@article{2ed00ee8e937412a8d906c009bfef159,
title = "Authoritarian leadership in projects: An integrated model to understand the team members{\textquoteright} task and innovative performance",
abstract = "Although authoritarian leadership (AL) behaviour is critical to organisational performance, its impact in different cultural contexts has received scant academic attention especially for managing bespoke projects which require temporary organisations to be formed. Drawing from self-determination and expectancy theories, this present research develops an integrated model to interpret the underlying impacts that the two dichotomous groups of ALs (i.e. discipline- and dominance-focused) have on project team members' task and innovative performance in China. The model developed was tested using the data collected from 316 Chinese project team members. Empirical evidence indicates that psychological empowerment acts as a {\textquoteleft}mediator{\textquoteright} via which the discipline- and dominance-focused ALs can positively and negatively affect the team members' task and innovative performance respectively. Additionally, the aforementioned indirect relationships are moderated by outcome expectancy, implying a positive interdependency between them. This research enriches an understanding of ALs and project team in terms of task completion and innovation and is useful for developing interventions to improve project team performance.",
keywords = "Project team member, Authoritarian leadership, Psychological empowerment, Outcome expectancy, Task performance, Innovative performance",
author = "Bingsheng Liu and Shi-Hao Zhou and Dan Wang and Henry LIU and Edwards, {David J.} and Yuan Chen",
note = "Funding Information: The extent to which a leadership style effectively motivates a project team relies on the members' characteristics (i.e. personality traits), because of individual heterogeneities in terms of personality, cultural and educational backgrounds (Matthews et al., 2021). A leader's behaviour that highly assists one team member might marginally help another. In this stance, the expectancy theory suggests that project team members' outcome expectancy would either aid or constrain the motivational influence of leadership (Liu and Chan, 2017). For instance, in the case where project team members have high expectations of their work performance, their intrinsic motivation (i.e. reflected in their psychological empowerment) can vary significantly depending on whether they are under a discipline-focused or dominance-focused leadership style. This is because personality traits can influence how employee perceive and respond to these leadership styles (Chou and Cheng, 2014; Shoaib and Baruch, 2019). Under such circumstance, outcome expectancy would be a moderating influence, where it moderates the effects of ALs. This perspective is supported by a fact that individuals with different outcome expectancy react differently to the two types of AL, resulting in different levels of psychological empowerment (Latham, 2001). However, there is a void of evidence empirically examining the moderation effect of project team members' outcome expectancy, which this paper addresses via the second research question: what is the boundary condition that alters the effects of the two types of AL on project team members' performance?Table 5 indicates that project team members' gender, age and education, as well as projects\u2019 duration, team size and industry type were included as control variables. Then, discipline-focused AL, dominance-focused AL and outcome expectancy were regressed on psychological empowerment in Model 1. Analysis results show that discipline-focused AL has a significantly positive effect on psychological empowerment (\u03B2 = .465, p < .001), thus supporting Hypothesis 1. Moreover, dominance-focused AL is significantly and negatively correlated to psychological empowerment (\u03B2 = \u2212.130, p < .001). Therefore, Hypothesis 2 is also supported. In Models 2 and 3 (Table 5), psychological empowerment is regressed on task and innovative performance, respectively. It is noted that psychological empowerment significantly and positively predicted both task (\u03B2 = .351, p < .001) and innovative performance (\u03B2 = .896, p < .001), thereby supporting Hypotheses 3a and 3b.Table 6 presents the moderated mediation effects. Discipline-focused AL has positive indirect effects through psychological empowerment on task and innovative performance when project team members' outcome expectancy is high (i.e. 1 SD above the mean). Specifically, the 95% CI is [.049, .171] for task performance and [.203, .604] for innovative performance. However, in the case where project team members\u2019 outcome expectancy is low (i.e. 1 SD below the mean), the confidence intervals for the indirect effects both included zero (task performance: 95% CI = [\u2013.012, .074]; innovative performance: 95% CI = [\u2013.054, .255]). Furthermore, the differences in indirect effects between high and low outcome expectancy are significant for task and innovative performance, i.e. task performance: \u03B2diff = .076, 95% CI = [.011, .158]; innovative performance: \u03B2diff = .283, 95% CI = [.031, .541]. Fig. 2 illustrates this moderating effect, supporting Hypotheses 6a and 6b.These findings underscore the importance of adopting culturally sensitive leadership practices in global project management settings. Leaders should consider adapting their approach based on the cultural context to maximise team performance and ensure alignment with team members' expectations. In conclusion, this study not only provides insight into the dual dimensions of AL in influencing project members\u2019 performance through an integrated model, but also supports leaders in identifying culturally appropriate interventions to enhance team outcomes.This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers: 72134002; 72304051), and Project No. 2022CDJJJ-010 supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities. Funding Information: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers: 72134002; 72304051), and Project No. 2022CDJJJ-010 supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2024 The Authors",
year = "2024",
month = dec,
doi = "10.1016/j.plas.2024.100162",
language = "English",
volume = "5",
pages = "1--11",
journal = "Project Leadership and Society",
issn = "2666-7215",
}