The traditional Chinese philosophies in inter-cultural leadership

Abstract

Purpose As the global presence of Chinese firms grows, increasing numbers of Chinese managers are working abroad as expatriates. However, little attention has been paid to such Chinese expatriate managers and their leadership challenges in an inter-cultural context, especially across a large cultural distance. To fill the gap in the literature concerning the leadership challenges for expatriate managers in an inter-cultural context, the purpose of this paper is to elucidate the leadership styles of Chinese expatriate managers from the perspectives of three traditional Chinese philosophies (i.e. Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism) in the inter-cultural context of the Netherlands. Design/methodology/approach The data for this qualitative study were collected via semi-structured, open-ended, narrative interviews with 30 Chinese expatriate managers in the Netherlands. Findings The results clearly show that the leadership style of Chinese expatriate managers is deeply rooted in the three traditional Chinese philosophies of Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism, even in an inter-cultural context. Specifically, the study reveals two salient aspects of how Chinese expatriate managers frame and interact with a foreign cultural context from the perspectives of traditional Chinese philosophies. First, the Chinese expatriate managers reported an initial cultural shock related to frictions between the foreign cultural context and Confucianism or Taoism, but less so in the case of Legalism. Second, the Chinese expatriate managers also reported that their interactions with the Dutch culture are best described as a balance between partial conflict and partial complementarity (thus, a duality). In this sense, the leadership style of Chinese expatriate managers is influenced jointly by the three traditional Chinese philosophies and certain elements of the foreign cultural context. This is consistent with the Chinese perspective of yin-yang balancing. Originality/value This study is among the first to offer a more nuanced and highly contextualized understanding of leadership in the unique case of expatriate managers from an emerging market (e.g. China) in an advanced economy (e.g. the Netherlands). The authors call for more research to apply the unique perspective of yin-yang balancing in an inter-cultural context. The authors posit that this approach represents the most salient implication of this study. For practical implications, the authors argue that expatriate leaders should carefully manage the interplay between their deep-rooted home-country philosophies and their salient host-country culture. Reflecting on traditional philosophies in another culture can facilitate inter-cultural leadership training for Chinese expatriates.

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“…Finally, we must conclude our review with Buddhism, which despite its "Western" origin (in India), and in part due to a critical role filling a metaphysical system gap in China, has been considered by various scholars as one of China's main systems of thought of Li (1998). Yet in view of Buddhism's sui generis adaption, selection, independent intellectual development and its integration into the Chinese worldview and into Daoism, even to the extent of the emergence of the polemic huahu (化胡) theory which saw Buddha a manifestation of Laozi (Zürcher, 2007), we refrain from considering Buddhism as a fourth principal and discrete form of Chinese of thought applicable to teams in our analysis, in consistency with previous positions (Ma and Tsui, 2015;Lin et al, 2018).…”

“…Just like Confucianism requires the effective leader to ultimately work, legalism hinges on effective rules. The leaderfollower relationship refereed by rules, the "two handles" of reward and punishment, rather than by benevolence or the pursuit of harmony, implying a deep professionalism, performance-orientation, and the proscription of personal feelings (Witzel, 2012;Lin et al, 2018). Legalism has been associated the with modern transactional leadership theory (Ma and Tsui, 2015;Lin et al, 2018) of Burns where "leaders approach followers with an eye to exchange one thing for another" (Burns, 1978, p. 4).…”

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