Holistic and dialectic foundations
While Confucianism prevailed mainly in the social life of traditional
Chinese societies, Daoism provided ontological and epistemological
bases for the holistic and dialectic views of the Chinese (Nisbettet al.,
2001 ). It is evident that Sunzi’s leadership theory is based on his
holistic and dialectic approach to the participants, elements, and pro-
cesses of military organization and operation. The holistic approach is
manifested primarily in two ways. The first is the comprehensiveness,
that is, the extent to which the conception and the analysis of a given
phenomenon cover all possible constituent elements. We are struck
with Sunzi’s frequent use of numbers to exhaust possible categories.
For example, there are five fundamental factors to be compared
between warring armies, three ways a sovereign can bring disaster to
his army, six fatal problems occurring in an army, five fatal faults for a
commander; there are nine varying tactics, five types of fire attack,
and five types of spy; and finally there are six types of terrain and
nine types of ground. Besides comprehensiveness, holism stresses the
interrelationship of constituent elements within and across systems.
For instance, terrain is one of the five fundamental factors and terrain
itself consists of six types and the effect of terrain on the outcome of a
battle must be assessed by combining knowledge of one’s own army
with that of one’s enemy’s army. The holistic view therefore seeks to
attend to all relevant elements of a phenomenon and its surrounding
situation. Applying the holistic view to leadership, it places the leader
in a field of social actions that consists of other actors and forces,
which may enable and constrain the leader simultaneously, and it is up
to the leader to take strategic actions which maximize and leverage
enablers but minimize the effect of constraints.
Chinese dialecticism is intricately related to holism because of the
Daoist systemic view of the universe: theDaois the Way which gives
birth to the dual,yinandyang.Yinandyang, in turn, produce the trio
of heaven, earth, and humanity, which in turn creates water, fire,
metal, wood, and soil, which in turn generate myriad things. Dualism
is therefore a fundamental concept of dialecticism. The dichotomous
confrontational nature of war lends itself readily to the use of the
dualist framework and Sunzi uses it abundantly. The theme of self
versus enemy, especially the importance of knowing self and knowing
the enemy, runs through the whole book. The two warring sides
156 Hai-fa Sun, Chao-chuan Chen, and Shi-he Zhang