Leadership has attracted a significant amount of scholarly attention in the past few decades. However, most research and theory contributions are to a great extent limited to accounting for leadership practices in the West (Littrell, 2002). This study is designed to develop an effective leadership model that works in the Chinese context. Paternalistic leadership, a dominant leadership style in an Eastern business environment, is compared with transformational leadership, a dominant leadership style in a Western business environment. The notion of transformational leadership was developed under the tutelage of Bernard Bass (1998). Transformational leadership is found to be compatible with collectivistic values (Walumbwa & Lwwler, 2003) and is believed to be appealing and generalizable to Chinese leadership situations (Chen & Farh, 1999). Other researchers have found that within Chinese organizations, leader behaviors are quite distinct from transformational leadership, referring to this leader style as paternalistic leadership (Redding, 1990; Cheng, 1995). The questions are asked, “Transformational or paternalistic leadership, which one is more effective in Chinese organizations? Is one type of leadership superior to the other one in the Chinese culture?” To answer these questions, a model is proposed to clarify the mediating effects of trust and harmony on the relationship between leadership style and its effectiveness, and to interpret the moderating effects of generation on the relationships between both paternalistic and transformational leadership with trust and harmony. Most theories of leadership in organizational behavior originated in the United States and Western Europe and are hypothesized to be universally applicable to non-Western contexts. Departing from this tradition, the current study proposes a Chinese culture-specific leadership theory, built on traditional Confucianism. The principle aim is to examine and articulate a culturally informed and warranted ground for a leadership model in the Chinese context. The results of the study provide a new perspective on leadership in the Chinese context by focusing on three dimensions of paternalistic leadership (authoritative, benevolent, and moral leadership) that are ignored in the Western leadership literature. The results also suggest that trust in the leader and harmonious relationships in an organization are key mechanisms for explaining effective leadership in Chinese organizations regardless of whether paternalistic or transformational leadership is used. What’s more, as the younger generation is becoming the dominant workforce, a successful leader in China should use Western practices and integrate them to fit in Chinese organizations in a way that also acknowledges Chinese traditions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc149628 |
| Date | 08 1900 |
| Creators | Lau, Wai Kwan |
| Contributors | Goodwin, Vicki L., Taylor, Lewis A., Salimath, Mnjula, Pavur, Robert |
| Publisher | University of North Texas |
| Source Sets | University of North Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | Text |
| Rights | Public, Lau, Wai Kwan, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved. |
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