Exploring how authoritarian leadership affects commitment: the mediating roles of trust in the school principal and silence

PurposeThis study aims to explore the relationship between authoritarian leadership and commitment and the mediating roles of silence and trust in school principals.Design/methodology/approachThis study employed a cross-sectional design to illustrate the relationships among authoritarian leadership, trust in the principal, silence and affective commitment using path analysis evidence provided by 409 K–12 teachers.FindingsThe findings revealed that authoritarian leadership indirectly affected teacher commitment through trust in the principal and acquiescent silence. Furthermore, trust in the principal played a partial mediating role between authoritarian leadership and defensive silence. Authoritarian leadership behaviours decreased teachers' affective commitment by decreasing trust in the principal and increasing organisational silence.Originality/valueAlthough leadership and culture have been studied intensively in recent years, authoritarian leadership, which is more commonly seen in Eastern societies, has been less studied in school contexts in the Middle East and Asia. Thus, this study contributes to the literature by examining the factors that might influence affective commitment in schools in an urban setting: authoritarian leadership, silence and trust in school principals.

Hotel Employees’ Voice Behavior: The Role of Paternalistic Leadership and Organizational Identification

This study explores the effect of paternalistic leadership (moral leadership, benevolent leadership, and authoritarian leadership) on hotel employees’ voice behavior and the moderating role of organizational identification. This study samples employees of five-star hotels in northern, central, and southern Taiwan. Purposive sampling is used to distribute 450 questionnaires: 150 in northern Taiwan, 150 in central Taiwan, and 150 in southern Taiwan. The number of valid questionnaires was 359, and the effective questionnaire recovery rate was 79.78%. The analysis results indicate that (1) supervisors’ moral leadership negatively affects hotel employees’ voice behavior, (2) supervisors’ benevolent leadership positively affects hotel employees’ voice behavior, (3) supervisors’ authoritarian leadership negatively affects hotel employees’ voice behavior, (4) organizational identification moderates the relationship between moral leadership and voice behavior, (5) organizational identification moderates the relationship between benevolent leadership and voice behavior, and (6) organizational identification moderates the relationship between authoritarian leadership and voice behavior. This study also proposes managerial implications based on the analysis results. This research attempts to make contributions to the literatures of hospitality and tourism.

Managing the Uncertainties Inherent in Prohibitive Voice: How Leadership Interacts With Employee Political Skill

Drawing from the uncertainty management theory, we examine how authoritarian leadership and humble leadership interact with employee political skill to predict prohibitive voice. We conducted a two-wave survey study of 43 managers and 176 subordinates in a power company in China. Our findings indicate that authoritarian leadership has a minimal negative effect on the psychological safety of employees with higher political skill, which in turn leads to a minimal negative effect on their prohibitive voice. Moreover, humble leadership is positively associated with prohibitive voice for employees with lower political skill. For employees with higher political skill, no type of leadership behavior has a significant influence on their prohibitive voice. We outline the implications of these findings for both theoretical and managerial practices.

The Roots of China’s Assertiveness in East Asia

In order to analyse the main driving forces in Chinese foreign policy, this article advances a neoclassical realist argument detailing how certain domestic dynamics that develop between an authoritarian leadership and the society when the country is ‘rising’ constrain its foreign policy behaviour in complex ways. Subsequently, the derived analytical framework is applied in an analysis of China’s ‘assertive turn’ in East Asia. It shows how certain authoritarian regime concerns intensify as China’s great power capabilities and influence grow, resulting in a different room to manoeuvre for Beijing in East Asia, which both encourages and enables a more assertive foreign policy behaviour. In the foreign policy literature, there is general agreement that regime type matters and has explanatory power when seeking to specify the domestic restraints on states’ foreign policy. However, there is still a lack of systematic conceptualisation of the regime type variable and theoretical explanations for how it matters. The neoclassical realist argument on the foreign policy of rising authoritarian states developed in this article is a step in this direction bridging the research fields of international relations, comparative politics and area studies.

Dilema Kepemimpinan Kristen, Tuhan atau atasan?

This paper aims to examine and describe the nature of dedicated Christian leadership and to explore the essential elements of servanthood leadership. To serve is one of the most basic substances of Jesus' work. The problem of Christian leadership today is when leaders lose the character of Christ and are trapped in manipulating the name of Christianity or the church for the sake of his/her power. Methodically, this research refers to the leadership patterns of figures in the Old and New Testaments, with the support of literature studies that discuss Christian leadership discourse. Jesus displaying his leadership as a critique towards the misgovern leader who can only tells order, same as the authoritarian leadership, those who reigning over the official or government employee by own wish or merely by his/her desire. If so, it means that the leader's character humiliates even corrupts his/her own leadership. In all conscience, the leader is a minister to his/her follower's needs; to serve with love, humility, and forgiveness. The result of this study emphasizes that Christian leaders who want to grow up should simply be like Jesus, great leaders originally ought to serve others first, thus in plain reality, the core of his/her leadership will be visible in greatness. Tulisan ini hendak mengkaji dan menguraikan hakikat kepemimpinan Kristen yang mengabdi, dan mencari tahu unsur esensial dari kepemimpinan yang mengabdi. Mengabdi/melayani adalah sebuah unsur yang sangat mendasar dalam kepemimpinan Yesus. Problem kepemimpinan Kristen masa kini adalah ketika pemimpin kehilangan karakter Kristus, dan justru terjebak mengatasnamakan kekristenan dan gereja untuk kepentingan kekuasaan. Secara metodik, penelitian ini merujuk pola kepemimpinan tokoh dalam Perjanjian Lama dan Perjanjian Baru, dengan dukungan studi kepustakaan yang membahas wacana kepemimpinan Kristen. Yesus memberikan kritik pada kepemimpinan yang bersifat memerintah pengikut, menempatkan pimpinan sebagai bos yang harus selalu diikuti perkataan dan kehendaknya dan tidak memberikan teladan benar. Karakter pemimpin yang demikian merusak dan merendahkan wibawa eksistensi dari kepemimpinan. Seorang pemimpin adalah pelayan bagi pengikutnya. Melayani dgn kasih dan pengampunan. Hasil pengkajian ini menandaskan bahwa seharusnya pemimpin Kristen yang mau besar, mula-mula harus melayani orang lain, dan bahwa kenyataan yg sederhana ini merupakan inti kebesaran-Nya sebagai seorang pemimpin

Fostering trust: Authoritarian, benevolent, and moral paternalistic leadership styles and the coach–athlete relationship

We used leadership theories and social cognitive theory to examine the association between paternalistic leadership styles and the coach–athlete relationship in sports contexts, along with the role of trust as a mediator. Participants were 312 teenage soccer players aged 13–19 years at two Chinese professional soccer schools, who completed a survey. The results show that the three dimensions of paternalistic leadership (i. e., authoritarian leadership, benevolent leadership, and moral leadership) each had different effects on the coach–athlete relationship. Benevolent leadership and moral leadership positively predicted the coach–athlete relationship, whereas authoritarian leadership did not have a significant impact. Further, trust as a cognitive process mediated the relationships between both benevolent and moral leadership styles and the coach–athlete relationship. Trust had a suppressing effect on the link between authoritarian leadership and the coach–athlete relationship. Our results complement those of past research and support the application of social cognitive theory in the context of the social psychology of sport training.

The Boss’s Long Arm: The Differential Impact of Authoritarian and Benevolent Leadership on Spousal Family Satisfaction

The extant studies on leadership are replete with employee, coworker, and leader outcomes, however, research is still nascent on leadership’s crossover into employees’ family members’ lives. To examine leadership’s impact on the work–family interface, we draw on conservation of resources theory (COR) and crossover theory and investigate how authoritarian leadership and benevolent leadership affect spousal family satisfaction. We examine the mediating influence of work–family conflict (WFC) and work-family facilitation (WFF), and the moderating impact of spouses’ need for control. Our model was tested with multisource, mutiwave data from 207 Chinese married dyads. The results suggest that, as expected, the positive relationship between benevolent leadership and spousal family satisfaction is fully mediated by WFF, and the negative relationship between authoritarian leadership and spousal family satisfaction is fully mediated by WFC. Findings further suggest that the negative relationship between employee WFC and spousal family satisfaction is stronger for spouses with a higher need for control. Thus, authoritarian leadership, through its negative influence on WFC appears to be universally detrimental for spousal family satisfaction, however, even more so for spouses with a higher need for control. These results underscore the importance of acknowledging leadership’s impact at work reaching far beyond the job incumbent.

On Authoritarian Leadership

This chapter outlines the established view of the way leadership in an authoritarian regime operates, emphasizing its arbitrary and violent dimensions. It criticizes this literature in terms of both its assumptions and its empirical accuracy. The chapter then discusses the key concepts used in the following analysis. It identifies five regime types: single party, electoral authoritarian, military, monarchy and personal dictatorship. It then discusses the nature of authoritarian leadership, conceived in terms of an oligarchy, including the bases upon which personal power can rest. The chapter discusses the nature of rules, introducing the three types of rules identified as central to the conduct of oligarch politics: operational, relational and constitutive rules. An explanation of the structure and a chapter summary of the book follows. An appendix to this chapter lists the twenty-nine rules identified as structuring leadership politics in authoritarian regimes.

Do authoritarian leaders also have “fans”? The relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee followership behavior in the Chinese context

PurposeThe existing research rarely explains the value of authoritarian leadership in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The purpose of this study is to explore how authoritarian leadership facilitates employee followership behaviors of the SMEs in China by considering the moderating effects of cooperative goal interdependence and leader behavioral integrity.Design/methodology/approachThis research tested hypotheses with a two-wave survey from a sample of 258 respondents from SMEs in China. Hypotheses are tested using hierarchical regression analyses.FindingsFindings of the study have indicated the instrumental function of authoritarian leadership in facilitating employee followership behavior in SMEs. In particular, this study shows that the influence of authoritarian leadership on followership behavior was positively related when employees have high cooperative goal interdependence with authoritarian leaders, and when employees perceive a leader's high behavioral integrity.Practical implicationsThe study will help SMEs to understand that authoritarian leadership should seek optimal levels of cooperative goals with employees and integrate achievement goals into their career development strategy to enhance their followership behavior. In addition, authoritarian leadership should strive to take actions consistent with their words to guarantee the relationship between achieving goals and sharing mutual goals with employees.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the literature by addressing an important yet under-researched area, i.e. the effectiveness of authoritarian leadership in SMEs. Authoritarian leadership, a demanding and controlling leadership style, is often criticized by scholars. This study elaborates on a three-way interaction implied by self-determination theory in predicting followership behavior. It specifies the different roles of two situational factors (cooperative goal interdependence and leader behavior integrity) in affecting employees' followership behavior.