Even Baekbum Kim Koo can be described as one of the most outstanding leaders in Korean history, leadership researches of Kim Koo have been hardly performed in the field of management. The reasons why many researches on Kim Koo have leaned on both his...
Even Baekbum Kim Koo can be described as one of the most outstanding leaders in Korean history, leadership researches of Kim Koo have been hardly performed in the field of management. The reasons why many researches on Kim Koo have leaned on both historical and political sciences and have not interested in them seems that management scholars used to select research subjects only in business organizations and profit-oriented enterprises but placed too much emphasis on them. If it is possible to study and analyze Baebum''s leadership traits and behaviors by integrating diverse leadership theories, it is not so difficult to get various and in-depth leadership implications for business leaders in modern organizations.
It may have lots of problems to analyze Korean leaders'' all-too-Korean leadership phenomena with western leadership theories while an individual leadership can be affected directly and/or indirectly by the values and cultures where the individual belongs to. Therefore, it doesn''t seem to be effective to study Baekbum''s leadership only with one or two western leadership theories but it is needed to explore Baekbum''s leadership dimension in the view of Korean cultural values as well as to access toward western leadership views . Therefore, this study is to analyze Baekbum''s leadership and to explore the possibility to construct Korean leadership model reflected on Korean values further.
The purposes are to analyze Baekbums'' leadership by itself based on many traditional and modern leadership theories; to analyze Baekbum''s leadership in the common view of the Korean style leadership; to suggest and encourage a leadership model for the Korean and many implications for CEOs in recent business organizations.
This study has some problems to use common research methodologies as follows; Baekbum is not alive, however, his consciousness, behavior, and even achievements are to be conducted as the research subjects. In addition, this study is an exploratory research with less preceding researches. Therefore, this study uses a qualitative research method not a quantitative(experimental) research method in order to analyze Baekbum''s leadership using Baekbums'' journal(Baekbum Ilji), research material concerned with Baekbum''s life or historical and a lot of Baekbum-concerned lawsuit cases. According to connoisseurship, for this leadership research on Baekbum, many information were collected and supplemented through interviews and surveys by many experts and researchers who have been interested in Baekbum for a long time.
Baekbum lived in and grew up together with Confucianism and Korean cultural values, and especially he understood the importance of being righteousness which he had learned from his mentor, a Confucian scholar. When his early days, Baekbum participated in raising an Army in the Cause of Justice(Euibyung) and formed his own leadership style through many useful and inspiring experiences as a leader.
Baekbum''s leadership behaviors can be described both human-oriented and performance-oriented and even noble-cause-oriented. Baekbum''s leadership characteristics, which are Consideration and supportiveness, courage and determination, sacrifice and service, were all focused on Koreans'' national independence and unification, and on his country''s continuous development in the end. It is accomplishment of his original intention (noble-cause- oriented) that makes Baekbum''s leadership purely different from many other human-oriented- leaders who were also a great performers.
Results revealed that Baekbum''s leadership can be explained with western leadership theories but it should be ahead of understanding Korean cultural values in order to explain lucidly his leadership styles. This study can be said to make a significant contribution to derive a decent Korean leadership model. But it has some limitation to make a general conclusion with this research analysis results on Baekbum''s leadership. Future studies will need to be executed by focusing the lives of many Korean leaders, and it is also to explore the reasons and effectiveness of formation of the Korean leadership.