Business leaders and leadership in Taiwan

This chapter illustrates the key aspects of business leaders and leadership in Taiwan through a number of layers of investigation, including: a historical review of the cultural tradition and the impact on business leadership; Western influence on developing a modern concept and model of behaviour of business leadership. The traditional normative values in Taiwan share some of their roots with mainland China, namely the traditional philosophies of Confucianism, Daoism, Yijing, the Legalist School and later Buddhism. Western influence in Taiwan derived predominately from the US as provider of most of the political, economic and military support to the country during the Cold War in defence against the expansion of Communism in East Asia. In Taiwan formal business leader development takes place through the management education systems. Since the management system was substantially influenced by the Japanese system, the internal labour market for selecting leaders in the workplace, including supervisors and managers, dominates the promotion system among Taiwanese firms.