leadership; Christianity; Roman Empire; social identity; followership; moral authority; ethical leadership; values; vision; hierarchical structure
摘要
Leadership is one the most appealing and challenging area of interest and research field from time immemorial. In this thesis, we focus on leadership from a perspective which can be called historical-religious, as it consists in the study of the history of two of the greatest religions in the world: Chinese Buddhism and Christianity. In particular, for each religion we take into consideration a timespan which, for Chinese Buddhism stretches from 140 B.C. to 589 A.D., while for Christianity, the timespan goes from the first to the fourth century A.D. In these periods of time, both Chinese Buddhism and Christianity had to deal with two powerful empires, respectively the Chinese Empire and the Roman Empire. We consider history and religion as two promising fields where to find and study leadership. In this sense, the purpose of this thesis is that of providing a better understanding of the concept of leadership by applying modern theories of leadership to the history of Chinese Buddhism and Christianity.
