How Do Different Faces of Paternalistic Leaders Facilitate or Impair Task and Innovative Performance? Opening the Black Box

Abstract

There is a growing amount of research integrating leadership and positive organizational behavior literatures in order to understand the processes through which leadership contributes to performance. One such mechanism through which leaders influence performance is psychological capital (PsyCap). Particularly, paternalistic leadership, which is a leadership style that combines discipline, authority, and power with fatherly benevolence, may be a critical antecedent to the development of followers’ PsyCap. Yet no studies to date have investigated how paternalistic leaders affect followers’ PsyCap, which, in turn, influences their task and innovative performance. To this end, based on a sample of 409 Turkish employees and their 72 leaders, the current study investigates the effects of three dimensions of paternalistic leadership (i.e., benevolent, authoritarian, and authoritative) on followers’ leader-rated task and innovative performance. While there were no significant mediation effects for task performance, the results revealed that both benevolent and authoritative leadership positively influenced innovative performance through enhancing followers’ PsyCap. Authoritarian leadership, however, has negative effects on PsyCap, which, in turn, mediates the effect on innovative performance of followers. The theoretical and practical implications of our findings, along with suggestions for future research, are discussed.