Abstract
Paternalistic leadership (PL) is prevalent in organizations in East Asia, but few studies have examined its potential effects in school contexts. This study explored the relationship between PL, trust in the principal, and teachers’ satisfaction and commitment to students, with a focus on the mediating role of trust in the principal in Chinese schools. Using a quantitative method, the study investigated 408 primary schoolteachers in mainland China. The results showed that the three dimensions of PL had different effects on teachers’ job satisfaction, trust in the principal, and commitment to students. Moral leadership had positive effects, while authoritarian leadership had negative effects on teachers’ job satisfaction and commitment to students. Meanwhile, trust in the principal played a mediating role of authoritarian and moral leadership on teachers’ job satisfaction and commitment to students. Finally, implications and suggestions are discussed for leadership practices in Chinese schools and those in similar cultures.
Highlights
In the past several decades, leadership has played a key role in influencing student learning and school improvement (Day et al, 2011; Hallinger, 2011; Leithwood et al, 2017)
The field of school leadership was dominated by leadership styles that originated in Anglo-American contexts such as instructional leadership and transformational leadership (Hallinger, 2011; Walker and Qian, 2018a)
The study focuses on Paternalistic leadership (PL), a contextspecific leadership style in Chinese contexts
Summary
In the past several decades, leadership has played a key role in influencing student learning and school improvement (Day et al, 2011; Hallinger, 2011; Leithwood et al, 2017). Since the 2000s, researchers have consistently argued that successful leadership practices can hardly escape from cultural contexts (Hallinger, 2011; Leithwood et al, 2017; Walker and Qian, 2018b). Emerging studies have focused on different leadership practices across different cultures, to develop a more international, comparative, and contextually bounded scholarship (Mertkan et al, 2017). Among these studies focusing on nonWestern contexts, paternalistic leadership (PL) has captured much attention, as it is a prevalent leadership style but often ignored in research on educational leadership (Jackson, 2016; Bedi, 2019). Even though the concept of PL was originally described in Chinese firms, scholars
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