followers choose to share network leadership after it is offered.
Leaders who refuse to share network leadership choose to be seen as
authoritarian and ‘‘rock hard.’’ In this information age, the merging of
admired leadership values, such as those of being a wateristic leader
employing modern and scientific production and service technology
through day-to-day struggles betweenyinandyang, continues. For the
purposes of the American manager in China theyinsare Chinese
values and theyangsare American values. Until we accept that the
struggles must be acknowledged, understood, and joined, little pro-
gress can be expected in the mission of incorporating the two more less
equally within a single organization that respects both nations and
leads to the sharing of network leadership between Chinese and
Americans. Let us proceed with this Sino-American mission.
In Graen, Hui, and Gu’s ( 2005 ) five-year study of college-degree
Chinese managers in Sino-Western companies in the Shanghai–
Pudung economic zone, several particularyinandyangconflicts were
identified by our Chinese managers between their Chinese way and
the modern Western bureaucratic organization way. These are shown
inTable 9.4. As shown, the US way was seen by our Chinese man-
agers as giving unfair advantages to the Western managers at the
expense of the Chinese managers. These conflicts must be struggled
with by teams of both American and Chinese managers across the
corporation. The mission of these teams should be to invent new
procedures that will be fair to those who grew up in either China or
the West.
Although our mission to find a ChineseDaofor corporations
to follow in Sino-Western ventures in China has only begun, it has
identified the above fundamentalyinandyangstruggles that must
be addressed as continuing tensions that define leadership. Our hope
is that this in-depth struggle to integrate the East and West, without
either dominating, will yield a functional marriage, with the strengths
of one complementing those of the other and sharing network
leadership to prosper and live long. Finally, true cross-national man-
agers must remember their credo: People who were socialized
in another country are not better or worse than you — only the
same or different,and you should understand the difference before
judging.
Linking Chinese leadership theory and practice to the world 293