Social action as ‘a total social phenomenon’: Comparing leadership challenges facing community-based labour organizations in China and Japan

Abstract

This article seeks to address an empirical puzzle: ‘why do community-based labour organizations (CLOs) in China and Japan play a similarly marginal role in facilitating social change, despite drastic differences in national circumstances?’ Theoretically, special importance is given to a cross-disciplinary approach that combines anthropology and business and management perspectives. Methodologically, the comparative study draws on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews to explore how leadership activism is embedded in and shaped by an intricately interwoven web of political, economic and cultural forces, what anthropologists refer to as ‘a total social phenomenon’. The findings highlight a series of agential and structural challenges, especially those arising from the tension between culture and social institutions. More generally, the work contributes to an alternative, critical understanding of leadership.