Neglected influences of wisdom of Sun Zi’s Art of War on corporate leadership

Abstract

The prevailing perspectives on Sun Zi’s Art of War are predominantly strategic and limit leadership to implemented actions. This study seeks to examine the framework of an understanding of leadership actions and wisdom of Sun Zi’s Art of War, including the values, ethics and morals. The qualitative design was used and semi-structured interviews were used in this study to answer the research questions. The inductive analysis on the participants’ responses shows that their wisdom or deep knowledge and understanding are dependent on moral influences (Dao) such as being patient, doing away with inner greed, honesty and fairness, morality and a strategic mindset. Specifically, the themes of the influences are pointed primarily to the ethics and moral dimensions and secondly to the strategic dimension. This study has implications for extending research of roles of ethics and morality of Sun Zi’s Art of War on leadership effectiveness.

Keywords: Sun-Zi’s Art of War, ethics and morality, corporate leadership and inductive analysis.