Effective leadership demands integrity, vision and ethics — as well as the ability to inspire these qualities in others. Confucianism, an ancient Chinese philosophy, offers timeless insight for cultivating these virtues. In a new technical note, Darden Professor Ming-Jer Chen presents a practical guide for applying Confucian thinking to modern business.
Expert
Ming-Jer Chen
Leslie E. Grayson Professor of Business Administration
Insights
Between 2020 and 2021, the number of billionaires in China rose by more than 60 percent. Compared to the U.S. — which still holds the highest number of billionaires — China’s list changes frequently. Why does it show so much turnover? The answer has to do with the country’s dualistic capitalist-socialist identity.
With the world on the brink of pandemic, a business was asked to make masks. How should it balance an ethical imperative against the risks of entering a new market? And what direction should it take when the crisis receded? Public-private partnerships can combine the strengths of diverse entities, driving rich, broadly beneficial results.
During rising tensions between the U.S. and China, what happens when one professional makes a comment on Chinese innovation that offends his colleague? Professor Ming-Jer Chen offers a discussion of context and complex cross-cultural problems, an understanding of which can aid in appropriate action when no clear-cut answer may exist.
China manufactures nearly a quarter of the world’s high-tech goods, but most of those goods’ microchips come from the U.S. When tension rose in U.S.-China relations, one Chinese company found an M&A win-win with a European chipmaker looking to expand in China’s market. Here’s how a CEO turned around an existential threat and supply chain weak link.
China’s progress towards modernization and marketization gave women unprecedented opportunities to launch and scale private enterprises and make billions in the process. Professor Ming-Jer Chen shares insights on how China managed to forge a new class of super-successful female founders.
Famous for producing pork products, Smithfield Foods had a history of aggressive growth. But when that growth stalled for a matter of years, it was time to consider acquisition by ShuangHui International. This case in point discusses the pros and cons and strategic considerations that went into the international deal.
Competition is defined by the relationship between its constituent parts: action and response. The two are as interdependent as day and night; they exist within the context of one another, together creating one totality.
Professor Ming-Jer Chen says in a world in which globalization and technology are rapidly recoding the very DNA of business, its time for profound reexamination of the meaning, parameters and aims of competition.
An ambicultural mindset applied to business, or to any enterprise, embraces the possibility for long-term relationships among multiple parties, from managers and policymakers to industries and customers, from organizations to societies and nations.
