| With the development of information technology and the globalization of markets, CEOs of Chinese firms have confronted unprecedented challenges. It is difficult for CEOs to make rapid and effective strategic decisions based on various information derived from the complicated and dynamic competitive environments. Instead, firms have been increasingly relying on top management teams (TMTs) to make decisions. Such a joint and participative decision making mode has become a new and innovative decision mode, because it represents the collective intelligence of TMTs and properly adapts the requirements and changes of markets. However, the management practices of Chinese firms indicated that TMT joint decision making in China still has problems of ineffectiveness and dysfunctional conflicts, while the paternalistic leadership styles of CEOs are the main factors that impacted TMT decision effectiveness and conflict mode. Paternalistic leadership theory, the unique leadership style of Chinese firms, has been rapidly developed in the past two decades. It is rooted in the Chinese traditional culture and emphasizes benevolence, morality and authoritianism. Although paternalistic leadership has demonstrated strong explanation power in individual and organizational levels, its effects at TMT level still remain unexplored.The objective of this study is to link CEO paternalistic leadership, conflict and decision effectiveness together, to discuss how the three dimensions of paternalistic leadership influence the decision quality, commitment consensus, understanding consensus and affective acceptance of TMTs ,and additionally, how paternalistic leadership influence TMT decision effectiveness via the mediating mechanism of affective conflict and cognitive conflict. This result of the study is to provide theoretic and practical implications for CEOs in Chinese firms to apply paternalistic leadership to management TMT conflict and thus improve decision effectiveness.The difficulties of this study lies in several points. Firstly, empirical research on paternalistic leadership has been relatively limited in scope and offers few consistent findings.This implies that paternalistic leadership theory development and testing remains a critical, yet ripe, area for investigation. Secondly, research that examines the effectiveness of paternalistic leadership has focused primarily at individual or organizational levels, Specifically, we could not find any study that linked CEO’s paternalistic leadership to TMT decision making. Thirdly, most of TMT research are based on demographic approach, few researchers have examined the relationship between CEO leadership and team effectiveness. Finally, TMT conflict theory has been developed in Western countries, and therefore, the effects of cognitive conflict and affective conflict need to be reexamined in Chinese contexts.This study follows the research methods of literature analysis, depth interview and survey. Firstly, the study reviews the recent research on paternalistic leadership and TMT conflict; Secondly, this study does depth interview with TMT members from selected firms; Thirdly, this study analyzes the definition of paternalistic leadership in TMTs and conclude its dimensions and type and reveal the relationship among paternalistic leadership, conflict and TMT decision effectiveness to establish the concept model and represent several research hypotheses. Finally, this study designs a constructed questionnaire about paternalistic leadership, conflict and TMT decision effectiveness and has conducted dyadic survey on more than 108 TMTs in China. After the test of ICC and Rwg, this study aggregates data from individual level to team level and test effects of paternalistic leadership on decision effectiveness, and the mediating roles of cognitive conflict and affective conflict between paternalistic leadership and decision effectiveness. This study analyzes the data of the survey with SPSS 17.0 and Lisrel 8.70, applying regression analysis, correlation analysis, reliability analysis, availability analysis and hierarchical regression in the study.The research result shows that paternalistic leadership is not a unified construct with negatively correlated dimensions, and that the three dimensions of paternalistic leadership have significant but incompatible effects on decision effectiveness. Benevolent and moral leadership are correlated positively and both of them are also positively associated with decision effectiveness, whereas authoritarian leadership has negative relationship with the other two dimensions and decision effectiveness as well. In addition, paternalistic leadership influences decision effectiveness through team conflict. The results of regression analysis reveal that cognitive conflict and affective conflict partially mediate the relationship between paternalistic leadership and decision outcomes. The implications of the findings along with some potentially practical applications are discussed. |
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