Authoritarian–benevolent Leadership and its Effect on Graduate Student Creativity: The Mediating Role of Intrinsic Motivation

Abstract

Despite numerous studies demonstrating that authoritarian leadership and benevolent leadership exert incompatible influence on an individual’s creativity, the combined effects of authoritarian leadership and benevolent leadership on an individual’s creativity and the related mechanisms have yet to be explained. This study tests a model that considers the combined effects of authoritarian and benevolent leadership on graduate student creativity in the universities in China, while also examining the mediating role of the intrinsic motivation of graduate students. Multisource data were collected from 297 graduate students in 60 university scientific research teams in China. The results show that when authoritarian leadership and benevolent leadership are in congruence, the intrinsic motivation of graduate students and their creativity increase as supervisor authoritarianism and benevolence increases. When authoritarian leadership and benevolent leadership are in discrepancy, the intrinsic motivation of graduate students is higher when low supervisor authoritarianism is combined with high benevolence; however, the findings also show that low authoritarian leadership combined with high benevolent leadership would not increase graduate student creativity. The relationship between authoritarian–benevolent leadership and graduate student creativity is partially mediated by intrinsic motivation. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.

Do authoritarian leaders also have “fans”? The relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee followership behavior in the Chinese context

“…Intrinsic motivation is an essential driver of self-determination (van Schie et al, 2019;Xia et al, 2021). A work environment with autonomy and without external control or reinforcement facilitates intrinsic motivation (Ryan and Deci, 2020;Xia et al, 2021).…”

“…Intrinsic motivation is an essential driver of self-determination (van Schie et al, 2019;Xia et al, 2021). A work environment with autonomy and without external control or reinforcement facilitates intrinsic motivation (Ryan and Deci, 2020;Xia et al, 2021). Authoritarian leaders may emphasize their authority to gain control over employees and are more unlikely to allow room for employee autonomy (Dedahanov et al, 2016;Shu et al, 2018).…”

“…Authoritarian leaders are highly competitive and set very high expectations for their teams (Li et al, 2021). Employees may realize that the best way to meet the highperformance goal is not only to work hard but also work to learn and build up their competence and creativity (Xia et al, 2021). Given that authoritarian leaders emphasize that their team members must have the best performance of all the teams in the organization (Huang et al, 2015;Leroy et al, 2015), cooperative goal interdependence can help employees acquire the knowledge and information that will help to achieve the best performance among the teams.…”

“…Cooperative goal interdependence supports employees in effective and efficient goal achievement, which promotes the fulfillment of competence and superiority at work (Urbach et al, 2021). Accordingly, favorable cooperative goal interdependence promoted by authoritarian leaders keeps employees intrinsically motivated to exert their efforts in goal achievement so as to feel interested, rewarded and meaningful in their job (Xia et al, 2021). Employees will build up their competence and pursue self-development and support their leaders.…”

“…Acting as a goal incentive, cooperative goal interdependence refers to an interdependent situation in which leaders' goals are positively related to their employees' goals (Deutsch, 1949;Wu et al, 2015), enhancing the relevance of the leader's goals to employees' goal achievement. Leader authoritarianism tends to produce goal-oriented behaviors (Xia et al, 2021). In SMEs, due to their smaller size with fewer employees working, authoritarian leaders are usually the most influential decision-makers within the firm and their objectives mostly reflect the business strategies of SMEs (Franco and Matos, 2015).…”