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Effects of Paternalistic Leadership on Quality of Life of Grassroots Officials in China: Mediation Effects of Burnout

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A Correction to this article was published on 18 September 2021

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Abstract

This study examined the importance of three dimensions (authoritarian leadership, benevolent leadership, and moral leadership) of paternalistic leadership for the quality of life of grassroots officials in Shandong Province, China, with burnout as the mediation factor. In 2019, a cross-sectional survey was conducted of 2064 grassroots officials from 106 towns or sub-districts in Shandong. We used the scale developed for measuring paternalistic leadership. Burnout was measured by the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS), and the quality of life was measured by the abbreviated version of World Health Organization Quality of Life questionnaire (WHOQOL-BRIEF). A structured equation model was implemented in AMOS 21 to examine the contribution of paternalistic leadership (PL) to the quality of life, and the potential mediation of these relationships by burnout. We found that authoritarian leadership (AL) has indirect and negative effects on the quality of life mediated by burnout. Benevolent leadership (BL) was found to be positively and directly associated with the quality of life. Meanwhile, burnout had a partial mediation effect in the relation between moral leadership (ML) and the quality of life. In addition, the level of burnout had a negative and significant influence on the quality of life. The findings showed the significance of PL when considering the effect of burnout on the quality of life of the grassroots officials. We conclude that to enhance their quality of life, leadership style should incline less towards authoritarian styles and more towards benevolent and moral ones.

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Funding

Youth Project of National Social Science Foundation (18CZZ021); MOE (Ministry of Education in China) Youth Foundation Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (19YJC630102); Major Project of National Social Science Foundation (16ZDA080); Foundation for Key Program of Ministry of Education(19JJD710004).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Political Science and Public Administration, Shandong University, No. 72 Bin hai Road, Jimo District, Qingdao, 266237, China

    Qing Huang, Huaxing Liu & Chengya Chu

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  1. Qing Huang
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  2. Huaxing Liu
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Correspondence to Huaxing Liu.

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I would like to declare on behalf of my co-authors that the work described is original research that has not been published previously, and not under consideration for publication elsewhere, in whole or in part. I hope this paper is suitable for this journal. All the authors listed have approved the manuscript that is enclosed.

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Huang, Q., Liu, H. & Chu, C. Effects of Paternalistic Leadership on Quality of Life of Grassroots Officials in China: Mediation Effects of Burnout. Applied Research Quality Life 16, 2113–2130 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-020-09863-w

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