Developing Global Roles for Chinese Leadership: An ASD Theory of Organizational Change

Abstract

Leadership has been an active area of research and practice in China over the past 30 years of economic reform and organizational change. The main purpose of this chapter is to summarize recent progress from leadership research in China and to propose a growth model for Chinese change leadership. There have been three key trends emerging from the recent research and applications under organizational change in China: (1) problem-driven trend emphasizing global leadership context and business practices; (2) high-performance human resources configuration trend integrating key competencies to build up the new work systems for global leadership; and (3) theory-building trend focusing upon the conceptual development for global leadership areas for future research and applications in China. These trends are discussed in connection with organizational change and global entrepreneurship. The recent progresses in leadership research and practice in China indicated that leadership development has become more and more strategic and embedded with the cultural and industrial contexts. A theory of “adaptation-selection-development” (ASD) is proposed for more systematic research and theory development in global leadership research and applications in China. This chapter demonstrates frontier approaches and implications of the ASD framework for global leadership development are highlighted.

Citation

Wang, Z. (2012), "Developing Global Roles for Chinese Leadership: An ASD Theory of Organizational Change", Mobley, W.H., Wang, Y. and Li, M. (Ed.) Advances in Global Leadership (Advances in Global Leadership, Vol. 7), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 375-388. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1535-1203(2012)0000007020