How Authoritarian Leadership Affects Employee's Helping Behavior? The Mediating Role of Rumination and Moderating Role of Psychological Ownership

Abstract

Interpersonal helping behaviors, i.e., voluntarily assisting colleagues for their workplace related problems, have received immense amount of scholarly attention due to their significant impacts on organizational effectiveness. Among several other factors, authoritarian leadership style could influence helping behavior within organizations. Furthermore, this relationship could be mediated by workplace stressor such as rumination, known as a critical psychological health component leading to depressive symptoms, hopelessness and pessimism. In the meantime, less research attention has devoted to probe the crucial role of psychological ownership, which can buffer the adverse effects of authoritarian leadership upon rumination. Building on conservation of resources theory, this study investigates the adverse impacts of authoritarian leadership on employees' helping behaviors through mediating role of rumination, and also examines the moderating effect of psychological ownership between the relationship of authoritarian leadership and rumination. The data were collected from 264 employees in education and banking sectors and the results show: (i) authoritarian leadership has adverse impacts on helping behavior, (ii) rumination mediates the relationship between authoritarian leadership and employees' helping behaviors, and (iii) psychological ownership moderates the positive relationship between authoritarian leadership and rumination. This study concludes that authoritarian leadership has adverse impacts upon helping behavior, which needs to be controlled/minimized. The findings are of great significance for managers, employees, and organizations in terms of policy implications. The limitations and future research directions are also discussed.

The influence of social capital on knowledge sharing: the moderated mediator of perceived supervisor support and psychological ownership

“…Such perceptions evoke employees to voluntarily exert prosocial behaviors, such as knowledge sharing (Kurtessis et al, 2017). Asim et al (2021) offered an example in which psychological ownership buffers the negative impact of authoritarian leadership on employees' helping behavior via rumination. Similarly, Islam et al (2022) examined the moderated mediating effect of psychological ownership on knowledge hiding.…”

Effects of Ambidextrous Leadership on Employees’ Work Behavior: The Mediating Role of Psychological Empowerment

“…This leadership style is prevalent in collectivist and hierarchical cultures ( Tian and Sanchez, 2017 ) and has both cultural origins and potential for development in China ( Zhang et al, 2018 ). The main characteristics of authoritarian leadership is the emphasis on absolute authority and control of the leader and the absolute obedience of employees, as well as extremely high requirements for employees’ performance ( Farh and Cheng, 2000 ; Jiang et al, 2017 ; Wang and Guan, 2018 ; Asim et al, 2021 ).…”

Relationship of abusive supervision and employees’ helping behaviors: moderated-mediation perspective

“…Leadership styles and behaviors are widely acknowledged in shaping employees’ behaviors (Yukl, 2010). Previous literature highlighted the importance of leadership styles on discretionary behaviors (Asim et al , 2021; Islam et al , 2021). For example, positive leadership styles like transformational leadership and appreciative leadership can enhance employees’ discretionary behaviors (Liu and DeFrank, 2013; Asim et al , 2022), but negative leadership styles negatively affect discretionary behaviors such as organizational citizenship behaviors (Zhang and Xie, 2017).…”