The Influence Of Taoist Leadership And Zhong-Yong Leadership On Employee Green Behavior

The current society is facing three major problems,population explosion,environmental pollution and energy shortage,all of which pose a growing threat to the survival and development of human beings.Despite the remarkable social and economic achievements in the past four decades of reform and opening up in China,its economic progress is increasingly constrained by resources and environmental problems,as China is becoming the most polluted country in the world.In the report at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China(CPC),general secretary Xi Jinping again stressed the importance of building China into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous,strong,democratic,culturally advanced,harmonious,and beautiful by the middle of the century.The word "beautiful" was first considered the goal of the socialist modernization drive and written in the report of CPC Congress.The Report on the Work of the Government 2018 proposes to further pollution prevention and control,which is listed as one of the three major battles that are important for decisively bringing to completion the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects.Enterprises should take account of both the achievements of economic activities and responsibilities of maintaining and improving the ecological environment,and seriously solve relevant social problems.As the main body and cornerstone of enterprises,the employees,attitude toward environmental protection and eco-friendly behaviors plays an important role in promoting the sustainable development of enterprises.According to previous studies,leadership are directly related to employees'attitude and behavior,while the former is also influenced by culture.At present,there is little research on the employee green behavior in Chinese cultural context.Taoist culture and Confucian culture constitute the mainstream culture of Chinese traditional culture.The Zhong-yong Thinking can be said to be the quintessence of Chinese Confucian culture and one of the most influential theories.Based on a comprehensive study of the existing literature,the author of the study discusses the impacts of leadership on employee green behavior from the perspective of Taoist culture and Zhong-yong Thinking.The author conducted in-depth interviews with 21 senior and middle managers as well as employees of 8 units in Beijing which are related to environmental protection,and compiled the interview recordings into a text document of more of less 130,000 words.Through analysis and summary of the research data,it is concluded that three leadership factors affect the employee green behavior,including "governing by non-forcing" in the Taoist philosophy,"principle of moderateness" and "in perfect harmony" of the Zhong-yong Thinking.Combined with the analysis of the influencing factors,the author puts forward three measures to promote employee green behaviors.First,it is important to build an eco-friendly culture in enterprise with non-forcing management and to arouse employees' subjective activity.Second,it is necessary to establish a balanced decision-making concept and achieve a win-win goal.The third measure is to create a harmonious working atmosphere and a team of one heart and one mind.