Zheng He's Art of Collaboration: Understanding the Legendary Chinese Admiral from a Management Perspective

8. Zheng He and His Faith: Implications for Management Practices

248 Chapter 8 ZHENG HE AND HIS FAITH Implications for Management Practices INTRODUCTION When we explore the existing literature on Zheng He and his grand voyages, it is difficult to miss the observation that Zheng He and his men were significantly involved in praying for divine help and protection. For example, in two of the few primary sources of writing on Zheng He, namely the Liujiagang and Changle inscriptions of 1431, much space were devoted to their invocation for divine protection and honouring of the “Heavenly Princess” or Tianfei — the goddess of sailors and seafarers. In fact, Zheng He and his associates also made mention of the religious buildings they had helped in: the repair of the halls of Buddhas and the temples of the gods, including making the statue of the goddess shine as though it were new. They also stated their resolve to do even more for their gods.1 To Zheng He then, his faith practices were therefore both prominent and real throughout his grand voyages. Perhaps it is not difficult for us to understand why. Once Zheng He and Zheng He and his Faith 249 his men were out in the open seas, his own vulnerability to the natural elements, and that of his tens of thousands of men, became helplessly obvious. Zheng He must have realized very quickly through such a sense of leadership loneliness that he needed to invoke divine help. At the same time, throughout his grand voyages, Zheng He would have encountered rulers and peoples of various nationalities, cultures and religions. Even his own crew comprised men of different religious faith and beliefs. These would no doubt have added to Zheng He’s sense of spiritual awareness, and the importance he attached to religious beliefs and practices. In today’s context, the relationship between religion and business appear to be a complex one.2 Any mention of the two elements together would tend to bring about a generally negative response from many. Indeed, most would think that the two should be kept separate and should never be mixed. To some extent, this is true as religion can pose real problems with regard to management of the company and its employees.3 And with today’s globalization, talents and skills are mobile across borders, and this would add to the personnel diversity and hence complexity in managing a multi-religious workforce. Yet in Zheng He’s context and experience, he seemed to have managed his faith practices and the emperor-decreed mission quite well. Zheng He seemed to be able to effectively deal with the potential problems associated with the different religious beliefs and practices of his crew who travelled with him. At the same time, his personal faith and those of his crew seemed to be an underlying contributory factor to his mission success in spreading goodwill and peace, and building collaborative ties with other countries and peoples. What can we learn from Zheng He and his faith practices? From our reading of the Zheng He faith-related literature, it is 250 Zheng He’s Art of Collaboration apparent to us that learning from Zheng He and his faith can take place at two levels: there is the individual level of personal faith and beliefs, and there is the corporate level of managing diverse faith and its associated practices. We therefore introduce in this chapter what we refer to as Zheng He’s PC model for managing religious beliefs and faith practices; to Zheng He, it was apparent that Personal Faith can be a Significant Plus for his sea-faring enterprise, while Corporate Inclusiveness is an Important Must for mission success. This chapter is therefore organized as follows. In the next section, we will provide a brief description of Zheng He’s personal faith through his family background and religious upbringing. Here, our focus is on Zheng He as a Muslim with a rich family Islamic faith heritage. We will then follow in the subsequent section where we will consider learning from Zheng He’s experiences on how Personal Faith can be a Significant Plus for any enterprise. Here, we will highlight Zheng He’s personal faith practices and conviction and how that shaped his leadership practices and added value to his overall mission. We will also similarly consider how the personal faith and beliefs of his crew contributed towards the success of Zheng He’s emperor-decreed mission. We...