors feel ethics of employment relations in China should cause more concern, in both the theoretical and practical areas.

The paper explores academics’ perceptions towards ethical issues related to employment relations and shows the importance of ethics during the development of Chinese companies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the cause‐effect chain between public services motivation (PSM) and consequences variables, which include organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) and job satisfaction (JS) of employees in the public sector of Guangzhou. Another purpose of the paper is to discuss the structure of behavior under the Chinese public sector's traditional culture, from the perspective of integration of three different mechanisms of behavior (ration, norm and affective).

The paper modified the PSM questionnaire, based on Perry's PSM scale, according to Chinese cultural customs. The data of public service motivation, job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior were collected by randomly sampling from the employees in the public sector of Guangzhou. Results were obtained through structural equation modelling for the examination of multiple relationships between PSM and its dimensions, and the consequences; and ANOVA for testing the difference between groups.

It was found that there are significant differences between groups in the PSM level and correlations exist between PSM, and JS, OCB.

This paper contributes to the literature regarding PSM by examining the relationship between the dimensions of PSM and the consequence variables of OCB and JS against a Chinese cultural background. The paper presents the findings as a model to show the dynamics in these relationships. The integration of three different mechanisms of behavior is novel in the field of human resource management (HRM). The paper not only contributes to the further development of the field, but also implies healthier and more sustainable practices in public HRM.

Deals with one aspect of cultural leadership – leadership attributes. Based on recent research on cultural aspects in educational leadership in Singapore, attempts to identify essential attributes possessed by school principals that are found to be an indispensible yardstick for measuring leadership effectiveness. The leader, e.g. a school principal, has the responsibility to design and maintain a school culture as a framework with its unique environment and atmosphere in which teachers and administrators work. Attempts to search for some answers to: what are the personal characteristics that one possesses to be a school leader?; what leadership attributes are essential for leadership effectiveness?; how do these characteristics and attributes help a leader build up the strengths of the school culture? Presents the results of interviews and discussions with around 200 heads of departments of schools in Singapore.

The purpose of this paper is to examine Chinese traditionality as a predictor of applicants' procedural fairness perceptions in selection, and both its direct and indirect relationship with applicants' recommending behavior, job performance and turnover intention three to four months post hire. Traditionality, as a moderator of perceptions‐outcomes relationships, is also tested.

Survey data of 218 supervisor‐subordinate dyads were collected from Mainland Chinese organizations. Data were gathered in two waves, with demographic and traditionality measures taken at time 1, and supervisory ratings of performance, recommending behavior and intention to turnover taken at time 2.

One component of traditionality alone (Respect for Authority) positively predicted applicants' procedural fairness perceptions. These perceptions, in turn, predicted recommending behavior (+), job performance (+) and turnover intentions (−). There were also direct relationships between Respect for Authority and both job performance (+) and turnover intention (−). The data failed to support the moderating effect of Chinese traditionality on the relationships between procedural fairness perceptions and outcome variables.

Despite the methodological strengths of this study, the study is cross‐sectional in nature which weakens causal inferences regarding the relationships in the theoretical model. Moreover, the paper does not investigate empirically the concrete mechanisms from Chinese traditionality to fairness perceptions and from fairness perceptions to outcome variables, since its foci are the predicting and moderating roles of Chinese traditionality.

The paper's findings underscore the importance of Respect for Authority as the key and only component of Chinese traditionality that predicts procedural justice perceptions and worker outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to fill the gap in the existing literature regarding relationships between occupational commitment and labor relations in the Chinese context, particularly in Chinese firm settings.

Based on well‐defined concepts and instruments, the data were collected from 402 human resources (HR) workers in 35 firms, mainly located in Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and Hunan Province, China.

The occupational commitment for HR workers in Chinese firms can be divided in four dimensions: affective commitment, normative commitment, accumulated costs and limited alternatives. There are positive interrelations between the four dimensions of occupational commitment and labor relations. Also, there is a significant correlation among the three‐way interactive terms with labor relations.

Although the results of this paper suggest that the four‐dimensional model of occupational commitment can be employed to account the variation of labor relations in China, there is a need to use other samples and additional noted research design variables, e.g. organizational commitment and intent to leave one's job, to explore labor relations more comprehensively and deeply.

Theoretically, the paper serves as a pioneer research for indigenizing the concept of occupational commitment in the Chinese context, and fills the gap in the existing literature of the subjects being studied. Practically, the results and recommendations in the paper will be useful to those involved in the field of HR management in firms in China.