This book focuses on Chinese history lessons on leading Chinese people and is a testament to the need for Americans to understand our long-separated brothers at a deep level and also a plea to reject the tempting alternative of surface-level, national stereotypes and caricatures portrayed in the popular press. Americans have discovered the hard way that Japanese lessons on how to lead American people must be interpreted in terms of their culture and history, as signaled by the failure of Theory Z. Just as the Japanese Toyota system for manufacturing cannot be arbitrarily applied piecemeal to American manufacturing (Graen and Hui, 1995), American manufacturing cannot do so to the Chinese system. Post-modern Chinese managers working under Western manufacturing systems in China do not respond the same as Western managers (Graen, Hui and Gu, 2005). What is needed is a deep understanding of the critical disconnects between effective Chinese and American leadership in Sino-American organizations in China. We begin with a deep-level discussion of the significance of Chinese leadership theories, from the various historical theories of Confucianism to Farh's post-modern version called “paternalistic” leadership.

Introduction

Confucianism and its several modifications guided past generations of Han Chinese more or less adequately until it was turned upside down on the mainland during the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976.