the higher one’s position is, the better one’s performance will be. Matching
the degree of nobility with the official’s contribution, this is exactly the great
Way of the king. (Learned celebrities)^40
Confucian cultural tradition
Hanfei’s theory of leadership has been presented in the previous
section. Traditional Chinese society was organized on the basis of Con-
fucian ethics rather than Legalist principles. The struggle between
Confucianism and Legalism occurred many times at the state level in
Chinese history, and it may continue to happen either at the state level
or at the firm level in the future. As a social psychologist, my major
interest is the effect of cultural tradition on the daily operation of
individuals in modern Chinese society. In order to explicate the
relation of Legalism to modern life, an analysis of Confucian cultural
tradition is presented, followed by a conceptual framework to
expound the essential nature of the struggle between Confucianism
and Legalism from the perspective of social science. Finally, social
change in Taiwan after World War II is taken as an example to
illustrate the meaning of the struggle between Confucianism and
Legalism in understanding the operation of Chinese society.
Confucianism was the traditional orthodox ideology formulated in
Ancient China. In order to understand the emergence of the antithetic
Legalism, it is necessary to study the possible influence of Confucian-
ism on Chinese social behavior. I first constructed a theoretical model
of Face and Favor on the basis of scientific realism (Hwang, 1987 ).
Using it as a framework, I analyzed the deep structure of Confucian-
ism by the method of structuralism (Hwang, 1995 ; 2001 ). According
to this analysis, the deep structure of Confucianism has three major
components: (1) rendao, (2) self-cultivation with the Dao, and
(3) benefiting the world with theDao(Hwang, 2001 ).
Rendao:ethics for ordinary people
The essential component of Confucianism is theren-yi-li(benevolence–
righteousness–propriety) ethical system, with the cardinal idea being
ren, which is generally calledrendao. This ethical system requires
everybody to interact with the other party in each dyad of the ‘‘five
cardinal relations’’^41 according to different standards of conduct.
It proposes a principle of respecting superiors as the guideline for
Leadership theory of Legalism 123