Background. China is one of the most attractive investment destinations for the biggest global automotive players, and Lean Manufacturing (LM) is their most established business improvement methodology enhancing the automotive industry's performance. Despite intensive investments in LM, the automotive industry is still not able to employ Lean philosophy effectively at Chinese locations.
Research aims. Theoretical and empirical questions arise on how to improve the situation in terms of Lean Manufacturing performance at Chinese locations. Thus, in the paper, we pose that if we assume leadership is the crucial enabler in LM implementation, there is an urgent need to address the conditions of Chinese leadership.
Method. Basing on the content analysis of existing job offers we estimated the alignments of demands of the job posed by the unique context of Chinese culture with the profiles of candidates that are mostly wanted.
Key findings. The content analysis revealed that in job offers there is an underestimation of cultural intelligence skills. The aforementioned analysis led us to the proposition of how to improve leadership in China by introducing a model of Chinese leadership center development denoted as a “China Lean Center”. The Center can be used by practitioners to develop in-house skillful and culturally aware leaders in order to enable successful implementation of LM at Chinese locations.

Background. China is one of the most attractive investment destinations for the biggest global automotive players, and Lean Manufacturing (LM) is their most established business improvement methodology enhancing the automotive industry's performance. Despite intensive investments in LM, the automotive industry is still not able to employ Lean philosophy effectively at Chinese locations.
Research aims. Theoretical and empirical questions arise on how to improve the situation in terms of Lean Manufacturing performance at Chinese locations. Thus, in the paper, we pose that if we assume leadership is the crucial enabler in LM implementation, there is an urgent need to address the conditions of Chinese leadership.
Method. Basing on the content analysis of existing job offers we estimated the alignments of demands of the job posed by the unique context of Chinese culture with the profiles of candidates that are mostly wanted.
Key findings. The content analysis revealed that in job offers there is an underestimation of cultural intelligence skills. The aforementioned analysis led us to the proposition of how to improve leadership in China by introducing a model of Chinese leadership center development denoted as a “China Lean Center”. The Center can be used by practitioners to develop in-house skillful and culturally aware leaders in order to enable successful implementation of LM at Chinese locations.