Whether and how authoritarian leadership and benevolent leadership affect the family satisfaction

Abstract

The extant studies on leadership are replete with employee performance outcomes. However, the literature remains quite silent on whether leadership effects transfer to employees’ family members and influence their family satisfaction. In the present study, we explore the crossover effects of the most prevalent leadership styles in high power distance and collectivist cultures—namely, authoritarian leadership and benevolent leadership—on the employees’ spouses family satisfaction. Based on conservation of resources theory, we suggest that employees’ work-family conflict mediates the relationship between authoritarian leadership and family satisfaction of employees’ spouses, whereas employees’ work-family facilitation mediates the relationship between benevolent leadership and family satisfaction of employees’ spouses. Additionally, we investigate spouses’ need for control as a moderator of the indirect effect of authoritarian leadership, which moderates the relationship between employees’ work-family conflict and spouses’ family satisfaction. We test these hypotheses using multiphase, employee-spouse dyads from 207 Chinese couples. The findings contribute to work-family research by illustrating that leadership could affect employees’ work-family interface and ultimately influence the family satisfaction of employee’s spouse.