Modesty or Overconfidence: On the Attitude of Chinese Indigenous Management Research

Regarding the attitude for conducting Chinese indigenous management research, this paper makes three arguments. First, the relationship between the mainstream patterns of thinking of China and the West is not substitutive or subordinative, but a complementary one, and therefore it is meaningless to say which is superior to the other. Second, dialectical thinking such as Yi and Yin-Yang is not unique to China, Heraclitus and Hegel also had similar ideas. The structure of Hegel’s dialectical sublation/becoming is almost same as that of the change process of Yin-Yang, being quadruplicity rather than triplicity of so called thesis-antithesis-synthesis. Third, in the history of Western thinking, there are two parallel traditions, one being the logical major stream and the other dialectical minor stream; while in China, there has always been only a dialectical one although the logical thinking appeared briefly once in pre-Qin period. Therefore, it is unrealistic and inappropriate to assert that the dialectical nature of Chinese traditional philosophy will enable Chinese indigenous management research to catch up with or even overtake the Western management research. The author supports the above arguments with emergent Copenhagen Interpretation of management paradox.