Authoritarian Leadership And Employee Performance:The Role Of The Sense Of Leadership Support And Proactive Personality

Authoritarian leadership is a common leadership style in Chinese enterprises.The concepts of "superior subordinate relationship","power distance" and "superior respect and inferiority" are clearly reflected between leaders and employees.Under this concept,the leaders control the employees strictly and require them to obey themselves unconditionally.In order to respond to the management of the leaders,the employees will also show obedience and awe.With the prosperity of China’s economy,society and culture in recent years,management scholars pay more and more attention to localization of management leadership behavior.Therefore,when discussing the relationship between related variables of leadership behavior,more and more attention is paid to the Chinese cultural background.Based on this,this study establishes on the reality of China and focuses on the employees of Chinese enterprises to explore the mechanism between authoritarian leadership,proactive personality,sense of leadership support and employee performance.After reviewing the research results of previous scholars,this study believes that employees’ sense of leadership support will be negatively affected by authoritarian leadership,which in turn will have a negative impact on employees’ performance.Based on this,a theoretical model with leadership support as the intermediary variable is constructed.In terms of the selection of moderating variables,this paper chooses proactive personality as the moderating variable between authoritarian leadership and the sense of leadership support,and puts forward the hypothesis that proactive personality plays a regulating role between authoritarian leadership and the sense of leadership support.Combined with mediating variables and moderating variables,this study deeply explores the indirect impact mechanism of proactive personality regulates that authoritarian leadership influences employee performance by influencing the sense of leadership support.In this study,406 effective samples were obtained through the field survey method of multiple time points and multiple sources.On the basis of analyzing data and testing assumptions,the conclusions are as follows:(1)Authoritarian leadership is negatively correlated with the sense of leadership support;(2)There is a positive correlation between the sense of leadership support and employee performance;(3)The sense of leadership support plays an intermediary role between authoritarian leadership and employee performance;(4)Proactive personality moderates the relationship between authoritarian leadership and the sense of leadership support.Specifically,when employees’ proactive personality level is high(relative to low),the negative relationship between authoritarian leadership and the sense of leadership support is stronger;(5)Proactive personality can regulate the indirect impact of authoritarian leadership on employee performance by influencing the sense of leadership support.Specifically,the higher the proactive personality,the stronger the indirect effect.This paper studies the mechanism of authoritarian leadership affecting employee performance deeply.It reveals the intermediary mechanism of authoritarian leadership affecting employee performance-sense of leadership support.When employees perceive less leadership support,they will have negative emotions,take inaction,be content with the status quo,and are unwilling to take positive action to solve the difficulties and challenges in work,thus reducing employee performance.On the other hand,it reveals reveals the boundary condition of authoritarian leadership affecting employee performance-proactive personality.For employees with highly proactive personality,they can take proactive actions to change the environment,and they are good at finding opportunities and can seize and use them to achieve success through their own efforts.They have strong subjective initiative,so they have a stronger perception of the negative impact of authoritarian leadership;However,for employees with low proactive personality,they have a negative attitude and are not good at finding opportunities.Even if opportunities appear,they rarely seize and use them and passively accept the conditions of their environment.Therefore,they do not have a strong perception of the negative impact of authoritarian leadership.The above findings have great significance to the study of the relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee performance.Through the empirical analysis of this study,important conclusions are obtained,and valuable enlightenment and reference are obtained,which is helpful to solve the practical management problems of enterprises,and has important practical significance for enterprises to correctly understand authoritarian leadership and improve employees’ sense of leadership support.