Research Paper

Introduction

   

“Gordian knot” is one of the famous episodes of Alexander the Greats, which shows his wisdom and quick-witted tact. The legendary of Gordian knot is following. At Gordium (the capital of ancient Phrygia) there was an ancient wagon and its yoke was lashed to a pole whose ends were hidden. According to legend it could only be loosed by the future conqueror of Asia. Alexander tried to untie it. When he failed, he pulled out his sword and cut it in two. (Cawthorne 24) Thunder and lightning that night was interpreted as a sign of pleasure from the gods, helping spread the story around the Europe, which remains in English cliché today “Cutting the Gordian knot” (Bose 125). J.M. O’Brien commented that “There is no question that Alexander possessed extraordinary powers of concentration and responded to "impossible" challenges with exceptional insight” (69).

Leadership is essential for various situations today not limited to a country's monarchy. It is especially prominent in business and many leaders lead their companies and expand their business such as Bill Gates of Microsoft and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. It seems there is a great difference between us and the king of the emperor who lived more than two thousand years ago. We can learn, however, much about leadership from Alexander the Great and apply strategies to our way of solving various problems we faced.

The purpose of this paper is to try to apply Alexander’s leadership to our way of dealing problems, organizing our teams and creating image of a leader especially in business. It will first show history and background at him and his age where his leadership grew up. It will then reveal how Alexander exercised his leadership especially at these three point- solving problems he is faced by thinking about it from different point of view, organizing a team and creating consciousness of solidarity among the members, and creating good image of a leader by using symbols. Finally it will try to analyze his leadership and apply his strategies to business scenes in practical ways.

Historical Background

Macedonia was the ancient kingdom that was established about the middle the seventh
century B.C. (Errington 2) and once conquered 90 percent of the historically known areas at that time under the reign of Alexander (Kurke 4). Its land is well suited to pastoral and agricultural activities and mountains of it are appropriate for stock raising and can provide abundant supply of wood (Borza51). Macedonia seemed blessed with a good environment for maintaining life. It was once, however, it was a mere marginal state on the northern edge of the Greek world and a target of continual attacks from its neighbors by the time of Philip II (359-336 B.C.)
(Errington 1-2). He succeeded in conquering Greek and built the foundation of prosperity of Macedonia which was succeeded to his son, Alexander.

   Alexander was born in July 356 B.C. as the eldest of Phillip’s sons. He was just under 20 years when he took the throne on the death of his father in 336. (Chesire v). After he crowned, he soon planned to set about the work that Philip II was fail to accomplish-the conquest of Persian Empire. It was under the reign of Darius III, who ascended to the throne in the same year as Alexander coincidentally.  He started invading into Asia Minor in 334 intending to subdue whole Asia (Cummings 123). The first victory over Persian was the Battle of the Granicus fought on the banks of the Granicus river (Bennett 132). In 333, he won against the Darius’s  70,000 troops with his 40,000 troops on the Gulf of Issus (Sacks and Oswyn 23). He proceeded to procession and ruled Syria. Then he moved to  Egypt later in 332 and founded Alexandria in the next year. In 331, he defeated Darius’s troops again at Gaugamela (Cheshire 70), which determined the fall of Persian Empire.  After he finally succeed to rule the former areas of Persian Empire, he launched  Indian campaign.  It is usually interpreted as Alexander’s desire to conquer the entire known world because the world is ended in India in Greek thought (Wikipedian 161 ) Finally, however, he gave up pushing on over the Indus River because his subordinates refused to follow him (Bradbury 76). Alexander the Great's umpire was at its peak- 2 million square miles. It stretched from Greece all the way to India (Skelton and Pamela51)