The Effects Of Paternalistic Leadership On Subordinate Job Performance: The Moderator Role Of Power Distance

Under current circumstance with the booming globalized competition, the leaders ineach company are playing a gradually more important role in the business world. As theold saying goes “Soldier’s failure will affect only himself, while leader’s failure willjeopardize the whole team”, the behavior of the leader will cast great influence on thesubordinate job performance. Paternalistic leadership exists widely in Chinese companies,which consists of authoritarian leadership, benevolent leadership as well as moralleadership. How would these different types of leadership affect subordinate jobperformance? How would the results vary according to the individual difference? I amwriting to figure out the answers to the above questions in the thesis.Based on the theoretical results of previous studies as well as my own experience ofobservation, I propose the three following research hypotheses concerning the relationshipbetween paternalistic leadership and subordinate job performance:(1a)authoritarianleadership behavior negatively correlates with employee’s performance;(1b)benevolentleadership behavior positively correlates with employee’s performance;(1c)moralleadership behavior positively correlates with employee’s performance. Furthermore, thepaper argues that paternalistic leadership behavior for subordinate job performance will beaffiliated with the concept of power distance, which put forward the three followingresearch hypotheses:(2a) the longer subordinate’s sense of power distance, the smaller negative impact on subordinate job performance from authoritarian leadershipbehavior;(2b) the longer subordinate’s sense of power distance, the greater positive impacton subordinate job performance from benevolent leadership behavior;(2c) the longersubordinate’s sense of power distance, the greater positive impact on subordinate jobperformance from moral leadership behavior.This paper collected102copies of questionnaire and tested the research hypothesesby means of multivariate regression analysis, and hence obtained the resultthat:(1)authoritarian leadership behavior lacks significant correlation with subordinate jobperformance;(2)benevolent and moral leadership behavior positively correlate withsubordinate job performance;(3)power distance adjusts authoritarian leadership behavior’simpact on subordinate job performance in a way that the longer the power distance, thesmaller the negative impact;(4)power distance has no influence on subordinate jobperformance under benevolent or moral leadership behavior.These conclusions have great value for Chinese entrepreneur’s leadership practice.First of all, authoritarian leadership will not necessarily have a negative effect. In manycases, authoritarian leadership may work as a necessity to ensure the efficiency ofexecution in Chinese companies, especially for those employees with high power distancesense. Secondly, benevolent leadership and moral leadership behavior’s impact onsubordinate job performance will not differ in terms of employee’s different sense ofpower distance, which means that both these two types of leadership leave a positive effecton subordinate job performance. Hence, we encourage the leaders in companies to adoptboth benevolent and moral leadership.