Affective Trust in Chinese Leaders

In leadership research, Western leaderships are quite dominant while insufficient attention has been paid to Eastern leaderships, including Chinese leadership. Paternalistic leadership, an indigenous Chinese leadership, is prevalent in Chinese society given that it has been bounded by the cultural tradition. Yet, it is necessary to further explore the divergent influencing mechanisms of paternalistic leadership in Mainland China. The primary objective of this research was to replicate and empirically test a model on paternalistic leadership and in-role/extra-role performance by using trust-in-supervisor as the mediating variable. With the data of 239 supervisor–subordinate dyads collected from a textile firm in Mainland China, we conducted statistic analysis of structural equation modelling, multi-level analysis and so on by applying Amos 5.0 and SPSS 12.0. The results showed that trust-in-supervisor completely mediated the relationship between supervisors' authoritarian leadership and subordinate's in-role/extra-role performance, and trust-in-supervisor completely mediated the relationship between supervisors' moral leadership and subordinate's in-role/extra-role performance, whereas trust did not mediate the relationship between supervisors' benevolent leadership and subordinate's in-role/extra-role performance. Overall, by investigating the influencing mechanisms of the three elements of paternalistic leadership in the Chinese context, the current research not only adds a cultural perspective to paternalistic leadership literature but also advances our knowledge of the underlying psychological processes that paternalistic leadership works. The research confirms that paternalistic leadership is applicable in the context of business organizations in Mainland China. Since prior research has provided little theoretical guidance on the effect of paternalistic leadership on performance, this research contributes to the literature by identifying and examining the social exchange and social identity mechanisms of trust-in-supervisor. It highlights the great significance of trust-in-supervisor in explaining paternalistic leader effectiveness and leader–employee relationships in Mainland China. It explains how the three elements of paternalistic leadership have the differential effects upon subordinate's trust-in-supervisor, and it provides some cultural insights on paternalistic leadership. The results of the current research also shed light on how practicing managers may foster appropriate leadership styles in order to facilitate subordinates' in-role/extra-role performance. The results indicate that moral leadership and benevolence leadership are positively related to trust-in-supervisor, while authoritarian leadership is negatively related to trust-in-supervisor. Hence, supervisors who wish to obtain subordinates' trust and trigger their motivation would better abandon authoritarian leadership and adopt moral leadership and benevolent leadership instead. When subordinates have unsatisfactory in-role performance and extra-role performance, supervisors need to look into the details for the solutions, especially, in the areas of ‘trustworthiness’ and ‘paternalistic leadership’. In addition, human-oriented human resource practice is advocated, and leadership programme could be developed accordingly for business organizations in Mainland China. This research also highlights the fact that further research should be conducted in order to advance our knowledge of paternalistic leadership.

The Impact of Middle and Senior Leadership Styles on Employee Performance -- Evidence From Chinese Enterprises

Purpose The current study aims to explore the three dimensions of paternalistic leadership (i.e. moral leadership, benevolent leadership and authoritarian leadership) and their dual pathways of positive and negative influences on employees’ organizational citizenship behavior through the two aspects of trust (i.e. cognitive and affective trust). Design/methodology/approach Given that trust is pertinent in any human relationship, especially in Asian countries where bonding plays an important role, the current study investigated the relationship of each leadership style within paternalistic leadership on employees’ cognitive and affective trust in their leaders, employees’ organizational citizenship behavior and the processes involved. The current study employed a cross-sectional multilevel approach with 435 employees from 85 workgroups participating in the study. Findings As hypothesized, benevolent and moral leadership styles (but not the authoritarian leadership style) had a positive effect on employees’ cognitive and affective trust in their leaders and on employees’ organizational citizenship behavior. Cognitive and affective trust also mediated the relationships of benevolent and moral leadership styles with organizational citizenship behavior. Originality/value The study’s findings urge practitioners and human resources personnel to be aware of the dual effects that a paternalistic leader has on employees. To be specific, benevolent and moral leadership styles are conducive to employees’ work outcomes, whereas the authoritarian leadership style has a non-significant role in employees’ work outcomes.

PurposeAuthority leadership (AL) is one of the most distinctive dimensions of paternalistic leadership (PL), and it is recognized that PL is the most common leader behavior in the Chinese organizational context. Although considerable state‐of‐the‐art research work regarding the concept and dimensions of AL has been done, extensive empirical studies based on using the data from both individual and team levels to examine the effectiveness from the values viewpoint, e.g. Collectivism, attract little attention. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between AL and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). To address this issue, the role of collectivism to analyze the relationship between AL and OCB, at both individual and team levels in the Chinese organizational context, is explored.Design/methodology/approachThis paper focuses on analyzing the role of collectivism in the relationship between AL and OCB. To this end, the authors draw on a sample set of 320 supervisor‐subordinate dyads from 32 branches of a beauty chain shop in the cities of Shenzhen and Zhuhai, China. After sending out questionnaires to 32 supervisors and 320 beauticians, 31 supervisors and 245 beauticians provided effective feedback. With the help of SPSS 17.0 statistical software, the data from the sample set are analyzed rather than self‐reported. Furthermore, the authors study the relationship between AL and OCB, the mediating effect, and the moderating role of collectivism, respectively.FindingsThe findings of this paper can be described from two levels. At the individual level, AL positively influences employee's OCB through the mediating effect of collectivism; and collectivism is capable of moderating the main effect. At the team level: AL positively influences Team OCB (TOCB) through the mediating effect of Team Collectivism (TC); and TC also moderates the main effect.Research limitations/implicationsDue to space limitations, the authors only consider the effect of collectivism; other dimensions of values which may have similar effect to the mechanism of the relationship between AL and OCB are not taken into account.Originality/valueThe paper shows that both AL and collectivism enhance OCB, and collectivism is the moderator of the relationship between AL and OCB. Since the moderating effect mechanism is different between individual and team levels, there should be more focus on AL and values. It is expected that the obtained results are significant in both theory and practice for the Chinese leadership research and application. Moreover, the paper presents some comments on the implication of this work and future research issues.

The essential characteristic of servant leadership is serving first, which transcends any other leadership behaviors of organizational benefits first. However, the relevant research in Chinese organizational context is not enough. This research explored the construct of servant leadership and developed a measure of servant leadership in Chinese context with qualitative method and quantitative method. This research also examined the effectiveness of servant leadership with the techniques of structural equation model and hierarchical regression analysis dealing with the longitudinal data from paired supervisor-subordinate. Three studies were included:(1) The construct and measurement of servant leadership;(2) the longitudinal research of the effectiveness of servant leadership based on the perspective of comparing leadership behaviors; and(3) the longitudinal research of the effectiveness of servant leadership based on the perspective of influencing mechanism. The results are helpful to clarify the connotation and dimensions of servant leadership, recognize and measure servant leadership behavior, and examine the effectiveness of servant leadership. The results also compare the effects of servant leadership on team's and employee's performance with the ones of paternalistic leadership and transformational leadership, and reveal the mediating mechanism between servant leadership and team's and employee's performance.

We examined subordinates' attitudes and behaviors in response to moral and authoritarian components of direct leaders' and higher-level leaders' paternalistic leadership style. We developed 8 hypotheses and tested them with data collected from staff at 15 general hospitals located in Mainland China. The final nested sample consisted of 2,365 general employees, 270 direct leaders, and 15 higher-level leaders. The results were as follows: (a) direct leaders' moral leadership had a positive impact on employees' affective trust in their direct leaders, and direct leaders' authoritarian leadership had a negative impact on employees' affective trust in their direct leaders, (b) both moral leadership and authoritarian leadership of direct leaders had positive impacts on employees' personal initiative, and (c) higher-level leaders' moral leadership had a positive moderating effect on only the relationship between direct leaders' moral leadership and employees' personal initiative. The findings shed light on the effect of multilevel paternalistic leadership on subordinates' attitude and behavior, and will inspire managers to coordinate multilevel paternalistic leadership to achieve more positive outcomes.

PurposeIntegrating the pathway model of meaningful work and the intrinsic motivation principle of creativity, the authors investigate why, when and how paternalistic leadership relates to employee creativity in the Chinese organizational context. The authors suggest that the meaning of work (MOW) mediates the relationship between paternalistic leadership and employee creativity. The authors further identify perspective taking as a moderator in the mediated relationship for the path from MOW to creativity.Design/methodology/approachThe authors relied on a sample of 340 employee-supervisor dyads collected from multiple organizations located in Eastern China to test the study hypotheses.FindingsResults indicated that MOW mediated the positive relationships between the benevolence and morality dimensions of paternalistic leadership and employee creativity, and the negative relationship between the authoritarianism dimension of paternalistic leadership and employee creativity. Further, the indirect relationships between the three dimensions of paternalistic leadership (i.e. authoritarianism, benevolence and morality) and employee creativity through MOW were more pronounced when perspective taking was higher rather than lower.Originality/valueThrough a meaning-based perspective, the authors demonstrate that a culture-specific managerial philosophy (i.e. paternalistic leadership) shapes Chinese employees' perceptions of meaningful work and their subsequent creative performance. This paper complements the dominant focus on Western leadership in the creativity literature and denotes that paternalistic leadership matters for employee creativity in Chinese organizations.

Leadership has attracted a significant amount of scholarly attention in the past few decades. However, most research and theory contributions are to a great extent limited to accounting for leadership practices in the West (Littrell, 2002). This study is designed to develop an effective leadership model that works in the Chinese context. Paternalistic leadership, a dominant leadership style in an Eastern business environment, is compared with transformational leadership, a dominant leadership style in a Western business environment. The notion of transformational leadership was developed under the tutelage of Bernard Bass (1998). Transformational leadership is found to be compatible with collectivistic values (Walumbwa & Lwwler, 2003) and is believed to be appealing and generalizable to Chinese leadership situations (Chen & Farh, 1999). Other researchers have found that within Chinese organizations, leader behaviors are quite distinct from transformational leadership, referring to this leader style as paternalistic leadership (Redding, 1990; Cheng, 1995). The questions are asked, “Transformational or paternalistic leadership, which one is more effective in Chinese organizations? Is one type of leadership superior to the other one in the Chinese culture?” To answer these questions, a model is proposed to clarify the mediating effects of trust and harmony on the relationship between leadership style and its effectiveness, and to interpret the moderating effects of generation on the relationships between both paternalistic and transformational leadership with trust and harmony. Most theories of leadership in organizational behavior originated in the United States and Western Europe and are hypothesized to be universally applicable to non-Western contexts. Departing from this tradition, the current study proposes a Chinese culture-specific leadership theory, built on traditional Confucianism. The principle aim is to examine and articulate a culturally informed and warranted ground for a leadership model in the Chinese context. The results of the study provide a new perspective on leadership in the Chinese context by focusing on three dimensions of paternalistic leadership (authoritative, benevolent, and moral leadership) that are ignored in the Western leadership literature. The results also suggest that trust in the leader and harmonious relationships in an organization are key mechanisms for explaining effective leadership in Chinese organizations regardless of whether paternalistic or transformational leadership is used. What’s more, as the younger generation is becoming the dominant workforce, a successful leader in China should use Western practices and integrate them to fit in Chinese organizations in a way that also acknowledges Chinese traditions.

PurposeIn the background of the post-financial crisis era and the transition of China’s economic development, the frequent occurrence of workplace deviant behavior in the economic field, such as stealing and bribery, caused a huge impact on the enterprise. In recent years, the deviant behavior of employees has been increased noticeably. The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of paternalistic leadership on employee deviant behavior in workplace. To have a deep understanding of the relationship between paternalistic leadership and employee deviant behavior, the author’s design rule-oriented ethical climate and self-interest-oriented ethical climate as two mediators in this research model.Design/methodology/approachBased on social learning theory and stressor-emotion model, this study conducts an investigation of influence mechanism between paternalistic leadership and workplace deviant behavior. Time-lagged data was collected from 226 employees from six cities in China. To test the hypothesis that the authors developed in this paper, the authors use empirical models from the existing literature about paternalistic leadership on employee deviant behavior. They establish multiple linear regressions to test the hypotheses.FindingsThis study reveals the direct effect of authoritarian leadership on employee deviant behavior and the moderated roles of benevolent leadership and moral leadership, also analysis the mediated mechanism of self-interest-oriented ethical climate and rule-oriented ethical climate. The results show that the higher the degree of authority leaders show in the organization, the easier to stimulate workplace deviance of employee, self-interest-oriented ethical climate and rule-oriented ethical climate play mediated role between authoritarian leadership and workplace deviant behavior. The interaction of benevolent leadership and moral leadership with authoritarian leadership can weaken the self-interest-oriented ethical climate but has nothing to do with rule-oriented ethical climate.Originality/valueThis study has three main contributions to the previous literature. First, this study explores the relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee workplace deviance, which could enrich the research on these negative behaviors in the Chinese context. Second, this study unpacks the “black box” in which authoritarian leadership influences employee workplace deviant behavior. Third, this study further examines the impacts of different combinations of the three factors of paternalistic leadership.

ABSTRACTIn this article, we propose that types of CEO paternalistic leadership will affect the effectiveness of top management team (TMT) decisions, and that team conflict will play a mediating role in the relationship between CEO paternalistic leadership and decision effectiveness in the Chinese context. Data collected from 108 TMTs in China suggest that dimensions of paternalistic leadership significantly affect decision effectiveness: benevolent and moral leadership positively affect TMT decision effectiveness, but authoritarian leadership has negative effects on TMT decision effectiveness. In addition, cognitive and affective team conflicts partially mediate the links between paternalistic leadership types and decision effectiveness. The results suggest that CEO paternalistic leadership approaches and conflict modes significantly determine TMT decision effectiveness.

Purpose This study examined the chain mediation relationship between different dimensions of paternalistic leadership (PL) and innovative work behavior (IWB) through trust in the leader (TIL) and employee voice behavior (VB). This study introduced the external locus of control (ELoC) as a boundary condition that moderates the link between PL and TIL. Design/methodology/approach This study used a questionnaire survey with a multi-source, dyadic design, collecting matched supervisor–subordinate data from 303 hospitality industry employees. Findings The findings suggest that PL has a significant relationship with TIL, and TIL has a positive relationship with employee VB and IWB. Furthermore, TIL and employee VB negatively serially mediate the relationship between authoritarian leadership (AL) and IWB. However, TIL and employee VB positively serially mediate the association between benevolent (BL) and moral leadership (ML) and IWB. This study also found that employee ELoC negatively moderated the relationship between AL and TIL, whereas it positively moderated the relationships between BL, ML and TIL. Practical implications This study suggests that leaders adopting ML and BL styles may be more effective in encouraging IWB at the workplace than those adopting AL styles. Organizations may screen and develop ML and BL to promote IWB, particularly those that maintain trust and encourage VB. Furthermore, when employees feel their voices are acknowledged, they are willing to take risks to engage in IWB, ultimately boosting employee and organizational performance in the long run. Originality/value This study highlights the significance of PL and its dimensions in promoting IWB through a serial mediation mechanism that characterizes TIL and employee VB. This study also revealed how managers may regulate TIL using an interaction between different dimensions of PL and ELoC.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to focus on how the three elements of paternalistic leadership – authoritarianism, benevolence and moral leadership – affect organizational innovation – both explorative and exploitative innovation – in Chinese enterprises. It also examines the moderating effect of environmental dynamism on the relationship between paternalistic leadership and organizational innovation.Design/methodology/approachData on 190 superior–subordinate dyads are collected using questionnaire surveys. The supervisors are recruited from the MBA program in a famous university in the city of Hefei, China, who are also asked to distribute subordinate questionnaires to their subordinates. The hierarchical regression analysis is conducted to test the hypotheses by using SPSS 22.0.FindingsThe analysis of 190 superior–subordinate dyads shows that benevolent and authoritarian leadership is positively related to exploratory innovation, while moral leadership has no significant impact on exploratory innovation. The results also reveal that all three elements of paternalistic leadership is, in general, positively correlated with exploitative innovation. Furthermore, environmental dynamism moderates the relationship between paternalistic leadership and innovation. In a dynamic environment, moral leadership has a stronger positive effect on innovation, but only on exploratory innovation; whereas authoritarian leadership exerts more detrimental effects on both exploratory and exploitative innovation.Originality/valueThe current work contributes to understanding the relationship between paternalistic leadership and innovation in the Chinese cultural context by examining the effects of the three elements of paternalistic leadership separately and by showing how these effects can be moderated by environmental dynamism.

道德型领导是新近提出的一种领导理论，大量研究证实这种领导方式会对员工和组织带来积极影响。然而，在领导过程中处于主体地位的领导者从中获得了什么收益却较少受到关注。以50个工作团队的248名员工为研究对象，本研究基于社会交换理论考察了道德型领导与个体层次和团队层次上领导者收益的关系及其作用过程。跨层次分析结果表明：（1）道德型领导对个体层次的员工对领导的认知信任和情感信任，以及团队层次的团队绩效和领导者绩效均有显著正向作用；（2）团队平均领导-部属交换中介了道德型领导与下属对领导者的认知信任、情感信任以及团队绩效的关系，但在道德型领导与领导者绩效关系间无显著中介作用。本文揭示了道德型领导者在领导过程中获得的“收益”以及团队层次社会交换的中介作用，为道德型领导和团队社会交换的研究提供了启示。

Most previous studies investigated the impact of paternalistic leadership and challenge stressor on employee's in-role performance in the individual level. In this study, we focused on the impact in group level. Data were collected from 208 employees within 35 research and design work teams of real estate company and architecture design institute in 7 cities of mainland China. Team paternalistic leadership and team challenge stressor were rated by employees whereas in-role performance was assessed by their immediate supervisors. We found that team paternalistic leadership had a cross-level positive effect on employee's in-role performance which was mediated by team challenge stressor. Specifically, in terms of three dimensions of team paternalistic leadership, only team benevolence leadership and team moral leadership showed indirect effects on employee's in-role performance mediated by team challenge stressor.

Leader Mindfulness and Employee Performance, and Wellbeing in Pakistani Firms: The Role of Interpersonal Justice, and Employee Stress, and LMX Quality