Profiling the paternalistic manager: leadership excellence in the Philippines

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we explore paternalism as the main cultural framework within which excellence in managerial leadership operates in organizations in the Philippines. Factor analysis, regression and structural modelling are employed to explain managerial leadership excellence in the Philippines. Perceptions from 258 Filipino managers highlight paternalistic leadership as a unique mixture of Confucian and Catholic values. Pastoral focus is an important cultural dimension through which Environment focus and Work practices influences the Personal qualities. Moral obligations are important since they mediate between Pastoral focus and managerial response to Organizational demands but unimportant as direct influence on excellent leader.

KEYWORDS:

• Confucian
• cultural modelling
• leadership excellence
• managerial behaviours
• paternalism
• the Philippines

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the contribution to this study by Professor Anna Miren Gonzalez, School of Social Sciences, Department of Psychology at Ateneo De Manila University in Manila. She provided support for the data collection, without which this study would not have been possible. We also take the opportunity to thank the editor, Professor Chris Rowley, and the reviewers of APBR. Their dedication and support with the feedback and rewrites have been extremely useful and through and we are truly indebted.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Both these papers reported on the pilot studies carried out to test the conceptual framework and a pilot sample in five ASEAN countries.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christopher Selvarajah

Christopher Selvarajah is Professor of International Business at the Faculty of Business and Law at Swinburne University. Professor Selvarajah has published five books and contributed over 60 refereed articles and cases studies to reputable international journals. His general interest is in management and in international business with a focus on leadership and cultural studies in international HRM. He has acted as consultant to numerous companies in the Asia Pacific region. Professor Selvarajah has been instrumental in successfully gaining competitive grants for three international projects worth AUD 1.3 million. These are for projects in ASEAN, and the VISGARD nations.

Denny Meyer

Denny Meyer is Professor of Statistics at the Swinburne University of Technology. She has co-authored two books and has published upward of 100 articles in a variety of refereed journals and books. She is an applied statistician, working in areas such as management, mental health and sport. She has published extensively on leadership, utilizing her skills in structural equation modelling and multi-level modelling to capture and describe the important relations in organizational and national samples. She has supervised 21 PhD projects to completion and has been on successful grant applications totalling more than AUD 3.6m. In addition, she has lectured to university students at all levels, presented short courses for industrial partners and acted as a statistical consultant for many years.

Pradeepa Dahanayake

Pradeepa Dahanayake is Academic Tutor at Swinburne University of Technology. She completed her PhD in 2018 titled Justice and fairness in the workplace: A trajectory for managing diversity and published her first refereed paper in the same field in the Journal of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal. Pradeepa has also presented at numerous academic conferences. Prior to commencing her doctoral studies, she was Human Resources Manager with the Sri Lankan Airlines and a barrister by training.