The Mediating Role of Organizational Climate in Assessing the Influence of Local Governance-Based Paternalist Leadership on Employee Innovation

Abstract

Abstract With the acceleration of economic globalization and the increasing uncertainty in the external market environment, Chinese enterprises are increasingly required to survive and thrive through continuous innovation activities. As the ultimate source of organizational innovation, the staff determines the overall level of organizational innovation. Simultaneously, leadership behavior within an enterprise profoundly influences employees’ innovative behavior. Therefore, influencing employees’ innovative behavior through a leader’s conduct has become a hot topic of academic discussion. The study aims to explore the impact of locally based paternalistic leadership on employees’ innovative behavior and introduce organizational climate to examine the mutual influence between these two variables. This is a quantitative case study to be conducted on various banks in China, utilizing SPSS software and bootstrap mediator variable analysis. According to the results of this research, paternalistic leadership has a significantly beneficial impact on innovative employee behavior and organizational climate. However, the authoritarian leadership dimension negatively affects innovative behavior and organizational climate. Organizational climate has a substantially positive effect on innovation behavior, and organizational climate plays a role as a mediating variable in the influence of paternalistic leadership on innovative behavior. The future value of this research lies in providing practical suggestions for the development of leadership behavior theory and improving the efficiency of human resource management.