| Author: | Wai, Yau-hang Andre |
| Title: | Exploring new constructs of authoritarian leadership : an empirical study on paternalism in Hong Kong |
| Degree: | D.B.A. |
| Year: | 2010 |
| Subject: | Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations Leadership -- China -- Hong Kong. Paternalism -- Economic aspects -- hina -- Hong Kong Labor discipline -- hina -- Hong Kong |
| Department: | Graduate School of Business |
| Pages: | 135, 6, 2 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm. |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Paternalistic leadership is a flourishing research area in management literature, however there is considerable disparity among authors with respect to the definition and effectiveness of paternalistic practices (Pellegrini, 2008). Despite different definitions offered by academia, researchers have typically defined paternalistic leadership as "a style that combines strong discipline and authority with fatherly benevolence" (Farh & Cheng, 2000: 91). In return of this paternal care and protection, employees are expected to show loyalty, respect, and compliance to the leader (Aycan, 2006). The objectives of this research are (1) to verify the relationship of paternalistic leadership, subordinate's psychological responses and staff's work outcomes; (2) to explore the nature of the new construct domains of Authoritarian Leadership: Tight Control, and Strict Discipline through a deeper analysis on staff's in-role/extra-role work outcomes. As far as the literature is concerned, no journals on "Tight Control" and "Strict Discipline" in the context of paternalism could be found and these two constructs are not empirically tested before. In this thesis, I collected sample pairs of managers and staff from a Hong Kong based financial services institution, 203 valid dyads are used and they were scattered in 45 sales teams. In the first part of my study, I took reference of Farh et a1. (2000,2006) paternalistic leadership model and confirmed that the subordinate's psychological responses i.e. fear of leader, gratitude and obligation to pay back and, respect and identification correspond strongly with the three dimensions of paternalistic leadership, i.e. authoritarian, benevolence and moral leadership. Secondly, this paper confirmed that subordinate's fear of leader fully mediate the negative relationship between authoritarian leadership and organizational citizenship behavior (OCBO). Such that, high level of authoritarian leadership creates high level of fear, which in turn negatively affects staff's OCBO. In addition, I found that fear of leader mediates the relationship between Tight Control and Strict Discipline style of leadership and OCBO; identification also mediates the relationships between Tight Control and Strict Discipline styles of leadership and OCBO. Interestingly, the way that Tight Control relates to fear of leader and identification with leader are quite opposite to how Strict Discipline relates to these two staff responses. Tight Control style of leadership. relates positively to fear of leader but negatively to identification; on the contrary, Strict Discipline strongly relates to these two psychological responses in the totally opposite directions. My study argued that subordinates may not automatically respond negatively to authoritarian leadership, the results show that subordinates respond positively to Strict Discipline which might kindle their potential while they respond negatively to Tight Control which implies demanding for unquestionable obedience. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| b2394268x.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 22.14 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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