Daoist Philosophy and Leadership: A Reappraisal

Recent leadership research increasingly advances diverse non-Western perspectives to enrich conventional paradigms. Among these, Daoist philosophy offers a notion of sagelike leadership that continues to intrigue both scholars and practitioners. This conceptual paper aims to challenge the common tendency in mainstream research to simplify Daoism into an idealized and coherent leadership model, emphasizing instead its paradoxical teachings. By examining the classical Daoist text, the Daodejing, particularly its vivid metaphoric imagery, the paper underscores the recurrent motifs of negativity, or ‘formlessness’, in Daoist sagehood, prompting a fundamental rethinking of the epistemological, ontological, and action-oriented foundations of ‘leadership’ as a concept. Hence, the study calls for leadership scholars to acknowledge and continuously work with distinct Daoist paradoxes to unsettle dominant theories and practices of leadership.