Authoritarian Leadership and Subordinates’ Performance: The Mediating Role of Leader – Member Exchange

Abstract

The study of leadership extracted from the background of Chinese traditional culture has increasingly attracted the interest of Chinese and foreign scholars, among which authoritarian leadership is the most typical. This study focused on the supervisor of the store managers in a large retail chain in China. We propose a model using authoritarian leadership as key independent variable to explain the subordinates’ performance. We use the leader-member-exchange as a mediator. We show that the leader-member exchange fully mediates authoritarian leadership and subordinates’ performance. Implications for the theory and practice of leadership are discussed.

Keywords: Authoritarian leadership, Leader-member exchange, Leadership, Paternalistic leadership