Effect And Mechanism Of Paternalistic Leadership On Organizational Creativity

Due to the increasingly intense competition and fast-changing environment, organizations have never placed so much emphasis on innovation and creativity. Managers have noticed the importance of leadership and need to take effective initiatives to promote creativity urgently. Despite the unfolding leadership-creativity literature, research in the Chinese cultural context is scarce and particularly urgent.This dissertation focused on the effects and mechanisms of paternalistic leadership on creativity in work teams. Drawing on extant literature and related theories, it firstly proposed a model to describe the mechanisms of the effects on team level. Then, based on a sample of304members from76work teams, it carried out empirical study with various statistical methods, such as hierarchical regression analysis, to validate the proposed model of this study.The results indicate that there is a strong correlation between paternalistic leadership and organizational creativity on team level. Specifically, benevolent leadership and moral leadership have significantly positive correlations with team creativity, while the correlation between authoritarian leadership and team creativity is not significant. Moreover, the main effect of moral leadership on team creativity is validated to be mediated by intrateam conflict.The conclusions not only formulate a theoretical basis to consider relevant issues and cast new light on in-depth understanding of the effects paternalistic leadership exerts on organizational creativity, but also provide practical suggestions for Chinese organizations on how to harness paternalistic leadership so as to enhance creativity.