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

Abstract

PurposeThe existing research rarely explains the value of authoritarian leadership in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The purpose of this study is to explore how authoritarian leadership facilitates employee followership behaviors of the SMEs in China by considering the moderating effects of cooperative goal interdependence and leader behavioral integrity.Design/methodology/approachThis research tested hypotheses with a two-wave survey from a sample of 258 respondents from SMEs in China. Hypotheses are tested using hierarchical regression analyses.FindingsFindings of the study have indicated the instrumental function of authoritarian leadership in facilitating employee followership behavior in SMEs. In particular, this study shows that the influence of authoritarian leadership on followership behavior was positively related when employees have high cooperative goal interdependence with authoritarian leaders, and when employees perceive a leader's high behavioral integrity.Practical implicationsThe study will help SMEs to understand that authoritarian leadership should seek optimal levels of cooperative goals with employees and integrate achievement goals into their career development strategy to enhance their followership behavior. In addition, authoritarian leadership should strive to take actions consistent with their words to guarantee the relationship between achieving goals and sharing mutual goals with employees.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the literature by addressing an important yet under-researched area, i.e. the effectiveness of authoritarian leadership in SMEs. Authoritarian leadership, a demanding and controlling leadership style, is often criticized by scholars. This study elaborates on a three-way interaction implied by self-determination theory in predicting followership behavior. It specifies the different roles of two situational factors (cooperative goal interdependence and leader behavior integrity) in affecting employees' followership behavior.

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“…By processing and interpreting them, subordinates can influence their cognition, attitude, and coping behavior towards leadership behavior (Salancik and Pfeffer, 1978). Therefore, leader behavioral integrity affects the extent to which subordinates understand leadership behaviors (Wang et al, 2022). Specifically, when subordinates perceive a high level of leader behavioral integrity, subordinates recognize the leader's determination to achieve the "vision", but this also leads to subordinates consuming a large amount of cognitive resources to interpret the information and expectations conveyed by the leader (Zhao et al, 2021), which increases the cognitive load and drives the development of cognitive strain in subordinates.…”

“…By processing and interpreting them, subordinates can influence their cognition, attitude, and coping behavior towards leadership behavior (Salancik and Pfeffer, 1978). Therefore, leader behavioral integrity affects the extent to which subordinates understand leadership behaviors (Wang et al. , 2022).…”

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“…Some researchers unveiled its positive effects from employees’ prospect perspective (Mitchell et al ., 2017), while others emphasized its negative outcomes from stress perspective (Kundi et al ., 2022), or revealed the inverted U-shaped relation between performance pressure and outcome variables based on intensity perspective (Ye et al ., 2021). In view of the inconsistency of above research conclusions, explanation may be that previous researches simply focused on linear thinking, ignoring the need of integrating incentive factors, security factors and their interaction in the process of performance management to conduct a structured analysis of employee’s achievement motivation (Wang et al ., 2022a, b). As a dynamic and continuous rather than a permanent and fixed psychological process, thriving at work indicates intensity fluctuations of employee’s internal attributes and behaviors (Ding et al ., 2022), which echoes the essence of employee’s work state under performance pressure (Mitchell et al ., 2019; Babalola et al ., 2022).…”

“…Performance pressure stimulates employees to pay attention to the benefits related to performance results, which will urge them to focus on performance goals and improve current performance. In case of cooperative goal interdependence between leaders and employees, the goals of both parties are in a state of positive connection (Wang et al ., 2022a, b). Thus, leaders can express their recognition to employees’ goals through goal management process, which can facilitate employees’ continuous enhancement of work meaning based on performance goals.…”