A Study on the Influence of Authoritarian-Benevolent Leadership on Employees' Innovative Behavior From the Perspective of Psychological Perception—Based on Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis

Abstract

Employee innovation is the key to enhancing the core competitiveness of an enterprise, and leadership style plays an important role in stimulating employees' innovative behavior. This study explores the impact of unique ambidextrous leadership in the Chinese context, authoritarian-benevolent leadership, on employees' innovative behavior from the perspective of employees' psychological perception, based on research data from 430 employees of companies with direct leaders. Based on the configuration theory, using the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method, the configuration analysis was carried out by taking authoritarian-benevolent ambidextrous leadership and employees' psychological perception as the influencing factors and obtained five configurations of high-level employees' innovative behavior. The results show that the combination of individualized care, understanding, and forgiving of benevolent leadership and Shang-yan of authoritarian leadership can effectively stimulate employees' innovative behavior. Juan-Chiuan leadership is not conducive to employees' innovative behavior. Employees' high psychological safety and low uncertainty are important conditions for promoting employee innovation. In this study, the four dimensions of authoritarian-benevolent leadership and the psychological perceptions of employees are discussed in combination, and the paths of motivating employees to innovate actively are obtained. It is hoped that it can provide certain ideas for leaders to promote employee innovation.

The Influence of Authoritarian-Benevolent Leadership on Subordinates’ Work Engagement: A Social Information Processing Perspective

“…First, this study analyses the mechanism by which authoritarian-benevolent leadership affects subordinates' LMX ambivalence and work engagement, which deepens the understanding of authoritarian-benevolent leadership. On the one hand, this study provides a new insight into the dark side of ambidextrous leadership styles, and responds to the call for the study of authoritarian-benevolent leadership style 11. Previous studies have mainly focused on the positive effects of ambidextrous leadership, which are proved to be positive in improving employees' trust76 and innovative behavior,11 but research on the negative effects of authoritarian-benevolent leadership on subordinates' status and behaviors is still insufficient.…”

“…On the one hand, this study provides a new insight into the dark side of ambidextrous leadership styles, and responds to the call for the study of authoritarian-benevolent leadership style. 11 Previous studies have mainly focused on the positive effects of ambidextrous leadership, which are proved to be positive in improving employees’ trust 76 and innovative behavior, 11 but research on the negative effects of authoritarian-benevolent leadership on subordinates’ status and behaviors is still insufficient. Based on social information processing theory, this study proves that authoritarian-benevolent leadership positively influences subordinates’ LMX ambivalence and attenuates subordinates’ work engagement, which enriches the literature of ambidextrous leadership that considers the negative side of authoritarian-benevolent leadership, thus offering a deeper understanding of this research topic.…”

“… 8 Authoritarian-benevolent leadership is in turn defined as leaders taking use of these two complementary leadership behaviors across different conditions. 9 Authoritarian-benevolent leadership has been proved to be an effective ambidextrous leadership style which positively affects subordinates’ psychological status and behaviors, such as promoting employees’ paradox mindset, 10 creativity 11 and work performance. 9 Although a growing attention has been paid on authoritarian-benevolent leadership, several important gaps still exist in understanding its impacts on subordinates’ work outcomes.…”