theoretical and practical implications of theArt of warin a global
context.
First and foremost, we are struck by Sunzi’s non-relational
approach to leadership. Admittedly one can see a reflection of the
Confucian dyadic model of interpersonal role relationships such as
that between the sovereign and the minister and between the parent
and the child. Yet, Sunzi is mostly concerned with the whole organi-
zation: its legitimacy, its systems of operation and administration,
the collective followership, or the unity and morale of the organiza-
tional members. His unit of analysis and his target of leadership
actions are more often than not at the collective rather than the
individual or the dyadic levels. His collectivity also tends to be at the
highest collectivity level, that is, the overall organization rather than
its individual divisions and subdivisions. Such an approach speaks to
the Western literature on strategic leadership (Boal and Hooijberg,
2001 ; Finkelstein and Hambrick, 1996 ) and contributes to it by
emphasizing the creation of external and internal winning environ-
ments. The system and situational approach to leadership comple-
ments dyadic models of leader–member relationships (Graen and
Uhl-Bien, 1995 ). Leadership in the global context calls not only for
cross-cultural relationship-building but also for attention to issues of
external and internal environments, system-level adaptation, and
collective identification.
Second, Sunzi’s theory of situationalism provides interesting cri-
tiques on the person–situation debate in the organizational behavior
literature and on cross-cultural research on cognition. The person–
situation debate centers around whether it is individuals’ stable
internal characteristics or the external situation that determine
people’s behavior (Davis-Blake and Pfeffer, 1989 ; Ross and Nisbett,
1991 ; Salancik and Pfeffer, 1978 ). Dispositionalists believe that the
impact of individual characteristics is more significant whereas situa-
tionalists believe in the power of the situation. Cross-cultural com-
parative research on cognition and behavior shows that the Chinese
are more holistic in that they see more situational causal factors,
whereas Westerners are more analytic and agential as they are
more likely to see individual actors as causal agents of events (Nisbett
et al., 2001 ). Both these bodies of literature might suggest that
Chinese leaders, relative to their Western counterparts, believe more
in the power of situation than in that of individuals, so that Chinese
Strategic leadership of Sunzi in theArt of war 165