Moral or Authoritative Leadership: Which One is Better for Faculty Members?

Abstract

While much has been written and empirically researched about leadership style, little effort has been made to make out what constitutes successful and effective leadership for university teachers of Pakistan. Paternalistic leadership is a promising body of research that has been tailored to the Pakistani context in this study. The research focuses on the impact of two most important dimensions of paternalistic leadership on the commitment and organization citizenship behavior of university teachers of Pakistan. A questionnaire was used in this research to survey the relationship among moral and authoritative leadership behaviors, organization citizenship behavior and organization commitment. Data was obtained from 798 faculty members from thirteen public sector universities of Pakistan. We found that: (i) morality increased teacher’s affective and continuance organization commitment, whereas authoritarianism negatively influenced the affective commitment; and (ii) morality positively affected the organization citizenship behavior and authoritarian paternalistic leadership negatively affected citizenship behavior.