Leadership, strategy and culture

Citation

Teck Foo, C. (2012), "Leadership, strategy and culture", Chinese Management Studies, Vol. 6 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/cms.2012.32306daa.001

Leadership, strategy and culture

Article Type: Editorial From: Chinese Management Studies, Volume 6, Issue 4

Here I have within covers of a single issue, a series of papers that exhibit a wide diversity in the styles of writing, research approach and methodology yet they belong together as one. For these papers are being collected to be read as one thematic issue that discusses deeply upon leadership (and thus strategy) in the context of Chinese culture. I am very glad to have the opportunity to present these papers for 2012 final and fourth issue of Chinese Management Studies. Next I shall introduce each of them briefly.

In realizing the first paper, I have to thank His Holiness the 17th Karmapa Trinley Thaye Dorje for his quiet encouragement to me to pursue research on the roles of the 17 Karmapas (the first, since 1110) as spiritual leaders. In this work, I must thank him for his kind permission to use of a very special, private photograph as evidence to reinforce on the traits of a spiritual leader. What motivates me to work for some time on this piece of research (leadership succession) is the rapidly growing awareness in the West – both in Europe and the USA – of the psychologically, strongly scientific orientation of Tibetan Buddhist spiritual practices.

Meditation for example, is now widely advocated for management in coping with stress. With the Dalai Lama winning the UK the 2012 Templeton Prize[1], Buddhist philosophy will grow to be in vogue in the West. It is perhaps timely to share my own research (as visiting professor of newly established Singapore Buddhist College) on a very ancient yet thoroughly well thought out Tibetan process. One that may yield intriguing insights that may broaden our thinking on management practices: leadershipsuccession.

Unlikely CEOs of twentieth century, Karmapas have been leaders of their spiritual organizations for more than 900 years. I research and discuss the Tibetan approach, and in this case, the Kagyud Karma organization of sustaining their leadership through a unique process in selecting their successors as part of their planned succession: “New paradigm, a socio-spirituality research on succession in leadership: consciousness, mind theory of Karmapas?” Yet the method utilized so successfully by the Tibetans hinges on a Western taboo: a belief in reincarnation and specifically, the transferability of consciousness. I therefore like to widen the paradigm of research on succession to incorporate such possibilities. For within Asian including Chinese culture, reincarnation is this is not just only a possibility but a reality.

I am glad to have the paper of Donald Helmich and Karen Gilroy that follows up on the issue of leadership succession: CEO succession specifically within the Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs). They investigate the performance consequences of the type of CEO succession. Their paper is entitled “CEO succession and organizational transitions: case of state-owned enterprises”. Based on empirical evidence, the authors argue against the practice of hiring CEOs to succeed on an intra-firm basis. In other words for SOEs should search for CEO successors who are outside of the internal pool. A wide range of financial performance measures are utilized in their study including typical measures such as sales, profits, assets and their associated ratios.

The first paper evokes of the relevance of integrating aspects of spirituality with management. This is reverberated in J.M. Li’s “Philosophy, training and spirituality: a longitudinal, empirical study”. It is truly an interesting, rare longitudinal, investigative research work. Her study involves extensive field work for gathering of data. Her analysis of data unveils that there is a role for Chinese philosophy in corporate training. Her findings argue for an important place for Chinese philosophy in enhancing the workplace’s spirituality (defined as one’s inner state of being). That is besides contributing positively, at a more mundane level to improving service quality.

Working as a research team, J.J. Gu, Q.X. Weng and F.H. Xie found particularly for transformational leadership. It is a style of leadership that enhances the speed of decision making. In their perspective, transformational leadership focuses on employees’ higher order needs and (quoting from their paper):

They provide meaning, challenge, a sense of mission and higher vision, pay attention to the individual developmental, learning, and achievement needs, and motivate employees to transcend self-interest for the sake of the organization (italics added).

Their paper is appropriately entitled “Leadership, team and decision speed: empirical study using cross-provincial data”. These insights on the role and nature of transformational leadership gained through structural equation modeling of statistical data from China are strikingly similar to visionary leadership that spiritual leaders such as the Karmapa provides for his followers.

Q.Z. Liang and Y. Meng explore very interestingly (and most meticulously and rigorously) these three aspects over a decade: leadership, culture and the political ideology of communism. Through this paper “Leadership attributes, culture and communism: analyses of cases 1998-2008 from China” the authors show how in China, critical events often re-shape approaches to leadership. What are the most interesting insights from this paper? I find this to be most striking about modern Chinese society:

[…] a more surprising finding is that political events have greater impacts on the attributes of Chinese leaders than economic events […]

In the opinion of Liang and Meng, even after 30 years of open, very successful economic transformation, the dictates of politics still prevail over economics.

Finally, we have a paper by T. Malik who explores within the context of a turbulent China, the advantages of being the first mover through host country, strategic alliances and consequently, their impacts on return on assets as a measure of financial performance: “First mover, strategic alliances and performance: context of turmoil in China’. Whilst he lauds firms for being the first mover, as he admitted, the paper did not look at hidden disadvantages. What also intrigues me about his paper is his comment about the age of a firm that somehow hampers firm performance? Maybe firms like all organisms age with negative consequences. It will now be most timely to contrast his research with those of fast-followers inside China, especially in technological industries. The case of China shows too you can be slow to enter and yet still come out winning. Or look at Huawei (The Economist, 4-10 August 2012) for what happens if you follow up and follow through at the right time!

So in a nutshell, how the reading of these papers here can contribute to your knowledge on Chinese management practices? This is a question I always ask myself as Editor-in-Chief. For this is a research journal on Chinese management. Every issue that is worth publishing must add to the pool of knowledge. Here is just my own summary of the additional insights that may be gained through being exposed to these papers and often indirectly:

1. 1.

   Chinese management should be broadly defined to include Mongolian, Tibetan, Manchurian and all the other minority cultures (in China besides Han there are 55 minority cultures) as well. For example, a study of Genghis Khan and his strategy should rightly be considered for publication in Chinese Management Studies. Mongol empire is still the largest world empire. The deeply historical, richness and diversity of cultures in China should be tapped for insights for management. Tibetan Buddhist meditation practices are investigated by MIT professors for a better understanding of the power and mystery of the human mind.

2. 2.

   You can analyze the dynamics of management within Chinese SOEs for what works and what do not: even on an issue like CEO succession. Professor Helmich and Professor Gilroy illustrated that through the use of a Statistical Yearbook on Tianjin City. If these Chinese Statistical Yearbooks are reliable, then we can evaluate whether SOE capitalism truly works better than pure, Friedman capitalism. Now in China, you have a rich statistical resource to data mine for managerial insights. The key is to be highly focused on key managerial practices: CEO succession.

3. 3.

   Professor Li’s paper makes a deep impression on me for the extensiveness of her data process across two distinct time segments (2005-2006 and 2009-2011) and she garnered 3,601 valid questionnaires. This fact alone makes her work stands out among the crowd. Her study is unique in providing empirical support of how Chinese philosophy in replacing Western management textbooks as training materials had positive effects of higher employees’ motivation as well as performances.

4. 4.

   The role of leadership remains to be of importance and the papers added further insights. That transformational leadership may be a factor behind speedy decisions. In a fast-paced, technologically driven world, decisions have to be timely (faster than before) and be precisely implemented. To be first mover, one too has to be fast. Thus, integrating papers (4) and (6) lead us to expect CEOs to be able to transform the workplace, enabling decisions be made at a higher speed and to capitalize on opportunities to be first movers. The fifth paper (5) is interesting too for analyzing changing attributes of Chinese leadership over time through extensive (1998-2008) study of relevant stories published in the official newspapers.

Overall, I am glad with this harvest of papers. Each differs from the other in terms of data, techniques, methodology, statistical procedures yet together these works yield a rather comprehensive and comprehensible picture on the theme: leadership, strategy and culture. I am very glad to introduce to the readers of CMS the papers in this issue.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18057519; Understanding Entrepreneurial strategy through the Work of Lao Tze’s Philosophy: Case of Haier inside China.

Check Teck FooEditor-in-Chief