Waking up the sleeping lion

In this qualitative study, I investigate how China's top private-enterprise CEOs develop their leadership capacities. I examine (1) the impact of familial, educational, organizational, and cultural contexts on their leadership capacities, (2) the lessons learned from their leadership experiences, and (3) their strategies of learning for overcoming difficulties. This study is based primarily on in-depth interviews with fifteen Chinese CEOs, entrepreneurial founders of their own private companies from a range of industries: (1) fund management, (2) real estate, (3) electronics, (4) textile and apparel, (5) construction materials, (6) pharmaceuticals, and (7) arts and media. The picture of leadership gleaned from my study both resonates with, and differs from, that reported in Western leadership literature. The CEOs' traits resemble the effective leadership qualities identified by theories of transformational and authentic leadership. Further, the CEOs are deeply connected with Chinese cultural ideas that date back to philosophical and ideological frameworks--Confucianism, Taoism, Bingjia (military philosophy), Legalism, and Communism. Under the pressure of economic growth, the CEOs seek to integrate Chinese culture with Western management practice.

Three major themes emerge from the data analysis. First, in terms of personal characteristics, most of the CEOs exhibit a positive outlook and have a high level of learning orientation, responsibility, self-awareness, and intrapersonal intelligence or metacognition. Second, individual CEOs utilize different combinations of learning strategies, including formal training, lessons from personal experiences, advice from political leaders and spouses, and self-reflection. Finally, the CEOs interpret 'trigger events' at a high level of cognitive complexity, thereby accelerating their leadership development. Trigger events are often external, disorienting events that press the CEOs to revisit hidden assumptions and to redefine their relationships with themselves and with significant others. For a few CEOs, trigger events take the form of crises that seem to be self-generated. This dissertation contributes to the literature on leadership education and development by revealing how a group of top Chinese CEOs understand their leadership development and learn to become effective leaders. It supplements a largely prescriptive literature that focuses on the static characteristics of effective leadership, as well as existing quantitative studies on middle-level managers.