Distributed leadership and Sunzi’s Art of Warfare

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the prominent critiques of distributed leadership and offers an alternative leadership approach. Focussing on the criticisms of limited empowerment and abuses of power in distributed leadership, this study turns to an ancient Chinese classic, Sunzi’s Art of Warfare (Sunzi Bingfa). Sunzi posits that leadership is distributed in accordance with shi (strategic advantage), and is manifested through the principle of contextual noninterference, as well as moral personhood and management. Rejecting the dominant understanding of power as tied to one’s position and is a zero-sum game, power in shi is circumstantial, dynamic and changeable. The ideal leader, according to Sunzi, eschews misrule by modeling virtue and empowering others to collectively promote the well-being of the people. The paper further recommends that school leaders enact contextual noninterference by knowing the environments, and cultivate moral personhood and management by knowing oneself and others.

Acknowledgement

The author is grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their detailed and insightful comments toan earlier draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Declaration

• Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.

• No potential competing interest was reported by the author.

• The author did not receive support from any organization for the submitted work.

• The author has no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

• This is a theoretical paper that does not involve human participants and/or animals. There is no empirical data associated with this paper.

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Charlene Tan

Charlene Tan, PhD, is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong. A former high school teacher, she has published widely in the fields of ancient Chinese philosophy and educational leadership.