Leadership and Management in China: Philosophies, Theories, and Practices

(Jacob Rumans) #1

bureaucratic organization obsolete and replaced it with overlapping
team organization (Orton and Dhillon, 2006 ; Seers, 2004 ).
As discussed inChapter 5, Sunzi’sArt of war, a handbook for leaders
in competition, counsels leaders to think twice before they act. Strategy
is all-important and the battle not fought and the prize achieved is
the best. Know your enemy better than you know yourself and use his
strengths against him. These thoughts have been commercialized in
the West in the usual piecemeal fashion.
InChapter 6, Farh and his colleagues present a progress report
on their 2000 proposed model of paternalistic leadership (PL) in
overseas Chinese family businesses. They outline the historical back-
ground, empirical research, and revised model of PL. Their PL model
proposes three independent leadership facets: moral leadership,
authoritarian leadership, and benevolent leadership. These three
facets are used to define eight leadership types a`la Fiedler ( 1967 )
by dichotomizing each and crossing them as high morality, high
authority, and high benevolence (HM HA HB). Finally, a revised
contingency model is proposed involving the eight cells. This is an
average leadership style (ALS) model of leader behavior in which
authoritarian leadership leads to compliance by subordinates, benevo-
lent leadership to obligation, and moral leadership leads to respect
and identification. As expected, a set of high ratings on all three facets
is the best and a set of low ratings on all facets is the worst, but
different combinations of high and low predict different responses by
followers.
Modifying Farh and Cheng ( 2000 ) to include modern corporate
and true cultural bonding (TCB) systems results in Table 9.2.As
shown in this table, the three facets produce different results for the
three systems. The moral leadership facet yields family values, health
of corporation, and health of Sino-Western ventures. In terms of
authority leadership, the prescriptions are clear lines of authority
and trust according to family ties, bureaucratic structures supported
by the legal system, and network organization with sharing network
leadership at all levels and functions. Finally, servant-leader facet
prescriptions are treating all employees as extended family, individual
consideration of employee needs by bureau, and bi-cultural servant
leader of employees. I prefer these three leadership facets, because
they acknowledge the human needs for moral leadership, authority
leadership, and servant leadership. Chinese and American people


280 George Bear Graen

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