Developing Glocal Hybrid Leadership
By Qingyan Tian
Qingyan Tian is a faculty member in the Department of Leadership and American Studies at Christopher Newport University (VA), where she also serves as the Provost’s Special Assistant for International Outreach. She is the author of Glocalization and the Development of a Hybrid Leadership Model: A Study of Chinese University Presidency published by Routledge (2021). She is also the chief editor of two books, Footprints to Success in the Academy and Perspectives on Change in the American System of Higher Education. She has taught and/or developed courses such as Globalization and Leadership, Leadership in Complex Contexts, Leadership Theories, Cross-Cultural Leadership, Leadership Through the Ages, and Values Leadership. She was an Associate Professor at Ocean University of China in Qingdao, China. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois (UIUC) focusing on higher education, globalization, and leadership. She can be reached at qingyan.tian@cnu.edu.
In this article, I discuss the hybrid leadership model that emerged from the research I conducted for my book Glocalization and the Development of a Hybrid Leadership Model: A Study of Chinese University Presidency. The book is grounded in qualitative methodology and based upon my in-depth interview study of nine presidents of key Chinese universities, each of whom had educational and/or professional experiences in the Unites States and other countries. I briefly discuss the call for glocal leadership and the call for glocal academic presidency before delving into how the presidents I interviewed exemplify characteristics of hybrid leadership.
Globalization and Localization Call for Glocal Leadership. Leadership has been studied on the personal, group, organizational, and national levels, yet the global level has been mostly ignored. The 21st century is marked by rapid globalization and increasing interconnectivity, and many issues and problems are global in scope requiring global approaches and solutions. Meanwhile, nation states are still playing important roles in shaping and regulating the forces from globalization with distinctive national identities and cultures as well as economic and political structures. As a result, the national (local) contexts, approaches, and perspectives should not be ignored when solving global problems with local implications. Leadership cannot be confined within either the global or the local boundaries. The juxtaposition of the global and the local contexts requires glocal leadership.
Globalization and Localization Call for Glocal Academic Presidency. Standing at the forefront of globalization, higher education plays an instrumental role in responding to or resisting it. However, the study of higher education leadership, particularly academic presidency, is largely confined within the North American realm, the local level (Tian, 2021). Universities shoulder much of the responsibility to develop future generations of leaders who possess the ability to collaborate globally. University presidents need to lead with global competencies using glocal approaches.
Glocal Hybrid Leadership. With active responses to globalization through leadership, China has been successfully transforming its society into one of prosperity. Economically and politically, China has been exploring a Chinese-Western development model: Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. In higher education, China promotes university presidents with Western experiences who lead in a unique dual leadership system: presidential leadership under the guidance of the Party Secretary. My research found that Chinese university presidents are dynamically and fluxionally integrating or hybridizing leadership approaches, perspectives, and attributes attained globally and locally to respond to both the global and local contexts when leading the world’s largest and fastest-growing higher education system. I created a hybrid leadership model for this approach, which demonstrates the following characteristics.
Chinese and Western Presidential Roles. These university presidents’ leadership approaches are hybridized because the leadership roles they play reflect a dynamic hybridization of the Western and Chinese presidential roles.
My research shows that these presidents play nine roles, namely: Visionary, CEO, Fundraiser, Head of Internationalization, Minister of Houqin (Mayor of a Small American Town), Scholar + Jack of All Trades, Friends Raiser and Relationship Balancer, Moral Role Model, and Non-leader. Among these nine roles, three — Minister of Houqin, Head of Internationalization, and Scholar + Jack of All Trades — are distinctively Chinese, which match the contemporary higher education context of China. The other six roles have both similar and different elements compared with the roles played by the university presidents of the other countries, particularly the United States.
The role of Visionary, for example, is emphasized in university presidents’ leadership in many countries. However, the situation and challenges of each university varies from country to country, thus the president’s vision cannot be the same. The visions of the Chinese university presidents I studied grow out of the Chinese context influenced by the global context.
The presidential role as a CEO managing the entire university has been emphasized in the American literature on university presidents’ leadership (Birnbaum, 1988, 1989, 1992, 1999; Bornstein, 2002, 2003; Fisher, 1984, Fisher & Koch, 2004; Padilla, 2005). What sets the Chinese university presidents’ CEO role apart is that they are managing universities in transition and transformation with unique challenges from both global and local levels.
The role of Fundraiser is one of the most important for American university presidents (Bornstein, 2002, 2003; Murphy, 1997; Rhodes, 1997) but new for Chinese university presidents (Yang, 2000). Furthermore, the fundraising channels and approaches of the university presidents in both countries are not the same. For example, American public university presidents are mostly seeking funding from donors and state government, while the Chinese university presidents are on the frontline making money for their institution and borrowing money from banks, in addition to soliciting money from private donors, and national and provincial governments.
The role of a leader as a Moral Role Model has been traditionally emphasized in China (Farh & Cheng, 2000; Li, 2003; Zeng, 2005) and recently highlighted in American literature on academic presidency (Brown, 2006; Keohane, 2006; Nelson, 2000; Rhodes, 2001). However, the moral values embraced by Chinese and American university presidents are not exactly the same. For example, most of the presidents I studied embrace Leifeng spirit (pure altruism), which is not visible in the American literature on presidential leadership.
Global and Local Contexts. Chinese university presidents’ leadership is a hybrid because they respond to both the global and local context, when playing their presidential roles.
These global and local contexts reflect a conglomeration of economic, political, cultural, and higher education contexts on global, national, regional, and institutional levels. For example, in articulating their visions, all the Chinese university presidents I interviewed constantly referred to the global and local (national, regional, institutional) contexts. Their basic approach for visioning is to “keep China in…heart while looking at the world for inspiration” (Tian, 2021, p.73). For instance, President Zhou Nonghua wants to develop an MBA program in his university with an agriculture focus because the hog, chicken, and cow farms in today’s world are huge, and his university is not preparing students to manage these big enterprises. Other universities have management programs, but they are not for the management of hog and chicken farms. President Jiao Beipu wants his foreign language university to expand its programs beyond the traditional linguistics and English literature foci because interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary human capital is needed for today’s world. Therefore, language plus expertise in a specific field, such as business or law, can make students more desirable to employers. President Li Dongba points out that his university will continue developing its textile strength because the textile industry is still needed in China, although it is shrinking in other parts of the world. He wants to start a fashion design program in his university because he believes that the city in which his university is located will soon become the new fashion centre of the world. The following remarks made by President Shi Yuxi captures his visioning process based upon the global and local context:
Actually, the Chinese medical education system comes from the same root and branches as the Western one. However, in the past one hundred years or so, the Western world has been reforming its system while we haven’t. Therefore, we are falling behind. …The distance between us and them [the West] is becoming larger. It is not that we are not as smart as them. It was because we only focus on learning but not on making changes and keeping up with the times during the past century… In order to achieve our goal [of establishing a West-China medical education system], we should work hard to reform…This is a daunting task; new problems keep surfacing before the old ones are resolved (Tian, 2021, pp.76-77).
Global and Local Values and Attributes. Chinese university presidents’ leadership is a hybrid because their leadership values and attributes (traits, skills, and behaviours) have shown the hybridity of the global and the local.
The leadership values of Chinese university presidents, for example, are informed and shaped by both Western and Chinese ideologies embedded in socialism, Confucianism, Daoism, collectivism, altruism, anti-materialism, capitalism, individualism, materialism, competition, and love for freedom. These presidents also show leadership attributes valued by both the Chinese and Western societies. For example, they are modest, interdependent, humble, and benevolent with high balancing skills and abilities to combine the West and East, while being self-confident, independent, assertive, and competitive. While being humane-relation-context-long-term oriented with paternalistic and holistic approaches, they are also task-performance-efficiency-outcome-data oriented awarding individual achievements and emphasizing leading by law and regulations.
Global and Local Experiences. These university presidents’ leadership is a glocal hybridization because it is shaped by their global and local experiences.
All these presidents were born, raised, educated, and worked in China. They also have experiences studying and working in the United States and other countries. Most of the presidents reported that their Chinese experiences nurtured their values; shaped their leadership traits, skills, and styles; and provided knowledge and deep insights about China. They also reported that their global experiences expanded their intellectual horizon, opened their minds, shaped their worldview, equipped them with global competencies, and exposed them to some capitalist values and leadership styles (Tian, 2021). These glocal experiences provided these presidents with the glocal knowledge, mindsets, skill sets, and resources along with higher adaptability and a cosmopolitan outlook.
For example, President Li Dongba thought that being born and raised in a middle-class family shaped his value of anti-materialism. Living and working with peasants during the Cultural Revolution trained his endurance to hardship and provided deep insights about Chinese realities. The Open-Door Policy allowed him to use his knowledge and skills to help transform China for the better. Serving as the vice president for several universities with various functional areas gave him the opportunity to learn about China’s higher education system and prepared him for presidency. His study in the United States as an MBA student expanded his horizon and transformed him from a nationalist who wanted to make China better to a cosmopolitan who wanted to make the world better for humankind. Like the other presidents, President Lidongba utilizes these glocal leadership attributes informed by his glocal experiences to reform his university. For instance, he was able to make many changes in his university based upon his capitalist-socialist ideologies, nationalist-cosmopolitan approaches, and business and education mindset.
Dynamic Hybridizing Process. In addition to integrating glocal perspectives, approaches, and leadership attributes informed by their glocal experiences according to the glocal context, these presidents’ hybridization of the global and local is a dynamic and fluxional process. This means their blending of the global and the Chinese is not static. Instead, “it is a dynamic, fluxional, and fluid process where the global and the Chinese aspects are constantly interacting, negotiating, adapting, and morphing with the changing contexts and the leaders’ values, behaviours, and traits and skills.” In other words, “the blending cannot be evenly split into two distinct categories of global (Western/American) and local (Chinese).” Rather, “the two are constantly balancing and re-balancing, defining and redefining, and negotiating and renegotiating their spaces and roles, to form a dynamic system that is constantly changing” (Tian, 2021, p.223).
Summary. Hybrid leadership is a simultaneous blending of leadership differences and similarities from multiple cultures, modified by the global and local conditions, and leaders’ values and attributes shaped by their global and local experiences. Its hybridization process is contextual, personal, and dynamic. It is contextual because it is shaped and reshaped by global and local political, economic, and cultural forces. It is personal because the leaders integrate the global and local values and attributes as a result of their global and local experiences. It is dynamic because its hybridization process is fluid, fluxional and constantly changing.
This leadership framework complements and hopefully enriches the existing theories on leadership, particularly academic presidency. In the 21st century, globalization and localization become two themes in leadership context. While the political and economic systems as well as national cultures worldwide are increasingly converging and hybridizing, local differences are strongly present. Under this context, leaders who are able to hybridize the global and local in their leadership can achieve ethical and effective leadership. I hope that more and more leaders possess or develop a glocal mindset, skillset, and heartset. I am also hopeful that my glocal hybrid leadership model can be helpful with the development of current and future leaders. Although the model is developed based upon my research about leadership in higher education, I believe it has strong implications for the professional development of leaders in other for-profit and non-profit sectors.
Due to the limitation of time and scope of the study, the hybrid leadership model’s focus is on the context and leader, and the leader component focuses on leader’s values, traits, skills, and behaviours. I have yet to explore the ways in which a glocal context impacts leaders’ needs and motivations, their use of power, tactics of influence, or other leadership dimensions. Nor do we know anything about followership in the glocal context. In addition, we do not know the dynamism of interactions among leader, follower, and the glocal context. Moreover, the study that led to my hybrid leadership model was conducted during a non-crisis time. We do not know how leaders can hybridize the global and the local to solve urgent and large-scale global problems such as COVID-19.
This research is just the beginning of an effort to explore a new framework that better fits the nature of today’s global-local hybridized cultures and structures. I only took a baby step to bridge globalization and leadership, cross-cultural leadership and higher education leadership, North American and Chinese perspectives in leadership studies, and Western and Eastern research approaches.
路漫漫其修远兮，吾将上下而求索.
The road ahead is long and has no ending; yet high and low we will search with our will unbending. - Qu Yuan
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