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Authority and Benevolence: the Confucian Recipe for Industrial Success*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Extract

I ONCE PERSUADED MYSELF THAT I COULD DISTINGUISH AT least seven different meanings of the term ‘individualism’ but I shall mention here only two. The fust is individualism in contradistinction to spiritual and emotional identification with a group. The second is individualism in contradistinction to dependence on some individual other, or others, who are in some sense deemed superior. One of my themes today is the interaction between the two: between self-assertion vis-à-vis the group, and self-assertion vis-à-vis established authority, and what this tells us about the way industrial concerns can be or ought to be organized in modern societies.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1985

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References

1 Wolf, Marvin J., A Japanese Conspiracy: A stunning analysis of the international trade war, Sevenoaks, New English Library, 1984.Google Scholar

2 Johnson, R. and Ouchi, W., ‘Made in America (Under Japanese Management)’, Harvard Business Review, Sept‐Oct 1974.Google Scholar

3 Hayashi, C. et al, Daiyon Nihonjin no kokuminsei, Tokyo, 1981.Google Scholar

4 See, for example, Barrington Moore, W. jnr. Injustice: the social bases of obedience and revolt, White Plains, NY,M. E. Sharpe, 1978, p. 438.CrossRefGoogle Scholar An Italian moral philosopher was saying much the same thing in a worried survey of the collapse of authority in Europe a century earlier: Bufalini, M., ‘Sull’autorità considerata come forza morale necessaria all’ordine ed alla felicità del umano consorzio’, Atti dell’ l e R Ateneo Italiano, Florence, 05 1857.Google Scholar

5 White, M. and Trevor, M., Under Japanese Management, London, Heinemann, 1983.Google Scholar

6 See, e.g., Shichihei, Yamamoto, Rongo no yomikata, (How to read the Analects), Tokyo, Shodensha, 1981, p. 18.Google Scholar