Bor-Shiuan Cheng

A Cultural Analysis of Paternalistic Leadership in Chinese Organizations

Paternalistic leadership, which combines strong discipline and authority with fatherly benevolence and moral integrity couched in a ‘personalistic’ atmosphere, has been found to be prevalent in overseas Chinese family businesses (CFBs). After critically reviewing the extant literature, we identify three constituent elements of paternalistic leadership (PL): authoritarianism, benevolence and moral leadership. We trace the deep cultural roots of each element and explore their relevance to organizations in contemporary Chinese societies. We then identify key research issues and propose a preliminary PL model for future studies on leadership in Chinese organizations.

Affective Trust in Chinese Leaders: Linking Paternalistic Leadership to Employee Performance

Adopting the theoretical framework of social exchange, the authors used the two dominant Confucian values—hierarchy and relationalism—to theorize the mediating role of affective trust in the relationship between paternalistic leadership and employee in-role and extra-role performance in the Chinese organizational context. Data from 601 supervisor–subordinate dyads of 27 companies in a Taiwanese conglomerate revealed that while the benevolence and morality dimensions of paternalistic leadership are positively associated with both in-role and extra-role performance, the authoritarian paternalistic leadership dimension is negatively related to subordinate performance. Furthermore, affective trust mediated the relationship between benevolent and moral paternalistic leadership and employee performance but did not mediate the relationship between authoritarianism and employee performance. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed in the Chinese context and beyond.

Individualism-collectivism as Descriptive Norms Development of a Subjective Norm Approach to Culture Measurement

The development and validation of a new instrument for measuring the descriptive norms related to individualism-collectivism (IC) is presented. IC is conceptualized as a group- specific unidimensional cultural construct with four defining attributes (Triandis, 1995). Three studies are reported showing the dimensionality and validities at individual and cultural levels across samples from 11 cultures. The new instrument has good statistical properties with iden- tical structures at the individual and cultural level, good reliabilities at the individual level, adequate agreement within cultures, and demonstrates first signs of convergent and discriminant validity. Correlations at the cultural level also indicate that the measure has the potential to add to research by integrating previously untapped attributes of IC. Finally, normative IC explains variance in self-reported behavior over and above self-referenced IC. Implications and opportunities for norm-oriented research and scale refinement are discussed.

Fitting in organizational values: The mediating role of person‐organization fit between CEO charismatic leadership and employee outcomes

Purpose – The current leadership literature has paid little attention to understanding the intervening mechanism by which leaders influence followers. In order to partially bridge this gap, the article aims to present a value‐fit charismatic leadership theory which focusses on the key intervening mechanism – person‐organization values fit.Design/methodology/approach – The model was tested empirically on 180 participants, including 51 managers and 129 employees from 37 large‐scale companies in Taiwan.Findings – Based on the block regression analysis, the results showed that CEO charismatic leadership has both direct and indirect effects on employees’ extra effort to work, satisfaction with the CEO, as well as organizational commitment, which are mediated by employees’ perceived person‐organization values fit. The findings also provided evidence that the relationship between charismatic leadership and person‐organization values fit is significant. Furthermore, the analysis also showed the significant effect...

Cultural Differences in Gender Role Attitudes between Chinese and American Students.

A total of 665 Chinese college students in Taiwan and Caucasian college students in eastern North Carolina were administered several sex role attitude scales developed by Spence et al. (1978, 1980). The scales were translated into Chinese for Chinese subjects. Results indicated cultural differences in attitudes toward Marital Roles, Expressivity, Social Interaction, and Preference for males. In both cultures, females were found to be significantly more liberal, as shown in Attitudes Toward Women, Marital Roles, and Social Interaction. These results are consistent with previous research. Cultural differences were also as expected, with Chinese holding more conservative views.

Leadership and Management in China: Paternalistic leadership in Chinese organizations: research progress and future research directions

P aternalistic leadership (PL) is an indigenous Chinese leadership style that is rooted in Chinas patriarchal tradition and has been found to be prevalent in overseas Chinese family businesses. Farh and Cheng (2000) proposed a model of PL that has three components: authoritarianism, benevolence, and moral leadership. Since then, a series of empirical studies have been conducted by Cheng and his colleagues to examine the validity of Farh and Chengs PL model using a variety of samples from Taiwan and mainland China. In this chapter, we review this body of research and identify promising areas for future research. Introduction In the second half of the twentieth century, entrepreneurship among overseas Chinese exploded not only in Chinese-dominated communities such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan, but also in South-east Asian countries, such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines, where the Chinese are in the minority (Weidenbaum, 1996). Scholars who were intrigued by this phenomenon embarked on a series of studies of the practices of overseas Chinese businesses. They discovered a distinct management/leadership style called paternalism, widely practiced among the owners/managers of overseas Chinese family businesses (e.g. Cheng, 1995c; Redding, 1990; Silin, 1976; Westwood, 1997). Paternalism, which is rooted in the traditional Chinese family structure, has crossed the boundary of families and generalized to the workplace.

Paternalistic Leadership in Four East Asian Societies Generalizability and Cultural Differences of the Triad Model

Paternalistic leadership has been claimed to be one dominant leadership style in Asia. However, research failed to assess its comparability and applicability across East Asian contexts. The triad model of paternalistic leadership entails elements of authoritarian, benevolent, and moral character leadership. This article investigates the triad model of paternalistic leadership in mainland China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Paternalistic leadership occurs in an equivalent three-factorial structure indicating the applicability of the triad model, whereas some of the item intercepts vary between the four East Asian employee samples. These findings indicate generalizability of the meaning attributed to paternalistic leadership via three components, whereas the different measurement intercepts epitomize culture-specific scales across the four Asian contexts. The assessment of weak and strong measurement invariance is essential for an emerging cross-cultural research on paternalistic leadership by establishing evidence for the applicability and generalizability (including their boundaries) across cultural contexts.

THE LOVE OF MONEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL: PAY SATISFACTION AND CPI AS MODERATORS

By incorporating pay satisfaction at Level 1 and Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) at Level 2, we investigated the relationship between the love of money and self-reported corrupt intent among 6,382 managers in 31 geopolitical entities across six continents. Our significant cross-level three-way interaction effect showed that for managers with high pay satisfaction, the intensity (slope) of the love of money to corrupt intent relationship was almost identical in high or low CPI entities but the former had the lowest magnitude of corrupt intent, whereas the latter had the highest. For those with low pay satisfaction, the slope was the steepest in high CPI entities, but was flat in the low CPI entities and the difference between the two was significant.

Effects of Physical Attractiveness, Sex, and Type of Crime on Mock Juror Decisions A Replication with Chinese Students

A study previously conducted with American college students was replicated with Chinese college students. The Chinese subjects read a description of either a burglary or a swindle where the defendant was either male or female, physically attractive or unattractive, and Chinese or American. A biographical sketch and a photograph of the defendant were attached to the description of the crime. Subjects were asked to indicate the length of sentence appropriate for the crime, rate the seriousness of the crime, and rate the defendant on 12 personal characteristics. Results indicated that (a) female subjects gave longer sentences for the crime of burglary but only when the defendant was American; (b) attractiveness was associated with lenient sentencing for American burglars but with stringent sentencing for American swindlers; (c) Chinese women gave more lenient sentences to female defendants than to male defendants; (d) American defendants, regardless of the crime, were rated more than favorably than Chinese defendants; (e) attractive defendants were rated more favorably on 6 of the 12 personal characteristics; and (f) the swindler was rated more favorably than the burglar on 7 of the 12 personal characteristics.

Attitude toward marriage roles among Chinese and American college students

Abstract Data on attitudes toward marriage role were obtained from Chinese and American students in 1962 and 1984. Jacobsons (1950, 1952) Marriage-Role Attitude Scale was used. Results supported both hypotheses: Compared to American students in 1962, American students in 1984 held a more equalitarian attitude toward marriage role; in 1984, compared to American students, Chinese students held a more male-dominant attitude toward marriage role. The results also revealed some other interesting facts. Women in both countries and at both times held a more equalitarian viewpoint. This sex difference in marriage-role attitude among Americans was definitely stronger in 1984 than in 1962. Also, contrary to expectation, Chinese women held a more equalitarian attitude than Chinese men, suggesting an unsurfaced progressive nature among young, educated, Chinese women.