Developing a charismatic leadership model for Chinese organizations: the mediating role of loyalty to supervisors

Abstract

Charismatic leadership has become a popular topic in organizational research in the last few decades. However, to date there is still a very limited amount of empirical evidence that illuminates the underlying influencing processes of charismatic leadership and the effectiveness of this type of leadership in the Chinese context. Given its emphasis on leaders' extraordinary abilities and roles, the authors argue that the charismatic leadership paradigm is likely to be effective in the China context, which has been heavily influenced by Confucian ideology that values respect for authority, character building and loyalty to the superior. Therefore, the primary objective of this study is to develop a charismatic leadership model for Chinese organizations. Informed by motivational theory, social exchange theory and social identity theory, the authors hypothesized that supervisors' charismatic leadership could influence subordinates' work performance and turnover intention through the mediating role of loyalty to supervisors. The authors pointed researchers to a new direction for their future inquiry of understanding the underlying mechanism that charismatic leadership influences subordinates' attitudinal and behavioural outcomes should be further explored.

Keywords:

• charismatic leadership
• China
• loyalty to supervisors
• transformational
• turnover
• work performance

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Professor Malcolm Warner and the reviewers of the paper for their constructive and insightful comments. This research (Project 70,701024) is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).