China’s economy is experiencing the most tremendous growth in the world. Many MNCs come to China mainly expecting cost-reduction and new market.  But these MNCs face a shortage of talents in China. Thus, the MNCs search the ways to develop the talents by themselves and retain qualified talents. But not all Western retention and development tools can be applied to Chinese employees. Thus the main question company has to answer in China is “How to retain and develop Chinese talents?” So in our study we intend to answer on this question and realize which tools MNC can use for retention and development of Chinese employees, and in what way it should adjust them with the cultural characteristics of Chinese employees. In order to achieve it, we conducted our research using different methodologies (literatures, case studies, interviews) to find the answer about effective retention and development of Chinese employees.

The so-called Critical Buddhism was originated by two Buddhist scholars at Komazawa University: Hakamaya Noriaki and Matsumoto Shiro. It stirred up great controversy by its claims that the teachings of Tathagatagarbha, Buddha-nature, original enlightenment, and the philosophy of Kyoto School are not Buddhist, and aroused great interest and responses from Buddhists and Buddhologist in Japan.( Shih, Heng-Ching¡F2001) They condemn the ideas of Buddha Nature, Tathāgatagarbha and Original Enlightenment developed in China and Japan as deviating from the fundamental Buddhist thoughts of pratītyasamutpāda and śūnyatā, thereby backtracking to the substantialism of the idea of Brahman in the Upaniṣads.At the level of social criticism, Critical Buddhism blamed the idea of Wa (harmony), which derives from Tathaagatagarbha thought, for social discrimination and injustice.(Yu-Kwan Ng¡F2009) The same controversy caused by Zhi Na Nei Xue Yuan and New Confucianism also occurred in China. Therefore,the development of Buddhism in China and Japan both became the representations of East Asia. The development of Buddhism became not only the characteristic of civilization, but aslo the public philosophy of East Asia through the concept of ¡§Nothing¡§(µL).

The main purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate that people¡¦s self/communities perspective plays a critical role in making democratic political institution fully function. There are many problems such as the corruption of local factions, bribery politics, ethnic conflict, and national identity dispute in Taiwan¡¦s young history of democratic system. This thesis claims that the problems lie on the difference between Western and Chinese perspectives of the relations between self and communities. The perspective of self/communities relations signifies an individual¡¦s thinking of his position in the communities, groups, or society, which he belongs to or lives in, and how he will interact with other people in different communities under different circumstances. Different culture and different historical background result in different perspectives of the relations between self and communities. In chapter Two, we first trace the history of Western political thoughts and the shaping progress of Western perspective of self/communities relations (mainly the perspective from the ¡§individualism¡¨); then, we focus on what the liberal democracy¡¦s perspective of self/communities relations. In chapter Three, we analyze the related concepts of Confucian perspective of self/communities relations, and indicate that Confucianism always teaches people that an individual must benefit the community and be loyal to the superiors. This perspective of self/communities relations supports the imperial institution. But in the last period of Ching Dynasty, some Chinese intellectuals introduced the western democratic thought to the Mainland China, and at last overthrew the imperial institution and intended to build a democratic government. However, these intellectuals and political elites did not realize that the Confucian perspective of self/communities relations has made the practices of Western liberal democracy difficult in both China and Taiwan. Chapter Four indicates that even KMT government moved to Taiwan, and there were still many intellectuals and political elites anticipating the government to build a political institution, but they still did not focus on the difference between Taiwanese perspectives of self/communities relations and Western individualism. So in chapter Five, we indicate that the problems of Taiwan¡¦s democracy were resulted from the ordinary Taiwanese perspective of self/communities relations. Such perspective emphasizes the interpersonal affections (ren-qing), relationship network (guan-xi), and the division between others and us. This research indicates that the perspective of self/communities relations is very important in studying different political culture and its political institution.

Leadership behavior theory and practice¡ÐResearch of the case Leadership behavior Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore. Abstract Leadship capability is not only inherent, it must be created by leaning and training also. And the leadership should have characteristics, which depends on the surroundings. Basically leadership has three types, which are dictatorship, laissez-faire, democratic. A leader must be responsible for his subordinates, team and superintendents. Excellent morality and advanced knowledge are the requisites for a good leader. The goal of leadship behavior is to prevent the troubles about people and things, then furthermore start his career and make contributions to the peoples. Finally he is to earn the sympathy of the crowd and erect his enterprise. The leadership behavior is show of creative intelligence and skill during solving the problems of ¡§people¡¨ and ¡§matters¡¨. It condenses the moral, wisdom, experience, ability and social relationship of the leader and displays the outstanding enchantment and boldness. It depends on the brain to operate powerfully, make use of main theme, depend on concentrate one¡¦s attention. Leadership is an very important intellect, it needs both theory and applications. In the daily life and the process of dealing the human affairs, people experience the tastes of leading and being lead. However, in the history, it is not difficult to find that some leaders are very prominent and bring happiness to human being, while some are very bad, caused masses in anguish and distressed. The public would justify that he is a success or a failure. Singapore is well known as a ¡§garden city¡¨ as well as a lawful nation. The government is famous for it ¡§being small with strength and being capable with uprightness¡¨. The leader, Lee Kuan Yew is the greatest contributor. Although he is criticized as tyrant, arbitrary, authoritative, he had been always persisting in his idea, not excited by the Western merits, advocacy ¡§Asian Values¡¨ and ¡§Confucianism¡¨ executing his ¡§Eastern authoritarian leadership style¡¨. Under his conduct, Singapore changes from head to feet and is praised as a miracle of ¡§politics and economics¡¨ in the world. Surely, that a country is strong or feeble depends on many aspects but the leader with sapience and characteristics of a statesman plays the main role. As is said, ¡§soldiers moves around their general¡¨, a leader constantly creates environments, then the people become accustomed in the district and go with his action as the leader go along with the timely opportunity, topographical advantage and social harmony. Lee Kuan Yew and his elitist cadres established the stable foundation for burgeoning by means of subjugating, candid, sagacious and practical leading style. We can examine the political leadership manner of Lee Kuan Yew carefully¡HHow he exert the leadership ability to confront challenge, break through predicament, overcome troubles and finally win the victory, shows boldness, intelligent resolution, braveness of a statesman everywhere. Anyway we can learn much more from Lee Kuan Yew.

Through comparative and qualitative research method, this dissertation first analyzes the individual values in political freedom and equality emphasized by modern Western individualism, will further discuss collective consciousness in the form of emotional and moral achievements as emphasized by traditional Chinese Confucianism as comparative reference basis and finally lists common grounds and differences between these two. This dissertation researches political thought and philosophy, mainly aiming at the political objectives of argument foundations, essential connotations and achievements in traditional Chinese political thought, illuminates collective sentiment thinking and will analyze and explain the reasons for a lack of Western individualism in traditional Chinese political thought, caused by the environmental conditions created by that thinking. The author hopes to be able to offer a comparison of nature and characteristics of Chinese and Western culture and thinking and a few answers and explanations regarding the problems the Chinese society is facing since it encountered and started to learn from Western democratic political systems more than 100 years ago.

This thesis looks at the understanding of Chinese and Western cultures within the academic working environment of internationalised higher education, and the influence on their working relationships. This research takes an interpretivist, qualitative approach. It is based on four different organisational contexts of internationalised higher education in Mainland China, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. The four organisational contexts include a Chinese case, a Collaborative case, a Colonialism case and a British case. Qualitative interview data were collected from seventy Chinese and Western academic staff. The research examines academic staff s interpretation of Western (Hofstede s cultural dimensions) and Chinese cultural values (Guanxi, Mianzi and Harmony). The key findings are Guanxi, Mianzi and Harmony are closely related to Hofstede s cultural dimensions. Particularly, with the support of the Chinese Yin-Yang theory, it demonstrates that Hofstede s bipolar cultural dimensions are not sufficient to explain the Chinese culture. The findings also show that Western expatriate academics have stronger cultural sensitivity than the Chinese indigenous academics. Furthermore, the findings show that the organisational context has a stronger impact than the national one on employees cultural understanding and working relationships. Based on the findings, practical implications are discussed as well as limitations and recommendations for future research.

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / Chinese / Master / Master of Philosophy

This master thesis aims to put an abstract view on culture and leadership in China considering the context of a Chinese society, which is adapting and transforming within the age of globalization and a rapid economic development. The goal of our research is to investigate on influences, trends and manifestations, which help to characterize the foundation and exercise of leadership in China. In order to be able to answers our research questions, we travelled for six weeks to China to conduct in-depth interviews with 15 Chinese leaders in Shanghai and Beijing in order to draw conclusion from the utterances we were able to grasp. Many researchers try to oversimplify the Chinese culture and society as well as its approach to leadership. For this reason we tried to underline the complexity of conducting business in China, and what factors need to be taken into consideration in order to have a successful encounter. The key findings of our thesis are that it is hard to simplify the phenomenon leadership in China, since it highly depends upon the observed company, and also the generation of the leader or follower one is dealing with. Furthermore, it is important to keep in mind the complex and rich culture of China, which goes several hundreds of years and has still a huge impact on behavior of today’s Chinese.

This thesis is an in-depth analysis of beauty ideals in South Korea and India. These two countries have recently turned to skin lightening and cosmetic surgery in order to achieve their new beauty standards. Not only do these two countries share a propensity for those two trends, but they also have an overwhelming majority of the population that identifies with a specific religion; Hinduism in the case of India and Confucianism in the case of South Korea. However, it is not clear that the current beauty ideal in each country aligns with the beauty ideal set out in the respective foundational religion.