Cross-Cultural Generalizability of Paternalistic Leadership: An Expansion of Leader-Member Exchange Theory

Abstract

Paternalism is an emerging concept with significant potential for international leadership research. Paternalistic leaders combine benevolence with authority. Paternalism is a prevalent leadership style in non-Western business organizations. In this article, the authors extend research on paternalism to the Western business context. They compare the attitudes of employees from the United States ( N = 215) and India ( N = 207) with respect to paternalistic leadership and its correlates. Paternalism had a significant positive effect on job satisfaction in India, but the relationship was not significant in the United States. In both cultural contexts, paternalistic leadership was positively related to leader—member exchange and organizational commitment. Results suggest paternalistic leadership may generalize across cultures.

The impact of leadership on organizational ambidexterity and employee psychological safety in the global acquisitions of emerging market multinationals

“…In the Chinese context, for example, individuals are used to a paternalistic leadership style (Farh & Cheng, 2000;Pellegrini, Scandura & Jayaraman, 2010;Ho & Nesbit, 2014;Chou, Sibley, Liu, Lin & Cheng, 2015). Also, Chinese individuals are likely to respond to a paternalistic leadership style by adopting subordinate behaviours aimed at demonstrating their indebtedness towards their leaders' benevolence (Ho & Nesbit, 2014).…”

A Study of the Reliability and Validity of the Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Instrument in Arabic

“…The generation of high values in relation to this scale reflect employee-manager relationships that are characterised by a great degree of affect, loyalty, contribution and professional respect. collectivistic societies such as Turkey where a 5.27 LMX mean score was reported in a study by Pellegrini and Scandura (2006) and a 4.86 LMX mean score was reported in India (Pellegrini et al, 2010). Pellegrini and colleagues used the seven-point scale of LMX, which is equivalent to the five-point scale applied in the present study (see appendix C; this will be discussed in more detail in section 7).…”

The effects of paternalistic leadership on organizational identification: the mediating role of trust in leader

“…Despite the research on managerial approaches and practices based on the cultural characteristics of western societies is abundant, the research reflecting cultural characteristics of eastern societies in the same field is scarce. On the other hand, recent research has frequently demonstrated that the leadership model based on paternalism phenomenon which reflects the dominant cultural characteristics of eastern societies is highly effective in those societies (Pellegrini et al, 2010). As substantial amount of studies show paternalistic leadership phenomenon is also a positive cultural value in our country.…”