Premium
Undermanaged and not yet led: Reconciling management gap and leadership challenge for the new nature of the Chinese firm
Author(s) -
Jelen Jonatan,
Schmidt Thomas
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
journal of leadership studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.219
H-Index - 14
eISSN - 1935-262X
pISSN - 1935-2611
DOI - 10.1002/jls.20169
Subject(s) - cognitive dissonance , china , ideology , scope (computer science) , economic system , political economy , political science , positive economics , sociology , economics , politics , law , psychology , social psychology , computer science , programming language
The People's Republic of China is already the world's largest social system. It is now well on its way to becoming the world's largest national economy. This rapid economic development of the last 30 years is a result of the economic reforms carefully architected since 1978 by the former Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping. There are several remarkable characteristics of this uniquely Chinese experience. First, it was not conceived as a paradigmatic shift. The Chinese transition to market‐economic models is closely controlled, incremental, selective, seemingly harmonious, and yet sustainable. Second, it was conceived as a paradox. The scope of these reforms deliberately did not extend to institutional reform. The famous characterization “One Country, Two Systems” captures this almost un‐Western idea of disassociating the evolution of the two spheres and allowing the co‐existence of two competing ideologies. Third, it was conceived as a pragmatic transformation, without proper ontological grounding as to how this dissonance will eventually be reconciled. At this point, the main actors caught between the two fronts (markets and institutions), the firms, will have to rise to the occasion and provide change leadership autonomously. The purpose of this conceptual article is to identify the required changes in nature of the Chinese firms navigating this dualist system, in particular with respect to their leadership component by exploring the presence of antecedents that will allow leadership to emerge. In the alternative we tentatively suggest carefully transferring some of our Western leadership wisdom, but we have to carefully evaluate to what extent existing conditions may also prevent us from doing so.