Empowerment in the manager-employee relationship in Hong Kong : interdependence and controversy

M. Deutsch's (1949) theory of cooperation and competition may be usefully extended to the study of effective, empowering, managerial leadership in Chinese settings. Results of structural equation modeling and other analyses on data collected from interviews of Chinese managers and employees in Hong Kong indicated that cooperative goals contributed to constructive discussion between managers and employees and that such discussions, in turn, resulted in productive work and stronger work relationships. Cooperative goals and constructive controversy also predicted democratic leadership and the power of employees and managers. The results suggest that Chinese and North American managers may operationalize goals and controversy differently.