Contorted Leadership in Chinese Hierarchically Oriented Context: How Social Governance Influences Organizational Leaders

The aim of this research is to explore the behavioral model of Chinese organizational leaders acquiring resources for the development of their organizations under the influence of hierarchically oriented social governance. The paper compares the differences between Western and Chinese contexts and conducts a grounded multi-case study to explore leadership behavioral model in the Chinese context. We argue that the Chinese social governance structure is hierarchically oriented, whereas the Western social governance structure is market oriented. Further, we define this unique inconformity found in the Chinese organizational leaders as contorted leadership, which refers to the dissonance between leaders’ cognition and their behavior when acquiring resources for the development of their organizations. The conflict between leaders’ cognition and behaviors is caused by the social governance mechanism within which leaders are embedded. We link leadership with social governance by emphasizing on the core role of social governance in allocating the resources which organizational leaders scramble for.