of a company CEO, would support what Gehani ( 1994 ) termed as the
tortoise style of management. According to Gehani, there are two
styles of leadership or management: the hare style and the tortoise
style. A hare-like leader makes quick decisions in a top-down manner;
however, implementation of such decisions may be rather slow as
these hastily made decisions, not derived from organizational reality
and frontline employees, may encounter resistance from the frontline
employees, who are the actual implementers of company decisions.
In the tortoise style, careful investigation of the company reality is
conducted with the frontline employees before a decision is made.
Decision-making in the tortoise style may be slow, but implementation
of ‘‘tortoise decisions’’ may be rather precipitous as the making of
the decision has incorporated the input, and thus the support, of the
implementers (i.e. frontline employees) of the decision.
An analytical comparison of Mao’s and Deng’s successes and fail-
ures suggests the important synthesis of a revolutionary vision with a
pragmatic and incremental methodology, a methodology based on
societal or organizational reality. The combined lessons from the
two also suggest effective matching between leadership philosophy
and leadership practice, between the knowing and the doing, between
the intention and the method, between the visionary and the prag-
matic, and between the revolutionary and the incremental. Some may
even contend that Mao and Deng represent the two weights on the
‘‘leadership scale,’’ and that the ‘‘perfect leadership pivot’’ should be
positioned between the two weights, the precise position of which to
be determined by organizational and societal conditions.
The leadership philosophies and practices of Mao Zedong and Deng
Xiaoping, and the successes and failures arising from them, represent a
rich collage of historical, social, cultural, and political forces. Further
studies will certainly shed light on the everlasting and important issue
of effective leadership from a global perspective.
Notes
1 Mao issued the ‘‘Three-Anti Campaign’’ (1951) and ‘‘Five-Anti
Campaign’’ (1952) in an effort to rid China of corruption and enemies
of the state. The Three-Anti Campaign targeted waste, inefficiency, and
corruption within governmental agencies, and the ‘‘Five-Anti Campaign’’
was against bribery, fraud, theft from the government, tax evasion, and
industrial sabotage within business.
234 Xin-an Lu and Jie Lu