Shuang Ren – författare

The quality of its business leadership is a key issue for the future development of Asia’s economies. Although Asia’s economies have grown spectacularly in recent decades, they are currently facing increasing challenges. This book explores the current state of business leaders and leadership in Asia. It demonstrates that there is no single model of Asian business leadership, and that Western models often do not fit easily alongside Asian cultural values. It discusses how relatively developed Asian economies – Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, and former socialist economies – China and Vietnam – all have different types of business leadership challenges at present. The book concludes by assessing how business leadership in Asia is likely to develop in future.

This book argues that China’s businesses, and hence China’s future economic development, face a huge crisis in that there is a considerable "leadership gap" in China, with a shortage of competent business leaders, at a time when new leadership skills are required urgently, as China’s businesses evolve rapidly and engage ever more with the global economy. Moreover, the book argues, training is an undervalued and often marginalised activity in Chinese companies. The book outlines the nature of this problem, and goes on to demonstrate that there is a new breed of manager emerging in China, aware of the need to upgrade management skills, moving away from skills appropriate in traditional industrial firms, and emphasising more flexibility, positive engagement with workers, and competence in the market economy. The book includes an evaluation of different management approaches in China, reports on extensive original research, including interviews with practising managers, and sets out how self-development in widespread, deep and important.