Oriental wisdom has a place in boardroom
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PETER Drucker or Dale Carnegie are probably the first names that come to mind if one is asked to name a few management gurus.
Indeed, few Oriental management thinkers can be mentioned in the same breath as these two personalities.
But the reality is, East Asia’s history is filled with examples of businesses thriving on the basis of Oriental thought.
For instance, the teachings of Inamori Kazuo, founder of the Japanese electronics and solar panel maker Kyocera, continue to inspire Asian companies’ spectacular rise to global prominence.
And as Chinese companies have come to represent an ever larger share of the Fortune 500 list, the role Oriental wisdom plays in their ascent is of increasing significance to the world.
That role was examined in a recent seminar held by Fudan University’s School of Management, with a bearing also on the interplay between Oriental and Western schools of management philosophies.
“For a long time, there was an academic fixation on Western management knowledge because of the West’s economic dominance,” said Su Yong, director of the Institute of Oriental Management, a research entity affiliated with the school. Although Western management science is a well-developed system of jargon, theories and case studies, it is no panacea for all kinds of problems that arise in corporate governance, Su told the audience.
In his opinion, the 2008 financial crisis was a rude awakening that exposed the ineffectualness of Western management philosophy in dealing with some of the worst fallout of the crisis.
Limits of Western knowledge
This calls for a reflection on the limits of Western knowledge, especially on its compatibility with Chinese circumstances. Since the discipline is primarily a Western invention, it is possibly ill-suited to the Oriental cultural context in which it is taught, Su argued.
Perhaps to balance the overwhelmingly Western content with a dose of Chineseness, ancient classics have been introduced to courses taught at Chinese management schools. Western skeptics, however, question the relevance of these seemingly metaphysical musings in terms of doing business.
Take Confucianism, a fixture in Chinese management books. Regarded often as a useful tool of statecraft or a set of principles guiding ethical behavior, it is curious how this value system stressing propriety and moral decency can survive the first encounter with fierce and sometimes hostile market competition.
Speaking from his own experience as a former EMBA student, Mao Zhongqun, chief executive of Fotile, a domestic kitchenware maker, said that Western publications on leadership are mostly about how to implement incentives to motivate employees and convince them to follow leaders.
While these methods are indeed important in their own right, they prove less straightforward than ways endorsed in Confucian learning, said Mao.
He went on to explain that Western management science suggests a chameleon-like approach to dealing with employees on an individual-specific basis.
In contrast, disciples of Confucianism, goes his view, need not to bother with these constant adjustments. Instead, they need only to focus on elevating themselves to a higher spiritual plane, and leading by moral example, and staff will automatically rally behind them.
Obsession with profits
Mao also railed against the obsession with maximizing profits — a core tenet of Western economic and management theories — which he believes will lead acolytes astray. Confucian classics exhort people to think beyond the narrow confines of profits, to conduct themselves in a way that is sensitive to others and brings wider harmony. This pays off as better treatment of customers and staff out of genuine kindness will be reciprocated with not just profits, but likely trust and loyalty as well, Mao noted.
All this hype about Chinese philosophy is not to denigrate the value of Western management science. What speakers like Mao advocate, in fact, is the modification of Western theories and practices in a way that makes them more tailored to Chinese conditions.
Su went even further. He said he is already seeing so much “borrowing” and “mixing” in the management curriculum, that the Western and Oriental schools are effectively influencing each other, although not all the influence should be considered positive.
An example of this is that old inaccurate stereotypes about Western and Oriental management styles are still bandied about.
For instance, it is believed that Western companies are ruthless in laying off staff, dispensing with ceremony, while Oriental firms are more aware of the need to preserve “face.”
Nothing is less true, according to Su, who said Asian bosses are sometimes worse employers than their Western counterparts. “While the law entitles Chinese company employees to paid leave, many in fact don’t enjoy the right, or dare not even ask for it (for fear of upsetting their boss),” Su said.
In a similar vein, stereotypes about Westerners being more likely to honor their contractual obligations than Asians are also false.
The value of contracts is taken seriously in both worlds, except that this may vary in forms and subtlety, Su argued.
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