the organizational transformation. The concept of moral integrity is
multifaceted but focuses primarily on selfless motives and intentions
and on priority for social and relational obligations over concerns for
material benefits. Autocratic leadership therefore goes hand in hand
with the leader’s moral integrity in China. Democratizing Confucian
leadership, however, does not relax the moral standard expected of
the leader. Leaders who practice participative management may be
more effective if they continue to uphold a higher standard of propriety
for themselves than for their subordinates.
Dialecticism and holism
Besides humaneness, dialecticism or theyin–yangway of thinking is
probably the other most commonly shared perspective among all
the Chinese philosophies and theories.Yinandyangstand for paired
opposites of any sort: heaven and earth, good and bad, leader and
follower, up and down, with the opposites being both independent
elements yet interdependent with each other in the larger unit, which
itself is a subunit of an even larger unit. The holistic way of cognition
attends to and assigns causality to the complete field, especially to
the background and the contextual factors rather than to the object
or the actor (e.g. Morris and Peng, 1994 ; Nisbettet al., 2001 ;Peng
and Nisbett, 1999 ). While the holistic and dialectic beliefs of the
Chinese can be attributed to the complex social relations and systems
of Confucian societies (Nisbettet al., 2001 ), they were also direct
testaments to the influence of Daoism (seeChapter 3). Daoistyin–yang
thinking has left its marks on Chinese philosophies, martial arts, medi-
cine, science, literature, politics, and daily life (e.g. Black, 1992 ; Lee,
2003 ; Lee and Hu, 1993 ; Peng and Nisbett, 1999 ). Dialectic and
holistic reasoning can be said to have influenced all of the schools of
thought featured in this book, especially Sunzi’s strategic leadership and
Mao’s theory of contradiction.
Although there is a striking contrast between the holistic views of
the Chinese and the analytic views of the West, the Daoistyin–yang
reasoning is similar to the Hegelian expression that everything involves
its own negation, as in the Hegelian dialectic of thesis–antithesis–
synthesis (Fung, 1948 ). Nevertheless, relative to the Western logic of
reasoning, the Daoistyin–yangreasoning prefers an ideal state of the
middle and the harmonious coexistence of opposites. When the devel-
opment of anything brings it to one extreme, a process of reversal to
Introduction 19