Chinese Leadership Styles in the Global Business Context

Since the early 1980s, with the support of a series of national policies, Chinese companies have been expanding globally to seek resources and strategic assets, aiming to build long-term competitive advantages. Alongside this foreign expansion, managing foreign workforces presents unique challenges. While researchers have investigated the management practices of Chinese MNEs with a focus on the relationship between headquarters and subsidiaries, there is limited research evaluating the effectiveness of Chinese leadership in non-Chinese contexts. Therefore, this dissertation aims to fill this research gap by addressing the main research question: How do Chinese organizations become successful abroad in the digital age, and how effective are Chinese leadership styles in the host business environment? To achieve this goal, we conducted four independent empirical studies (Chapters 2 to 5) to advance understanding of the success of Chinese organizations in international contexts and the impact of Chinese leadership styles on non-Chinese employees. Chapter 2 delves into the success of TikTok, an app developed by ByteDance, attributing its global success to business model innovation. This innovation combines successful elements from other social networking and video-sharing platforms to provide a new and unique customer experience and utilizes the huge and diverse domestic market for testing and improving core technologies before going global. Chapter 3 addresses the gap in systematic review regarding Chinese leadership research. We synthesize insights from 268 articles, highlighting two main areas: traditional Chinese leadership philosophies and the application of Western leadership theories in a Chinese context. Future research directions are proposed, including the development of Chinese leadership theories and exploring their effectiveness beyond the Chinese context. Chapters 4 and 5 build on the directions proposed in Chapter 3, focusing on investigating the effectiveness of Chinese leadership styles on non-Chinese employees' behaviors, specifically knowledge sharing and helping behavior. Chapter 4 examines the influence of servant leadership on knowledge sharing, proposing a moderated mediation model tested through a survey and a scenario experiment. Results suggest that servant leadership enhances knowledge sharing by encouraging employees' voice behavior, especially when organizational justice is high. Chapter 5 explores benevolent leadership's impact on interpersonal citizenship behaviors, positing that it fosters perceived insider status, thus promoting employees' helping behavior and knowledge sharing. Results from a scenario experiment support the hypotheses, indicating that employees who work with benevolent leaders are more likely to perceive themselves as insiders and engage more in helping behavior and knowledge sharing, especially among those with higher protean career attitudes. This dissertation provides significant contributions to Chinese leadership research by offering unique and novel insights into how and when Chinese leadership styles can enhance employees’ interpersonal citizenship behaviors in host countries. Emphasizing the crucial understanding of Chinese leadership styles in international contexts and their implications for organizational success, the findings of this dissertation offer practical implications for practitioners in effectively managing foreign workforces. Additionally, the dissertation proposes several future research directions aimed at further advancing the relevant research fields.