ABSTRACT
Business leaders and leadership in Asia give rise to complex and profound issues, given the wide range of influences of philosophical, historical, cultural, social, political and economic factors, as well as management/leadership theories and practices, from the East and the West. This chapter focuses on the identification of key aspects in mainstream Western leadership literature from the perspective of a historical evolution process. The evolution of research on leadership in the early years placed emphasis on the social, psychological and functional/task contexts influencing the leadership process. In more recent years, the relationship-based approach to leadership has been extended as Leader–Member Exchange (LMX) theory, which emphasizes team-member exchange as well as organizational context. The chapter focuses on philosophical elements that bear directly on leadership practices in East Asia. The most influential traditional philosophy in China and other East Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam is Confucianism.
