Utilizing Printed Media to Understand Desired Leadership Attributes in the People's Republic of China

Using news media as a reliable source, we content analyzed stories on business leaders in two major official Chinese newspapers in three different time periods over the past 20 years. Results show that the reform has brought an increase in stories of business leaders, and in coverage of the desirable leadership attributes relating to Confucian virtues, communist ideologies, and modern management philophies. The results suggest that, by publicizing and adorning specific leaders in both government and business sectors in the official media, the government reinforces the traditional values that are consistent with communist ideologies, and at the same time, it also introduces Western management values to suit the current needs of the society. The results of our study echo the findings of empirical studies on Chinese values that used data collected using other methods. We therefore encourage future research to use the printed media as a potentially valuable source of data for tracking changes in social phenomena in a society over time.

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