Paternalistic leadership and subordinate responses: Establishing a leadership model in Chinese organizations

Abstract

Paternalistic leadership (PL) is the prevalent leadership style in Chinese business organizations. With an approach similar to patriarchy, PL entails an evident and powerful authority that shows consideration for subordinates with moral leadership. Although PL is widespread in Chinese business organizations, very few studies have focused on this leadership style and those that have were simply conceptual analyses and not empirical studies. We sampled 543 subordinates from local businesses in Taiwan to investigate PL, Western transformational leadership, and subordinate responses to these two leadership styles. Our hypotheses were as follows: (1) PL has a significant and unique effect on subordinate responses compared to Western transformational leadership; (2) there exists an interaction between the three elements of PL (benevolence, morality, and authoritarianism) and subordinate responses; and (3) the authority orientation of a subordinate's traditionality has a moderating effect upon the relation between PL and subordinate responses. Statistical analyses generally supported these hypotheses. Directions for follow‐up studies are offered and implications for leadership theory and practice are discussed.

The Relationship Between Paternalistic Leadership and Organizational Commitment: Investigating the Role of Climate Regarding Ethics

“…The scale was taken from Cheng et al (2004). Paternalistic leadership has three distinct dimensions named authoritarian leadership, benevolent leadership and moral leadership.…”

“…Benevolence means that the leader's behavior demonstrates individualized, holistic concern for subordinates' personal or familial well being. Moral leadership can be broadly depicted as a leader's behavior that demonstrates superior personal virtues, self-discipline, and unselfishness (Cheng et al, 2004).…”

Managers’ conflict management styles and employee attitudinal outcomes: The mediating role of trust

“…Research on indigenous Chinese leadership behavior shows that a paternalistic leadership style that focuses on authoritarianism, benevolence, and moral leadership is prevalent in Chinese societies (Cheng, Chou, & Farh, 2000;. Interestingly, although most studies have found that authoritarianism has a negative effect on the attitudinal and behavioral outcomes of subordinates (Cheng, Shieh, & Chou, 2002;Farh, Cheng, Chou, & Chu, 2004), a number of studies have found that authoritarianism has positive effects on employee loyalty to supervisors, commitment to organization, subordinate identification, compliance, and gratitude (Cheng, Chou, Huang, Farh, & Peng, 2003;Cheng, Chou, Huang, Wu, & Farh, 2004).…”

The role of employee participation in generating and commercialising innovations: insights from Chinese high-tech firms

“…based on EDI, is a challenging task that must not only take account of differences between innovation strategies, but also of human and endowment factors differing between cultures, organisations, and institutions. Apart from paternalistic leadership research (Cheng et al, 2004), research on indigenous Chinese management theories (inside-out) has been scarce so far. Up to now, scholars have been mainly occupied with transplanting 'Western' management thoughts and assessing their applicability in China, flavouring them with 'Chinese characteristics' (Zhang et al, 2012).…”

“…On the one hand, it has been noticed many times that China has rather little participatory tradition, but one of strong leadership and clear power structures (Chen and Aryee, 2007;Huo and Von Glinow, 1995). Organisational practice is dominated by forms of directive (Sagie, Zaidman, Amichai-Hamburger, Te'eni, and Schwartz, 2002) and paternalistic leadership (Cheng, Chou, Huang, Wu, and Farh, 2004), and leaders put less emphasis on employee participation, particularly with regard to innovations -as it seems. Accordingly, there is almost no research on EDI or other forms of employee participation in the organisational context in China.…”