The Effect of Benevolent and Authoritarian Paternalistic Leadership on Affective Organizational Commitment and Innovation Behavior: A Comparison between Korean and US Employees

Drawing on the social exchange theory, we analyzed whether both benevolent and authoritarian dimensions of paternalistic leadership would affect employees’ innovative behavior through their affective organizational commitment using Korean and US samples. Analyses were made to identify any heterogeneous effects of both benevolent and authoritarian paternalistic leadership on affective commitment and innovative behavior. Results showed that the benevolent paternalistic leadership behavior positively affected the affective commitment and innovative behavior of employees both in Korea and the US. Additionally, we confirmed that the authoritarian paternalistic leadership behavior negatively affect the affective commitment. Specifically, the positive effect between benevolent paternalistic leadership and affective commitment was stronger for the higher power distance culture(Korea) than for the lower one(US). However, no significant relationship between the authoritarian paternalistic leadership and affective commitment was found.