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How do authoritarian and benevolent leadership affect employee work–family conflict? An emotional regulation perspective

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Abstract

We draw on the process model of emotion regulation (Gross, Emotion, 13(3), 359–365 2013) to propose that the two main components of paternalistic leadership – authoritarianism and benevolence, would induce negative emotions in employees that cannot be freely expressed at work, and how the act of emotion suppression would result in employee work–family conflict. Data from 218 employee–spouse dyads from three Chinese companies provide strong support for our hypotheses, revealing that both authoritarian leadership and benevolent leadership are positively related to employee work–family conflict through the mediation of employee emotion suppression in the workplace. Furthermore, employee power distance orientation positively influences the effect of authoritarian leadership, but negatively impacts the effect of benevolent leadership, on employee emotion suppression. These findings reveal the dark side of paternalistic leadership and shed light on the mechanisms through which leadership affect employee experience in the life domain and its boundary condition. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications in the context of Chinese organizations and beyond.

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Notes

  1. Work–family conflict explicates the strain spillover from work to the family domain (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). We used the spouse-rated employee work–family conflict to demonstrate the spouse’s observation and perception of how the employee’s work affects their family life, which reveals that the work strain could transfer to family and affect their family members (Grandey et al., 2005).

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  1. Human Resource Management, School of Business, Inner Mongolia University of Finance and Economics, 185 Beierhuan Road, Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, China

    Lei Yao

  2. Management & Organization, Foster School of Business, University of Washington, PACCAR Hall, 4273 E Stevens Way NE, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA

    Xiao-Ping Chen

  3. Management Department, School of Business, Robert Morris University, 6001 University Blvd, Moon Twp, PA, 15108, USA

    Hongguo Wei

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1. Moral leadership is the third dimension of paternalistic leadership, developed after the authoritarian leadership and benevolent leadership constructs were applied. Moral leadership is evidenced by a leader who demonstrates superior personal virtues by acting unselfishly and leading by example (Farh & Cheng, 2000). Although earlier studies did not include moral leadership (Aycan, 2006; Chan et al., 2013), we adopted moral leadership as our control variable to better demonstrate the effects of authoritarian and benevolent leadership on employees’ family life.

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Yao, L., Chen, XP. & Wei, H. How do authoritarian and benevolent leadership affect employee work–family conflict? An emotional regulation perspective. Asia Pac J Manag 40, 1525–1553 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-022-09824-x

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