Impact and Potential Influence Mechanism of Paternalistic Leadership on Team Performance: From a Resource Allocation Perspective

Abstract

An important impetus for this DMan research project stemmed from the author’s observation in management practice. Specifically, it was observed that the same paternalistic leader can elicit differing levels of team performance when leading distinct teams. Additionally, some successful entrepreneurs in China’s business Organisations often display pronounced authoritarian traits; however, the effectiveness of authoritarian paternalistic leadership (APL) has remained a subject of debate. Furthermore, the supervisor-subordinate Guanxi (SSG) within the Chinese context frequently exerts a substantial influence on leadership behaviours. Through a comprehensive literature review, the author identified the following insights: The existing literature exhibits a notable gap in investigating the effectiveness of paternalistic leadership at the team level, and the limited studies available on this topic have yielded inconsistent findings. Moreover, the differentiation of SSG within the Chinese context displays distinct characteristics compared to Leader-member exchange (LMX) differentiation observed in Western settings. However, this distinction has been frequently overlooked by scholars when studying Chinese management practices. From a resource allocation perspective, the study examines the relationship between two types of paternalistic leadership and team performance (TP), as well as its mechanism of influence. The sample consisted of 104 teams from state-owned, private, and foreign-funded enterprises in China, with 676 participants. The findings revealed a U-shaped relationship between APL and TP. Furthermore, this U-shaped relationship was moderated by task interdependence (TI), being significant only when TI is high. Additionally, this study revealed that SSG differentiation mediates the negative effect of APL on TP; this mediating effect was also moderated by TI. Regarding benevolent paternalistic leadership (BPL), the results revealed its significant positive impact on TP, rather than the expected inverted U-shaped relationship as hypothesised. Moreover, the expected mediating role of the SSG differentiation in the positive relationship between BPL and TP, as well as the moderating role of TI in this relationship, were not supported. By bridging theory and practice, this study offers novel and actionable insights into the field of paternalistic leadership research.