Does authoritarianism necessarily stifle creativity? The role of discipline-focused authoritarian leadership

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Honglei Zhao¹  Qingming Su²  Ming Lou¹  Chuqi Hang¹  Li Zhang¹ 

[1] School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology;Heilongjiang Provincial Government Offices Administration

关键词: Authoritarian leadership;    creative self-efficiency;    appointment event criticality;    Event system theory;    Employee creativity;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1037102

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

A burgeoning body of research has shown that authoritarian leadership have two characteristics of “light” and “dark”, for example it does not always have a negative impact on employees’ creative activities. However, there are not enough studies to explain this potential positive link. To extend the authoritarian leadership and creativity literatures, we draw on self-determination theory and event system theory, and elicit the two new notions of discipline-focused authoritarian leadership and appointment event criticality to examine whether, when, and how authoritarian leaders have a positive impact on employee creativity. With time-lagged data collected from 435 employees and their direct leaders in China, we found that discipline-focused authoritarian leadership has an indirect positive effect on employee creativity through creative self-efficacy. In addition, appointment event criticality strengthens the positive relation between discipline-focused authoritarian leadership and creative self-efficiency, and the indirect impact of discipline-focused authoritarian leadership on employee creativity through creative self-efficiency. Its theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

【 授权许可】

CC BY