Chinese paternalistic leadership and non-Chinese subordinates' psychological health

Abstract

Past research on Chinese leadership, a style which is different from that practiced in the West, has demonstrated that paternalistic leadership within Chinese society is significantly related to employees' psychological health. This research contributes to the literature by providing results from the interaction between Chinese and non-Chinese society and examining the moderating role played by the cultural value of uncertainty avoidance (UA). Based on the bottom-up model of the subjective well-being theory, this study aims to disclose the relationship between Chinese leadership behavior and its effects on the psychological health of non-Chinese subordinates from cross-cultural and multi-national backgrounds. Results from the study sample of 160 non-Chinese subordinates from 31 overseas branches of the selected, large, Chinese multinational enterprise (MNE), showed that the moral and authoritarian styles of the Chinese paternalistic leadership contributed negatively to psychological health in the workplace, a different pattern of results from studies completed with Chinese subordinates in previous research. In addition, it also showed that UA partly moderated this unique leader-follower relationship. Specifically, when non-Chinese followers had a higher UA value orientation, the negative effects of their superior's moral style on their psychological health was weakened.

Keywords:

• Chinese paternalistic leadership
• cross-cultural management
• psychological health

Notes

1. When conducting a factor analysis on the items to check the underlying structure of the construct, the recommendations of the item to response ratios ranged from 1:4 (Rummel 1970) to 1:10 (Schwab 1980). Based on the criteria of the item-to-response ratio, our item-to-response is 1:6 (160 effective responses/27 items of PL).

2. There may be concerns whether non-Chinese subordinates have a different perception of moral leadership. The results of additional data on Chinese subordinates (n = 145) in the same corporation within Taiwan show that the Chinese subordinates have different perceptions of the moral leadership style from those held by their non-Chinese counterparts (t = 3.68, p < .05) suggesting that this explanation should be ruled out.