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The Mediating Effect of Ethical Climate on the Relationship Between Paternalistic Leadership and Team Identification: A Team-Level Analysis in the Chinese Context

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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore the role of ethical climate on the relationship between the paternalistic leadership and team identification at the team level. In contrast to the prior studies which tended to focus on ethical climate as a whole dimension, this paper further classified the domain of construct into the categories of egoism, benevolence, and principle using a sample from 143 teams in Mainland China and Taiwan. Hierarchical regression results showed that the average paternalistic leadership had a significant impact on the team identification at the team level. Moreover, the results indicated that the ethical climate of benevolence fully mediated while the ethical climate of egoism partially mediated the relationship between authoritarian leadership and team identification. Also, the ethical climates of benevolence and principle had a partial mediating effect on the relationship between benevolent leadership and team identification as well as moral leadership and team identification, respectively, but the ethical climate of egoism did not play a significant role. The major findings, theoretical contributions, practical implications, and the limitations were discussed.

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Notes

  1. We conducted a test of homogeneity of variances and the results showed there were no structural differences between the two samples of Mainland China and Taiwan. Also, we separately proceeded the regression analyses on the two samples, and the results showed there was still no significant differences between the two samples. So we pooled the two samples together.

  2. To avoid the multi-collinearity issue, we also assessed the collinearity by examining the variance inflation factor (VIF) of the candidate variables. The results suggested little collinearity among benevolent leadership, moral leadership, and authoritarian leadership (VIF far lower than 10). Also, the collinearity diagnostics results of egoism, benevolence, and principle revealed little collinearity among them (VIF far lower than 10).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Administration, Feng Chia University, No. 100 Wenhwa Rd., Seatwen District, Taichung, 40724, Taiwan

    Meng-Yu Cheng

  2. School of Business Administration, Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, No. 217 JianShan St., Shahekou District, Dalian, 116025, People’s Republic of China

    Lei Wang

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  1. Meng-Yu Cheng
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Correspondence to Lei Wang.

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Cheng, MY., Wang, L. The Mediating Effect of Ethical Climate on the Relationship Between Paternalistic Leadership and Team Identification: A Team-Level Analysis in the Chinese Context. J Bus Ethics 129, 639–654 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2189-5

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