Abstract:

In recent years, scholars have actively explored the leadership style with local characteristics. One of the representative studies is authoritarian leadership. Influenced by complex environmental changes and traditional thoughts of Confucianism and Legalism, authoritarian leadership played a vital role in gathering all kinds of resources in the early stage of reform and opening up. It still widely exists in modern organizations and management in China. Authoritarian leadership has a dual character tendency in developing practice, which has evolved from the control of employees’ behavior to the control of core values. According to the variation of control focus, authoritarian leaders are divided into Zhuan-Quan leadership and Shang-Yan leadership. However, little attention has been paid to the emergence mechanism of authoritarian leadership, especially to the differentiation emergence process of Zhuan-Quan leadership and Shang-Yan leadership.
Based on the consistency matching logic, organizational trust reflects the unified cognition of the leadership relationship among the organization members. On the other hand, leaders will adjust their leadership behaviors according to this cognitive reinforcement, so different organizational trust may influence the differentiation and emergence of dual authoritarian leadership. From the perspective of the social exchange theory, western social exchange relationships mainly include economic and social exchanges while the social relationship in the Chinese culture which has solid ethical and moral norms is a kind of organizational family-like exchange. This perspective helps to understand other emergence processes of organizational trust affecting dual authoritarian leadership. At the same time, as one of the essential goals of innovative team activities, team performance, which reflects the effectual output of a series of organizational activities of leaders and employees and influences the development and adjustment of subsequent organizational activities, also includes the emergence of different leadership behaviors. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore the role of organizational trust in the emergence of dual authoritarian leadership in innovative teams by introducing the organizational family-like exchange relationship as a mediating variable and the team performance as a boundary condition.
This study takes a sizeable cultural enterprise in the Yangtze Delta region as the research object, collects the matching data of leaders and members from 35 project teams, and applies the hierarchical regression statistical method to explore the mechanism of organizational trust influencing the emergence of dualistic authority leadership. Results find that relationship trust is conducive to Shang-Yan leadership behavior, while threat trust promotes the generation of Zhuan-Quan leadership. In addition, organizational family-like exchange partly mediates the relationship between threat trust and Zhuan-Quan leadership and the positive relationship between relationship trust and Shang-Yan leadership. It is also found that the team performance plays a negative moderating role in the relationship between the organizational family-like exchange and the dual authoritarian leadership. When the team performance is poor, the higher the degree of the organizational family-like exchange, the more conducive it is to the generation of Shang-Yan leadership behavior, whereas the lower the degree of the organizational family-like exchange, the more conducive it is to the generation of Zhuan-Quan leadership.
This study provides an exchange relationship perspective for the emergence process of the dual authoritarian leadership in the Chinese context, promoting the understanding of the dual authoritarian leadership connotation and expanding the application scope of the cognitive theory of leadership relations. In practice, it also has reference value for managers to correctly understand, cultivate and adopt the authoritarian leadership and promote the organizational trust.

Key words: Organizational Trust, Dual Authoritarian Leadership, Organizational Family-Like Exchange Relationship, Team Performance

摘要：

作为中国文化环境下的特殊领导方式,威权型领导的涌现机制却鲜少被关注。立足于创新型团队环境,从组织类亲情交换关系理论视角探索组织信任对二元威权领导涌现的作用机制。以长三角地区一家大型文化企业为调研对象,收集了35支项目团队的领导和成员配对数据,研究结果表明:关系信任有助于尚严领导行为涌现,威胁信任有助于专权领导行为涌现;组织类亲情交换关系在组织信任与二元威权领导之间起中介作用;团队绩效在组织类亲情交换关系与二元威权领导间起调节作用,在团队绩效不佳情况下,组织类亲情交换关系程度越高,越有助于尚严领导行为涌现,而组织类亲情交换关系程度越低,越有助于专权领导行为涌现。

关键词: 组织信任, 二元威权领导, 组织类亲情交换关系, 团队绩效