Conference PaperPDF Available

When Controlling Leaders Meet Employees with Psychological Capital: Impact On Creative Performance

April 2018
Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings 2018(1):15343

DOI: 10.5465/AMBPP.2018.15343abstract

Conference: Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings

Authors:

Stijn Decoster

Zayed University

Leander De Schutter

Erasmus University Rotterdam

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Theoretical model of the current research.

…

The effect of AL on Employees' Felt Fear at different levels of PsyCap.

…

Means, standard deviations, scale reliabilities, and correlations of the variables.

…

Results for Study 1.

…

Comparison of measurement models for main variables in Study 2.

…

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Content uploaded by Stijn Decoster

Content may be subject to copyright.

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Business Research

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres

Authoritarian leadership and employee creativity: The moderating role of

psychological capital and the mediating role of fear and defensive silence

☆

Liang Guo

a,1

, Stijn Decoster

b,f,1

, Mayowa T. Babalola

c,⁎,1

, Leander De Schutter

, Omale A. Garba

Katrin Riisla

Shandong University at Weihai, China

Zayed University, United Arab Emirates

Peter Faber Business School, Australian Catholic University, Australia

WHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management, Germany

Boston University, USA

University of Leuven, Belgium

ARTICLE INFO

Keywords:

Authoritarian leadership

Fear

Defensive silence

Employee creativity

Psychological capital

ABSTRACT

Drawing from the transactional theory of stress, we examined the relationships between authoritarian leader-

ship, fear, defensive silence, and ultimately employee creativity. We also explored the moderating eﬀect of

employee psychological capital on these mediated relationships. We tested our hypothesized model in two

studies of employee-supervisor dyads working in Africa (Nigeria; Study 1) and Asia (China; Study 2). The results

of Study 1 revealed that the negative relationship between authoritarian leadership and creativity was mediated

by employee defensive silence. Extending these ﬁndings in a three-wave study in Study 2, our results revealed a

more complex relationship. Speciﬁcally, our results showed that both fear and defensive silence serially medi-

ated the link between authoritarian leadership and employee creativity. In addition, we found that this mediated

relationship was moderated by employee psychological capital such that the relationship was stronger when

psychological capital was low (versus high). Implications for both theory and practice are discussed.

In today's rapidly changing and increasingly competitive work en-

vironment, employees are more than ever expected to produce novel

and useful ideas about new products, services and procedures (i.e.,

exhibit creative behaviors; Zhou & Hoever, 2014). Creativity is im-

portant not only because it increases customer satisfaction and loyalty,

but it also plays a crucial role in organizational success and survival

(Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009). As a result, organizations often seek to

adopt policies that fuel employee creativity (Gong, Huang, & Farh,

2009). To do so, researchers have underscored and focused on the role

of positive forms of leadership (Bai, Lin, & Li, 2016;Shin & Zhou, 2003;

Tierney, Farmer, & Graen, 1999). Although these studies have gener-

ated valuable insights, little attention has been paid to potentially

darker or destructive sides of leadership and their relationship with

employee creativity. An example of such leadership approach is au-

thoritarian leadership (AL) (Aycan, 2006). Authoritarian leaders assert

absolute authority and control over employees and expect unques-

tionable obedience (Cheng, Chou, Wu, Huang, & Farh, 2004). Given

that the creative process often requires employees to use their own

discretion to share and come up with useful ideas (Amabile, 1988;Gong

et al., 2009), a growing body of work has suggested that AL can inhibit

creativity (e.g., Wang, Chiang, Tsai, Lin, & Cheng, 2013;Zhang, Tsui, &

Wang, 2011). Despite these important ﬁndings, there is still lack of a

coherent theoretical framework that explicates the psychological pro-

cesses and moderating factors of such relationship in more depth.

More speciﬁcally, aside from Zhang et al. (2011) who examined the

mechanisms (i.e., reduced knowledge sharing in workgroups and col-

lective eﬃcacy) through which the AL –creativity link occurs at the

group-level, our insight into why and when AL weaves its inﬂuence on

individual employee creativity remains very limited. Such expanded

insight is crucial because creativity is not merely an aggregated eﬀort,

but rather an opportunity for individuals to contribute uniquely

(Amabile, 1996). Furthermore, several studies have revealed weak, and

even in some cases positive associations between AL and employees'

overall performance (e.g., Huang, Xu, Chiu, Lam, & Farh, 2015;Wang &

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.07.034

Received 31 January 2017; Received in revised form 21 July 2018; Accepted 23 July 2018

☆

An Earlier version of the paper was presented at the 77th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, Anaheim, California.

⁎

Corresponding author at: Peter Faber Business School, Australian Catholic University, Australia.

The ﬁrst three authors contributed equally to this paper.

E-mail address: mayo.babalola@gmail.com (M.T. Babalola).

Journal of Business Research 92 (2018) 219–230

Guan, 2018). Since creativity is a critical component of employees'

performance (Raja & Johns, 2010), these mixed ﬁndings suggest that

the AL –creativity link is far more complex than generally assumed by

past research. They also emphasize the need for more detailed under-

standing of the mechanisms underlying this link as well as the moder-

ating factors that may weaken or strengthen these processes. Such

improved knowledge could then help organizations to alleviate the ill-

eﬀects of AL on creativity at work.

Accordingly, our primary goal in this paper is to develop and test a

more comprehensive model linking AL to individual employee crea-

tivity. To do so, we draw from Lazarus and Folkman's (1984) transac-

tional theory of stress as an overarching theoretical framework to

suggest two primary mechanisms: fear (the primarily felt emotion) and

defensive silence (the coping mechanism adopted to reduce the poten-

tially threatening relationship and feelings of fear) through which AL

may relate to employee creativity. Brieﬂy, Lazarus and Folkman's

theory suggests that individuals who encounter stressors in the form of

demanding or pressuring interpersonal interactions may experience

fear and may adopt relevant coping mechanisms (e.g., reduce their

work eﬀorts). Because creativity is an important work eﬀort that re-

quires individuals to go above and beyond their normal job require-

ments (George, 2008), we suggest in this manuscript that being con-

fronted with an authoritarian leader may be demanding, pressuring,

and form a signiﬁcant stressor for employees such that they experience

fear and become defensively silent, which then inhibits their creativity.

Further, we examine the moderating eﬀect of employee psycholo-

gical capital (PsyCap) on the relationship between AL and fear. PsyCap

is a higher-order construct combining eﬃcacy, hope, optimism, and

resilience (Luthans, Avolio, Avey, & Norman, 2007). We focus on

PsyCap as a moderator in our model, because it is an individual's “po-

sitive appraisal of circumstances and probability for success based on

motivated eﬀort and perseverance”(Luthans et al., 2007, p. 550) and it

serves as an important psychological resource useful for dealing with

stressors (see Luthans & Youssef, 2017). The transactional theory of

stress suggests that individuals react diﬀerently to stressful situations

and that certain personal resources are particularly useful in this re-

gard. Consistent with the transactional theory of stress (Lazarus, 1991;

Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) and research on personal coping resources

(Hobfoll, 2001), we suggest that employees high in PsyCap can cope

better with the stressful nature of AL, thus attenuating its eﬀect on

employee fear. In contrast, when an employee has low PsyCap, we

propose that the eﬀects of AL on employee fear will be more pro-

nounced (compared to high PsyCap individuals).

By examining these relationships (see Fig. 1), our study makes at

least four important contributions to the literature. First, to date, the

literature on AL has primarily focused on social exchange and identity

theories in explaining AL's eﬀects on employee work outcomes (e.g.,

Chen, Eberly, Chiang, Farh, & Cheng, 2014;Schaubroeck, Shen, &

Chong, 2017). While interesting insights have emerged from these

theories, this limited theoretical perspective may restrict the complete

understanding of how AL inﬂuences employees. Indeed, the use of a

single theory is insuﬃcient to fully capture how a speciﬁc leadership

style aﬀects employee motives, behaviors, and performance (e.g.,

Walumbwa et al., 2011). Against this backdrop, we aim to build upon

the emerging evidence linking AL with reduced levels of creativity (e.g.,

Wang et al., 2013;Zhang et al., 2011) by proposing a model wherein

authoritarian leaders may inﬂuence employee creativity through

multiple pathways based on the transactional theory of stress (Lazarus

& Folkman, 1984).

Second, our study contributes to AL literature, as it is one of the ﬁrst

to explicitly examine how authoritarian leaders inﬂuence employees'

emotions and their resulting outcomes in the form of fear and defensive

silence. By doing so, we add to leadership research focusing on how

leader behaviors aﬀect follower emotions and in turn follower out-

comes. More speciﬁcally, we answer the call for more research on the

role of negative emotions within leadership literature (Bono, Foldes,

Vinson, & Muros, 2007;Gooty, Connelly, Griﬃth, & Gupta, 2010). In-

deed, leadership literature is heavily skewed towards the beneﬁcial

eﬀects of positive emotions, leaving negative emotions vastly under-

studied (Gooty et al., 2010). Although previous research has suggested

that authoritarian leaders may induce fear (Cheng et al., 2004;Farh,

Cheng, Chou, & Chu, 2006), to our knowledge, the role of fear has not

been directly/comprehensively investigated in the link between AL and

creativity. By directly testing fear and defensive silence as the under-

lying mechanisms through which AL inﬂuences employees' creativity,

our study provides a more comprehensive understanding of AL. Indeed,

examining mediating mechanisms is a critical theory-building compo-

nent that expands scholars and practitioners' knowledge of why certain

processes occur in organizations (Colquitt & Zapata-Phelan, 2007).

Third, this research further contributes to the growing literature on

silence by examining the antecedents of a defensive form of silence and

how it can inﬂuence critical work outcomes, such as creativity.

Speciﬁcally, our research answers calls to identify potential antecedents

and consequences of defensive silence (Brinsﬁeld, 2013;Morrison,

2014). As Morrison (2014) noted, addressing such calls “requires a

perspective that recognizes the role of emotions and nonconscious

processes, as the failure to engage in voice does not always reﬂect a

cognitive or deliberate decision process”(p. 175). Our study addresses

these calls by identifying the roles of AL and the resulting emotion of

fear in the emergence of defensive silence and its eﬀect on employee

creativity.

Finally, we add to the leadership and PsyCap literatures by ex-

amining how PsyCap inﬂuences follower responses to AL. More gen-

erally, there has been very limited understanding of how PsyCap may

help employees navigate diﬀerent leadership behaviors (see for ex-

ample, Li, Wang, Yang, & Liu, 2016;Wang, Sui, Luthans, Wang, & Wu,

2014 for exceptions). As a result, scholars have called for more research

investigating PsyCap as a moderator of leadership behaviors (Dawkins,

Martin, Scott, & Sanderson, 2013;Newman, Ucbasaran, Zhu, & Hirst,

2014). We address this call and contribute to this emerging line of re-

search by shedding light on PsyCap as an important personal resource

that makes some employees more resistant to the negative eﬀect of AL.

More speciﬁcally, this research examines the mitigating eﬀect of em-

ployee PsyCap on the negative eﬀects of AL. As PsyCap represents a

positive psychological state, doing so allows us to enrich our theoretical

understanding of why some individuals are more resistant to the det-

rimental eﬀects of AL. Additionally, we oﬀer practical insights on how

employees can cope with AL to alleviate its negative consequences on

employee creativity and in doing so, also address the call for research

on boundary conditions of AL in organizations (Pellegrini & Scandura,

2008).

1. Theoretical background and hypotheses

1.1. Transactional theory of stress

According to the transactional theory of stress (Lazarus & Folkman,

1984), the cognitive appraisal of stress is a two-part process consisting

of primary and secondary appraisal. During the primary appraisal, an

individual will ﬁrst determine the relevance of an event or situation for

his/her well-being, and whether it can be categorized as stressful. If the

situation is perceived stressful, it may be evaluated as a threat (alter-

natively, the situation can also be appraised as a potential harm or

Fig. 1. Theoretical model of the current research.

L. Guo et al. Journal of Business Research 92 (2018) 219–230

220

challenge). Threats typically result in negative feelings such as fear.

After such feelings, a secondary appraisal will be triggered, in which

individuals search for a possible course of action (Lazarus & Folkman,

1984). During this secondary appraisal, individuals evaluate their

coping resources and available options to deal with the threat (Lazarus,

1991).

Applying this to an organizational context, the transactional theory

of stress suggests that individuals cognitively appraise aspects of their

work environment that are potentially threatening and stressful.

Interpersonal stressors at work may elicit intense feelings of negative

emotions such as fear, which can trigger coping strategies, e.g. reducing

one's work eﬀorts or communication towards the leader (e.g., Lazarus,

1991;Scherer, Shorr, & Johnstone, 2001). Due to the demanding and

pressuring nature of the interpersonal relationship between author-

itarian leaders and their followers (Chen et al., 2014;Pellegrini &

Scandura, 2008), we propose that AL is a signiﬁcant interpersonal

stressor that may reduce employees' creative eﬀorts by increasing fear

(a result of primary appraisal) and defensive silence (a coping me-

chanism generated from secondary appraisal).

1.2. AL and employee creativity

Authoritarian leadership refers to a leader's behavior of asserting

absolute authority and control over employees and commanding un-

opposed obedience by imposing strict discipline on them (Cheng et al.,

2004). Leaders who demonstrate authoritarian behaviors are known for

being overtly controlling and initiating structure, such that employees

who do not follow procedures and rules to the letter are severely

punished (Chen et al., 2014;Cheng et al., 2004). By issuing threats and

subtly intimidating employees, such leaders seek to make their em-

ployees submissive to achieve organizational goals (Pellegrini &

Scandura, 2008). The underlying idea is that AL may be more eﬀective

and eﬃcient in situations where quick decisions are needed, as these

leaders set speciﬁc and unambiguous goals (Huang et al., 2015). By

setting very clear rules and issuing punishments and rewards, the leader

reduces uncertainty, as followers know exactly what to do, and what

not to do (Wang & Guan, 2018). In reality, however, only a few studies

have provided empirical evidence of possible positive outcomes of AL

(Huang et al., 2015;Wang & Guan, 2018). The vast majority of previous

research showed that AL is negatively related with desirable attitudes

and behaviors such as followers' trust, voice, citizenship behaviors and

performance (e.g., Aycan, 2006;Chan, Huang, Snape, & Lam 2013;

Chen et al., 2014;Pellegrini & Scandura, 2008). AL has also been re-

lated to undesirable outcomes such as turnover intentions (Wang,

Cheng, & Wang, 2016). In sum, AL has often been considered an un-

desirable leadership style.

Leaders who are authoritative in their approach may negatively

impact the opportunities of building a well performing and creative

workforce. Further, authoritarian relations are control-based and em-

ployees witnessing such behavior only conform to avoid punishment

(Aycan, 2006). As such, AL often comes across as too rigid, demanding

and pressuring (Chen et al., 2014;Pellegrini & Scandura, 2008), con-

stituting a stressor that may reduce an employee's capability to generate

novel and creative ideas. Indeed, creativity is a work eﬀort that not only

tends to emerge when individuals are faced with less demands, pres-

sure, and rigid structure, but also requires considerable amount of

emotional and mental resources (Amabile, 1996). Therefore, the pres-

sure to conform to an authoritarian leader is likely to be counter-

productive for employees' generation of creative ideas (Mumford, Scott,

Gaddis, & Strange, 2002). These theoretical arguments are in line with

previous research showing that the relationship between AL and em-

ployee creativity is generally negative (e.g., Wang et al., 2013;Zhang

et al., 2011).

However, in the present research, we suggest that AL is not a simple

creativity inhibitor, but rather, we argue that the relationship between

AL and employee creativity is more complex. Drawing from the

transactional theory of stress, we consider fear and defensive silence as

two important underlying mechanisms that can enhance our under-

standing of how AL aﬀects employee creativity. Accordingly, we de-

velop mediating hypotheses for the role of fear and defensive silence,

thereby oﬀering a unique perspective on the AL–employee creativity

link.

1.3. AL, fear, and employee defensive silence

When individuals are confronted with stressors or external threats,

they may intentionally try to protect themselves from them (Schlenker

& Weigold, 1989). One possible protection mechanism is being defen-

sively silent. Van Dyne, Ang, and Botero (2003) deﬁned defensive si-

lence as a conscious decision where one is “withholding relevant ideas,

information, or opinions as a form of self-protection, based on fear”(p.

1367). In other words, defensive silence is a behavioral response to the

negative emotion of fear, and it can be viewed as a coping attempt to

neutralize that situation and to restore the individual's well-being (Oh &

Farh, 2017). Defensive silence is thus a conscious and active strategy to

withhold relevant input. Individuals could potentially speak up, but

after considering the estimated costs and beneﬁts, they ﬁnd it safer to

stay quiet (Milliken, Morrison, & Hewlin, 2003). The experience of fear

makes the alternative of speaking up less attractive, and often results in

a decision to withhold relevant input. In sum, defensive silence can be

described as a fear-based coping strategy that triggers an employee to

withhold his/her thoughts or relevant input as a form of self-protection.

Although a general concept of silence has already been discussed in the

literature (Milliken et al., 2003;Morrison, 2011), only a few studies

have directly examined this fear-based form of silence (Brinsﬁeld, 2013;

Kish-Gephart, Detert, Treviño, & Edmondson, 2009). We argue that

defensive silence can provide a more nuanced explanation of how AL

inﬂuences important employee work behaviors such as creativity.

Conceptually, AL behavior is derived from the Chinese word “li-

wei”, meaning awe and inspiring fear (Cheng et al., 2004). On the one

hand, this implies that the fear inspired by authoritarian leaders may

encourage employees to stand on their toes and to give their best at

work (Huang et al., 2015). On the other hand, because authoritarian

leaders are very demanding and expect absolute conformity to their

decisions, social interactions between such leaders and their sub-

ordinates have been described as inherently intimidating, threatening,

and stressful (Chen et al., 2014;Pellegrini & Scandura, 2008). Such

threatening and stressful relationships generate negative feelings and

make employees feel at unease at work, and as such, AL behavior is

likely to increase fear in employees.

In turn, employees may withhold relevant ideas and information

due to the feeling of fear resulting from their interactions with au-

thoritarian leaders. That is, fear is likely to be associated with the desire

to engage in defensive silence. Employees may reason that it is better to

remain silent and “play it safe”out of fear of making the relationship

with an authoritarian leader worse than it is, or out of fear of negative

career consequences (e.g., losing the opportunity to get better com-

pensation or promotion, or even worse: job loss). Such fear is likely to

reduce the extent to which employees speak up about their concerns or

problems in the workplace. This view is in line with the work of Van

Dyne et al. (2003), who showed that defensive silence is especially used

as a response to external threats that are related with fear (cf. Brinsﬁeld,

2013). In sum, we propose that defensive silence is a coping strategy

resulting from an employee's fear and it may be used as a form of

protection against the pressuring or dominating relationship experi-

enced when an employee is exposed to an authoritarian leader.

Supporting these arguments, previous research has indeed shown

that an employee's decision to remain silent is an avoidance strategy to

cope with the fear resulting from the interpersonal relationship with a

superior (Kiewitz, Restubog, Shoss, Gracia, & Tang, 2016). Therefore,

based on previous research and our theoretical arguments above, we

predict that an exposure to a highly demanding and pressuring leader

L. Guo et al. Journal of Business Research 92 (2018) 219–230

221

who expects absolute and unquestionable obedience (i.e., an author-

itarian leader) is likely to be associated with employee fear, and in turn,

defensive silence. Consequently, we advance the following hypothesis.

Hypothesis 1. Authoritarian leadership will have a positive indirect

relationship with employee defensive silence via fear.

1.4. Implications for employee creativity

Thus far, we have argued that AL is associated with employee de-

fensive silence via fear. In turn, we propose that defensive silence is

likely to be associated with reduced levels of creative behaviors.

Generally, silence refers to the withholding of potentially relevant and

important inputs or situations in which an employee refuses to share

what (s)he has in mind (Morrison & Milliken, 2000;Pinder & Harlos,

2001). As Morrison (2014) puts it, “it is not merely a lack of speech, as

not speaking can occur for many reasons, including having nothing

meaningful to convey”(p. 174). However, being defensively silent

implies that an employee is not speaking up when (s)he has suggestions,

information, or useful ideas to tackle a potential problem due to fear.

Such an employee may for instance lack suﬃcient courage or mental

energy to put forward his or her creative ideas to a fear-triggering au-

thoritarian leader. More speciﬁcally, because exhibiting creative be-

havior requires employees to move beyond their tasks to look for new

ways of doing things and generating ideas (Neubert, Kacmar, Carlson,

Chonko, & Roberts, 2008), employees who choose to remain silent

because of fear are less likely to show creative behaviors. This is in line

with previous research indicating that innovation is reduced when

employees remain silent at work (Brinsﬁeld, 2013).

In sum, defensive silence represents a fear-based coping strategy

linking AL to employee creativity. Additionally, to the extent that an

authoritarian leader invokes fear, and consequently defensive silence,

we expect that employees confronted with AL should exhibit lower

levels of creative behaviors. Accordingly, we propose fear and defensive

silence as the underlying mechanisms through which AL suppresses

employee creativity, leading to the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 2. Authoritarian leadership will have a negative indirect

relationship with employee creativity via defensive silence.

Hypothesis 3. Authoritarian leadership will have a negative indirect

relationship with employee creativity, via employee fear and defensive

silence, serially.

1.5. The moderating role of employee psychological capital

The transactional theory of stress indicates that individuals' char-

acteristics can mitigate the extent to which they are aﬀected by stres-

sors or threats in their immediate environment (Lazarus & Folkman,

1991). These characteristics are particularly linked to individuals' re-

sources, which can be anything that help an individual to attain his or

her goals (Halbesleben, Neveu, Paustian-Underdahl, & Westman, 2014;

Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Because PsyCap is a “positive appraisal of

circumstances and probability for success based on motivated eﬀort and

perseverance”(Luthans et al., 2007, p. 550), we identify and focus on

employee PsyCap as an important personal resource that can attenuate

the negative eﬀects of AL. When confronted with an authoritarian

leader, we suggest that PsyCap is likely to buﬀer the feelings of fear that

encourage defensive silence and in turn, reduce employee creativity.

According to Luthans, Youssef, and Avolio (2015), PsyCap is “an

individual's positive psychological state of development that is char-

acterized by: (1) having conﬁdence (eﬃcacy) to take on and put in the

necessary eﬀort to succeed at challenging tasks; (2) making a positive

attribution (optimism) about succeeding now and in the future; (3)

persevering toward goals and when necessary, redirecting paths to

goals (hope) in order to succeed; and (4) when beset by problems and

adversity, sustaining and bouncing back and even beyond (resilience)

to attain success”(p. 2). The combination of eﬃcacy, optimism, hope,

and resilience (i.e., high PsyCap) is positively related with desirable

organizational outcomes such as job satisfaction, organizational com-

mitment, citizenship behaviors, and job performance (Dawkins et al.,

2013;Newman et al., 2014;Peterson, Luthans, Avolio, Walumbwa, &

Zhang, 2011), and negatively related to undesirable outcomes such as

absenteeism, turnover, job stress, burnout, cynicism, and job deviance

(Dawkins et al., 2013;Newman et al., 2014). As individuals develop

higher levels of PsyCap, the quality of their personal lives and overall

well-being is enhanced (Luthans, Youssef, Sweetman, & Harms, 2013).

High PsyCap also helps individuals to better cope with stressors in their

immediate work environment (Avey, Luthans, & Jensen, 2009;Avey,

Reichard, Luthans, & Mhatre, 2011;Baron, Franklin, & Hmieleski,

2016;Luthans et al., 2007).

Because AL can be viewed as a signiﬁcant stressor (Chen et al.,

2014;Pellegrini & Scandura, 2008), we argue that PsyCap mitigates the

eﬀects of AL on employee emotional reactions. That is, with higher

levels of PsyCap, employees should be able to cope better with the

stressful experiences from an authoritarian leader. More speciﬁcally,

when they are confronted with AL, employees with high PsyCap are

more likely to keep the right mindset and a positive outlook on their

abilities to reach their work goals under such a leader. As such, high

PsyCap should reduce the fear that working with an authoritarian

leader might generate. In contrast, employees with lower levels of

PsyCap are less likely to eﬀectively cope with the pressuring and de-

manding nature of AL because these employees ﬁnd it diﬃcult to

maintain a positive outlook and to persevere in the face of challenging

and stressful situations. As a result, low PsyCap is likely to exacerbate

the fear employees may experience under an authoritarian leader.

Although we are unaware of any previous studies examining the

moderating eﬀect of PsyCap on AL, there is indirect support for our

proposition. For instance, previous research shows that individuals with

higher levels of PsyCap are able to cope better with stressful situations

at work and keep an optimistic outlook above all odds by responding

with positive rather than negative feelings (Roberts, Scherer, & Bowyer,

2011). Similarly, Li et al., (2016) found that employees with lower le-

vels of PsyCap were more aﬀected by the negative interpersonal re-

lationships between them and their immediate supervisor. Here, we

argue that PsyCap is likely to operate in a similar way. Speciﬁcally, for

those with lower levels of PsyCap, AL is expected to exacerbate their

feelings of fear, which subsequently encourages defensive silence and

reduces creativity. Therefore, we predict that PsyCap provides the ne-

cessary resources needed to cope with AL and thus mitigates the fear

resulting from such leaders.

Hypothesis 4. Employee PsyCap will moderate the serially mediated

relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee creativity,

such that the positive relationship between authoritarian leadership

and fear is stronger when PsyCap is low.

1.6. Overview of the research

Below, we present two ﬁeld studies designed to test our theoretical

model. Study 1 is a cross-sectional study involving employees and their

immediate supervisors working in Nigerian-based organizations, while

Study 2 is a time-lagged ﬁeld study conducted in Chinese-based orga-

nizations. In both studies, we used a multi-source design where ratings

from multiple sources were used to reduce same-source bias (Podsakoﬀ,

MacKenzie, & Podsakoﬀ, 2012). In Study 1, we ﬁrst tested whether

defensive silence mediates the relationship between AL and employee

creativity. Here, employees responded to measures of AL, whereas

leaders responded to measures of their employees' defensive silence and

creativity. We also controlled for employees' ratings of abusive super-

vision to account for the unique eﬀects of AL and assess the robustness

of our ﬁndings. We further tested our full theoretical model in Study 2

L. Guo et al. Journal of Business Research 92 (2018) 219–230

222

by including the measures of employee fear and PsyCap and assessing

our measures in three waves. More speciﬁcally, AL and PsyCap were

assessed at Time 1, fear was assessed at Time 2 (two weeks after Time

1), and employee ratings of defensive silence as well as supervisor

ratings of creativity were assessed at Time 3 (two weeks after Time 2).

2. Method

2.1. Study 1

2.1.1. Sample and procedure

We collected data from three organizations in Lagos-Nigeria, as part

of a large research project on developing eﬀective leadership. These

organizations were involved in hospitality, ﬁnancial, and consulting

services. Before administering the surveys, one of the authors contacted

an organizational member from the participating organizations, who

then facilitated the data collection. Two separate surveys were dis-

tributed to employees and their direct supervisors. Respondents were

informed through a cover letter that their responses would only be used

for research purposes and that individual responses would not be

shared with their organizations. We also noted that participating in the

study was voluntary. The surveys included a unique identiﬁcation code

written on the top-right of each survey that enabled us to match em-

ployee and supervisor responses. After completion, the questionnaires

were directly handed over to one of the research team members. In

appreciation of participants' involvement, they entered a raﬄe draw to

win one of four online shopping vouchers priced at approximately $15

each.

Of the 200 employees-supervisor surveys distributed, 133 em-

ployees together with their corresponding supervisor surveys were re-

turned (approximately a 68% response rate). Of these 133, only 115

employee-supervisor surveys were matchable (for an overall response

rate of 56%). We found that there were no statistically diﬀerence be-

tween the valid respondents and those invalid in terms of age

(t=−0.39, p> .05) and of gender (t= 0.30, p> .05). In total, all

employees were nested under 28 supervisors. On average, 4 employees

worked under the same supervisor. Of the 115 employees, 46% were

male and reported working under their respective supervisors for an

average of 2.6 years. Among the supervisors, 50% were male.

Employees provided ratings of their supervisors' authoritative leader-

ship behaviors, as well as their perceptions of abusive supervision,

whereas supervisors rated employees' defensive silence and their crea-

tive behaviors.

2.1.2. Measures

All items were measured on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly

disagree,5=strongly agree). We used established scales for measures.

2.1.2.1. Authoritarian leadership. To measure AL, we used Cheng et al.'s

(2004) scale. A sample item of this scale is “My supervisor always

behaves in a commanding fashion in front of employees.”The

Cronbach's alpha was 0.89.

2.1.2.2. Defensive silence. Supervisors rated employees' defensive

silence using 5-item scale developed by Van Dyne et al. (2003).A

sample item includes: This employee…“Withholds relevant information

due to fear.”The Cronbach's alpha of this scale was 0.86.

2.1.2.3. Employee creativity. Supervisors rated employee creativity

using Baer and Oldham's (2006) 4-item scale (α= 0.88). A sample

item includes, “This employee often comes up with creative solutions to

problems at work.”

2.1.2.4. Control variable. We controlled for abusive supervision, which

is deﬁned as the “subordinates' perceptions of the extent to which their

supervisors engage in the sustained display of hostile verbal and

nonverbal behaviors, excluding physical contact”(Tepper, 2000, p.

178). We decided to control for abusive supervision considering

previous research showing that AL positively correlates with such

negative supervisor behavior (Aryee, Chen, Sun, & Debrah, 2007).

Moreover, abusive supervision tends to inﬂuence employee fear-based

cognitions (Kiewitz et al., 2016) and creativity (Zhang, Kwan, Zhang, &

Wu, 2014). Therefore, by including abusive supervision as a control

variable, we account for the unique inﬂuence of AL and provide

evidence of the robustness of our predictions. We measured abusive

supervision using Mitchell and Ambrose's (2007) 5-item scale

(α= 0.94). A sample item was, “My supervisor makes negative

comments about me to others.”

2.1.3. Measurement model

Prior to testing our hypothesized model, we assessed the validity

and appropriateness of our measurement model by conducting a robust

conﬁrmatory factor analysis (CFA) in MPlus 6.0, taking into account the

clustered nature of our data. As shown in Table 1, our proposed mea-

surement model with three distinct factors (Model 1) had a better ﬁt

than two-factor models (Models 2–4), or a model where all items are

loaded onto the same factor (Model 5).

2.1.4. Hypotheses testing

Descriptive statistics and correlations of all study variables at the

individual level are presented in Table 2.

Because the 115 employees were nested under 28 supervisors, our

sample does not consist of independent observations. Multilevel ana-

lysis solves the violation of this independence assumption by taking the

clustering of employees within a work unit (i.e., employees working for

the same supervisor) into account in that it allows a randomly-varying

intercept between work units. We conducted multilevel regression

analysis using the lme4 and mediation package in R (Bates, Maechler,

Bolker, & Walker, 2015;Tingley, Yamamoto, Hirose, Keele, & Imai,

2014). To test our proposed mediation model (Hypothesis 2), we focus

on the paths that constitute the indirect eﬀect (Kenny, Kashy, & Bolger,

1998; see also Aguinis, Edwards, & Bradley, 2016). That is, we test

whether AL is related to defensive silence and that, in turn, defensive

silence is related to employee creativity.

Table 1

Comparison of measurement models for main variables in Study 1.

Model Factors χ

df χ

/df Satorra–Bentler Scaled Δχ

CFI RMSEA SRMR

Model 1 Three factors: Creativity, Defensive Silence, and AL 223.28 132 1.69 0.92 0.08 0.07

Model 2 Two factors: Creativity and Defensive Silence were combined into one factor 423.43 134 3.16 167.38

⁎⁎⁎

0.75 0.14 0.10

Model 3 Two factors: Creativity and AL were combined into one factor 460.56 134 3.44 355.48

⁎⁎⁎

0.71 0.15 0.12

Model 4 Two factors: Defensive Silence and AL were combined into one factor 369.74 134 2.76 59.16

⁎⁎⁎

0.79 0.12 0.10

Model 5 One factor: all three factors were combined into one factor 584.61 135 4.33 231.78

⁎⁎⁎

0.60 0.17 0.13

Note: We used a robust maximum likelihood estimator to take the clustered nature of our data into account. Following methodological recommendations (Satorra &

Bentler, 2010), we corrected the χ

using the Satorra–Bentler scaling correction when comparing the proposed measurement model with the alternative nested

models.

⁎⁎⁎

=p< .001.

L. Guo et al. Journal of Business Research 92 (2018) 219–230

223

Results are presented in Table 3.

Our results showed that AL was

positively related to employee defensive silence, (b= 0.43, p= .001).

Next, defensive silence was negatively related to creativity,

(b=−0.27, SE = 0.10, p= .006). To provide a complete test of our

mediation model, we calculated a 95% conﬁdence interval

for the

proposed indirect eﬀect. Results revealed a signiﬁcant indirect eﬀect,

indicating that defensive silence mediates the relationship between AL

and employee creativity (indirect eﬀect = −0.12; 95% CI = [−0.25;

−0.02]). This conﬁrms Hypothesis 2.

Study 1 showed that AL might decrease employees' creativity be-

cause employees are more likely to withhold valuable information.

Interestingly, this eﬀect still held up when we took a closely related

construct, abusive supervision, into account. This indicates that the

mechanism of AL on defensive silence is independent from that of

abusive supervision. Now that we know that defensive silence is a

mechanism behind the relationship between AL and employee crea-

tivity, we are able to look at this process more in depth, as we only

tested defensive silence as a coping strategy that employees adopt in

response to AL and as such did not test the emotions they feel in

response to AL in line with transactional theory of stress. In Study 2, we

build upon these ﬁndings by examining when and why AL is positively

related to employee defensive silence. More precisely, we integrate fear

in our model as a proximal antecedent of defensive silence, and assess

psychological capital as a boundary condition of this negative indirect

eﬀect.

Further, although same-source bias was reduced in Study 1 as the

data was collected from multiple sources (Podsakoﬀ, MacKenzie, Lee, &

Podsakoﬀ, 2003), the cross-sectional nature of the study and the fact

that leaders provided measure of defensive silence could raise some

concerns. However, past research has demonstrated the appropriate-

ness of using other ratings of defensive silence. More speciﬁcally, pre-

vious research showed that organizational members with whom em-

ployees closely interact with on a day-to-day basis can detect defensive

silence (Kiewitz et al., 2016). In our sample, the supervisors who pro-

vided the ratings defensive silence closely interacted with focal em-

ployees and have worked together for over two and half years. Never-

theless, to mitigate these concerns, we obtained employee ratings of

defensive silence in Study 2. In addition, we employed a time-lagged

research design of employee–supervisor dyad in Chinese organizations,

allowing us to separate our measurements in time. As Podsakoﬀet al.

(2012) noted, the use of a temporal design and multisource ratings

“diminishes the respondent's ability and motivation to use his or her

prior answers to answer subsequent questions”(p. 888).

2.2. Study 2

2.2.1. Sample and procedure

We collected data from four organizations (ﬁnance, advertising,

web service and retailing organizations) in Chengdu, a southwest me-

tropolitan area in China. A consulting ﬁrm was commissioned to con-

duct the data collection task. Two separate surveys were distributed to

employees and their direct supervisors based on the list provided by a

contact person in each organization. Based on this list, 479 employees

and their supervisors were paired and they received the surveys in three

waves. Respondents were aware of the voluntary nature of participation

and the strict conﬁdentiality of this survey. In appreciation of partici-

pants' voluntary involvement, the respondents who had completed all

three waves entered into a raﬄe draw to win one of 20 shopping

vouchers of an e-commerce company priced at RMB 200 (approxi-

mately $ 30) each.

Of the 479 employees and 479 supervisors to whom the survey was

distributed, we received 198 employee-supervisor matches at the end of

the third wave (approximately a 41.33% response rate). Of these 198

matches, 192 employee-supervisor surveys were usable because in six

dyads, either the key variables were missing, or the participants

Table 2

Means, standard deviations, scale reliabilities, and correlations of the variables.

MSD123456

Study 1

1. AL 3.01 0.90 (0.89)

2. Defensive Silence 2.51 1.04 0.55

⁎⁎⁎

(0.86)

3. Abusive Supervision 2.80 1.18 0.69

⁎⁎⁎

0.51

⁎⁎⁎

(0.94)

4. Creativity 2.38 1.06 −0.32

⁎⁎⁎

−0.40

⁎⁎⁎

−0.35

⁎⁎⁎

(0.88)

Study 2

1. AL 4.61 1.60 (0.83)

2. Defensive Silence 4.34 1.64 0.35

⁎⁎⁎

(0.90)

3. Abusive Supervision 3.29 1.69 0.36

⁎⁎⁎

0.22

⁎⁎⁎

(0.91)

4. Creativity 4.29 1.98 −0.20

⁎⁎

−0.27

⁎⁎⁎

−0.19

⁎⁎⁎

(0.91)

5. Fear 4.13 1.68 0.46

⁎⁎⁎

0.36

⁎⁎⁎

0.31

⁎⁎⁎

−0.27

⁎⁎⁎

(0.86)

6. PsyCap 5.65 1.01 0.06 −0.05 0.01 0.11 −0.04 (0.84)

Numbers in parentheses on the diagonal are reliabilities of the scales.

Study 1, N= 115; Study 2, N= 192. In Study 1 the scale ranged from 1 to 5, while in Study 2 the scale ranged from 1 to 7.

⁎⁎

p< .01.

⁎⁎⁎

p< .001.

Table 3

Results for Study 1.

Predictors Criterion variable

Employee defensive

silence

Employee creativity

Intercept 0.71

⁎

(0.35) 3.57

⁎⁎⁎

(0.42)

AL 0.43

⁎⁎

(0.14) −0.01 (0.16)

Abusive Supervision 0.18 (0.10) −0.17 (0.11)

Defensive Silence −0.27

⁎⁎

(0.10)

Marginal R

(model ﬁt for ﬁxed

eﬀects)

0.29 0.16

Conditional R

(overall model

ﬁt)

0.43 0.44

Unstandardized coeﬃcients are reported. Standard errors are in the brackets.

⁎

p≤.05.

⁎⁎

p≤.01.

⁎⁎⁎

p≤.001.

The statistical signiﬁcance of our hypothesized eﬀects did not change when

we did not control for abusive supervision.

To our knowledge, there is no program that can calculate a nonparametric

bootstrapped conﬁdence interval for multilevel modelling. Therefore, we used a

quasi-Bayesian Monte Carlo approximation with 5000 simulations to calculate a

95% conﬁdence interval of our proposed indirect eﬀect (see King, Tomz, &

Wittenberg, 2000).

L. Guo et al. Journal of Business Research 92 (2018) 219–230

224

returned an almost blank survey in any of the three waves (overall

response rate was 40.08%). We compared respondents with missing

data to those respondents with fully completed data and there were no

signiﬁcant diﬀerences in terms of age (t=−0.1893, p> .05) and

gender (t=−0.12, p> .05). Of the employee respondents, 43.8%

were male and reported working under their supervisors for an average

of 3 years. Among the supervisors, 67.2% were male. Employees pro-

vided ratings of PsyCap, their supervisors' AL, and abusive supervision

as a control variable at Time 1, fear at Time 2, and defensive silence at

Time 3. Also at Time 3, supervisors provided us with ratings of em-

ployee creative behaviors.

2.2.2. Measures

The measures for AL, defensive silence, creativity, and abusive su-

pervision are the same as in Study 1. All items were measured on a 7-

point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree,7=strongly agree), because

participants in Asia are more likely to select the mid- points and avoid

extreme responses on 5-point Likert scales (Chen, Lee, & Stevenson,

1995;Hamamura, Heine, & Paulhus, 2008). As such, we used a 7-point

Likert scale as it provides higher scale granularity that reduces response

bias. The Cronbach's alphas of AL, defensive silence, creativity, and

abusive supervision are 0.91, 0.89, 0.91, and 0.89 respectively.

2.2.2.1. Psychological capital (PsyCap). At Time 1, we measured

employee PsyCap using a 12-item scale (Avey et al., 2011). Sample

items are (a) “I feel conﬁdent contributing to discussions about the

organization's strategy”(self-eﬃcacy); (b) “If I should ﬁnd myself in a

jam at work, I could think of many ways to get out of it”(hope); (c) “I

can get through diﬃcult times at work because I have experienced

diﬃculty before”(resilience); (d) “I am optimistic about what will

happen to me in the future as it pertains to work”(optimism). The

Cronbach's alpha of the scale was 0.84. Consistent with previous

research on PsyCap (e.g., Rego et al., 2017), we used the overall

PsyCap score in our analyses, because we did not theorize the sub-

dimensions of employee PsyCap to have diﬀerentiated eﬀects.

2.2.2.2. Fear. At Time 2, we measured employee fear using the 4-item

scale from Kiewitz et al. (2016). Employees were asked to report the

extent to which they had been feeling “scared,”“

nervous,”“afraid,”and

“fearful”(ranging from 1 = very slightly to 7 = very much so). The

Cronbach's alpha of this scale was 0.86.

2.2.2.3. Control. As we did in Study 1, we also controlled for abusive

supervision using the same 5-item scale used in Study 1 to account for

the unique eﬀect of AL.

2.2.3. Measurement model

We evaluated the factorial structure of our research models using

nested CFA models approach. However, given that there are ﬁve con-

structs and 34 items, our sample-to-item ratio is quite small (5.65),

which is much lower than 10, as recommended by Everitt (1975).A

small ratio will cause less precise and less reliable factor loadings

(MacCallum, Widaman, Zhang, & Hong, 1999). To minimize potential

estimation issues and aid an appropriate indicator-to-sample ratio, we

followed the recommended procedure of MacCallum et al. (1999);

Landis, Beal, and Tesluk (2000), and Little, Cunningham, and Shahar

(2002) to create parcels for measures with more than ﬁve items (i.e., AL

and PsyCap).

We acknowledged that from an empiricist-conservative perspective,

parceling may prevent modeled data from fully representing the re-

sponses of the individual (Little, Rhemfulla, Gibson, & Schoemann,

2013). However, the advantages of parceling in this study outweigh the

disadvantages for two empirical reasons. First, compared to parcels,

item-level data are usually of low reliability, low communality and a

smaller ratio of common-to-unique factor variance (see Bagozzi &

Heatherton, 1994;Kishton & Widaman, 1994;MacCallum et al., 1999;

Hau & Marsh, 2004;Little et al., 2002). This is especially true in a small

sample size study like ours. Second, compared to the models with items,

the models with parcels are more parsimonious and have less para-

meters to be estimated. Therefore, there are less chances for residuals to

be correlated, for dual loadings to emerge, or for more sampling errors

(MacCallum et al., 1999).

Parceling has been used in past research in organizational studies in

general (e.g., Akgün & Keskin, 2014;Farh, Hackett, & Liang, 2007;

Hornung, Rousseau, Glaser, Angerer, & Weigl, 2010;Wu, Parker, Wu, &

Lee, 2018) and in leadership research in particular (Cooper, Kong, &

Crossley, 2018;Lam, Lee, Taylor, & Zhao, 2018;van Prooijen & de

Vries, 2016). Here, we used the random assignment method widely

used in previous studies to generate three diﬀerent types of parcels for

each construct. We did not bundle items to parcels based on EFA

loadings because on the one hand, EFA results indicate that these items

should be loaded to one common factor; and on the other hand, pur-

posively parceling may change the original factorial structure of con-

structs. Therefore, a random assignment approach is more appropriate.

If all the three types of parceling lead to similar results, we can safely

conclude that the random parceling mechanism is robust and will not

alter the conclusion that the ﬁve-factor model is the best model.

We then conducted measure model analyses with the full combi-

nations of these three types of parcels (45 models: ﬁve CFA

models × three types of AL parcels × three types of PsyCap parcels).

The three types of parcels yielded quite similar results, indicating the

robustness of our random parceling strategy. Results were summarized

in Table 4. As in Study 1, our proposed measurement model (Model 1)

had an adequate ﬁt, and ﬁtted better than a model where defensive

silence and employee fear were loaded onto one factor (Model 2), a

model where AL and PsyCap were loaded onto one factor, while de-

fensive silence and employee fear were loaded on the other factor

(Model 3), a model where variables that focused on the employee were

loaded onto one factor (Model 4), and a single factor model (Model 5).

2.2.4. Hypotheses testing

Descriptive statistics and correlations of all study variables are

displayed in Table 2. We tested our proposed mediation model using

SPSS PROCESS macro developed by Hayes, 2013 and the lavaan

package in R (Rosseel, 2012). The results

are presented in Tables 5 and

6. We followed the same analytical strategy as in Study 1 by examining

the paths that constitute of the serial mediated eﬀect (see Fig. 2) and

controlling for abusive supervision. Finally, we test whether this serial

indirect eﬀect is conditional upon employees' PsyCap (Hypothesis 4)

due to its moderating eﬀect on the relationship between AL and em-

ployee fear.

Our results showed that AL was positively related to employees'

defensive silence (b= 0.32, SE = 0.08, p< .001). Further, AL was also

positively related to employees' felt fear (b= 0.42, SE = 0.07,

p< .001) and, in turn, employees' felt fear was positively related to

defensive silence (b= 0.24, SE = 0.07, p= .001). The indirect eﬀect of

AL on defensive silence through employee fear was signiﬁcant (indirect

eﬀect = 0.10, 95% CI = [0.03, 0.20]), showing evidence for

Hypothesis 1.

As in Study 1, defensive silence was negatively related to employee

creativity (b=−0.21, SE = 0.09, p= .024). Next, we tested the serial

mediated eﬀect (AL ➔Employee Fear ➔Defensive Silence ➔Creativity;

Hypothesis 3). A 95% bias-corrected bootstrapped conﬁdence interval,

based on 5000 simulations, showed a signiﬁcant serial indirect eﬀect

(indirect eﬀect −0.02, 95% CI = [−0.06, −0.004]). This conﬁrms

Hypothesis 3. The simple mediated eﬀect tested in Study 1 (Hypothesis

2) was also signiﬁcant (indirect eﬀect −0.05, 95% CI = [−0.13,

The formulas are available upon request from the corresponding author.

The statistical signiﬁcance of our hypothesized eﬀects did not change when

we did not control for abusive supervision.

L. Guo et al. Journal of Business Research 92 (2018) 219–230

225

−0.005]), suggesting that employee fear only partially mediated the

indirect eﬀect between AL and employee creativity through defensive

silence.

We proceeded to test the full serial moderated mediation

(Hypothesis 4). Results are presented in Table 6. In line with Aiken,

West, and Reno (1991), we mean centered the predictors involved in

the interaction so that main eﬀects reported in Table 6 are easier to

interpret. We found a signiﬁcant interaction between AL and PsyCap on

employees' felt fear, (b=−0.13, SE = 0.06, p= .04; see Fig. 2). Simple

slope tests revealed that the eﬀect of AL on employees' felt fear was

stronger at low levels of PsyCap (1 SD below the mean; b= 0.59,

SE = 0.11, p< .001) and weaker at high levels of PsyCap (1 SD above

the mean; b= 0.32, SE = 0.09, p< .001).

We further explored Hypothesis 4 by testing whether PsyCap

moderated the serial indirect eﬀect of AL on employee creativity. We

used the lavaan package in R (Rosseel, 2012) to calculate the index of

moderated mediation (Hayes, 2015). If this index is diﬀerent from zero,

the indirect eﬀect diﬀers across levels of PsyCap. Results revealed a

signiﬁcant index of moderated mediation (index = 0.01, 95% boot-

strapped CI = [0.001, 0.024]), showing that the serial indirect eﬀect

was stronger and more pronounced at low levels of PsyCap (indirect

eﬀect = −0.027, 95% bootstrapped CI = [−0.079, −0.003]) and

weaker at high levels of PsyCap (indirect eﬀect = −0.015, 95% boot-

strapped CI = [−0.050, −0.002]). In sum, these analyses support

Hypothesis 4.

3. General discussion

Employee creativity is critical for organizational success and sur-

vival (Amabile, 1988;Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009). Yet, although much

is known about the beneﬁts of employee creative behavior and how

positive forms of leadership can stimulate such behavior (e.g., Bai et al.,

2016;Gong et al., 2009;Li, Zhao, & Begley, 2015), we have relatively

less understanding of how potentially darker sides of leadership such as

AL might hinder individual employee creativity. In this research, we

argued that authoritarian leaders inhibit employee creativity by in-

creasing employee fear, which, in turn, encourages defensive silence,

resulting in reduced levels of creativity. We further argued that em-

ployee PsyCap mitigates the fear triggered by authoritarian leaders.

Across two ﬁeld studies conducted in Africa and Asia, we found full

support for our proposed theoretical model. Speciﬁcally, the results

obtained showed that AL undermines employee creativity, with the

relationship between AL and creativity serially mediated by employee

fear and defensive silence. Our results further suggested that employee

PsyCap moderated the relationship between AL and employee fear,

Table 4

Comparison of measurement models for main variables in Study 2.

Models χ

CFI RMSEA SRMR

1(df = 179) 317.603–387.036 0.92–0.94 0.06–0.08 0.05

Δχ

312.94–313.63, p< .01

2(df = 183) 631.117–700.00 0.78–0.82 0.11–0.12 0.11

Δχ

253.25–306.06, p< .01

3(df = 186) 888.45–992.42 0.67–0.71 0.14–0.15 0.14

Δχ

291.85–418.43, p< .01

4(df = 188) 1214.65–1389.236 0.53–0.56 0.17–0.18 0.15

Δχ

463.48–473.82, p< .01

5(df = 189) 1682.50–1853.30 0.35–0.36 0.20–0.21 0.17

Model 1 (Five Factors): Creativity, Defensive Silence, Fear, AL and PsyCap;

Model 2 (Four Factors): Defensive Silence and Fear were combined into one

factor; Model 3 (Three Factors): AL & PsyCap, Defensive Silence & Fear, and

Creativity; Model 4 (Two Factors): Variables focusing on the employee (AL,

PsyCap, Fear, Defensive Silence) were combined into one factor; Model 5 (One

Factor): all items were combined into one factor.

Results of each model were summarized from nine combinations of the three

types of parcels of AL and of three types of parcels of PsyCap.

Table 5

Mediated regression results for Study 2.

Predictors Criterion variable

Employee fear Employee defensive

silence

Employee

creativity

Intercept 1.65

⁎⁎⁎

(0.34) 2.53

⁎⁎⁎

(0.36)

2.13

⁎⁎⁎

(0.37)

6.55

⁎⁎⁎

(0.50)

AL 0.42

⁎⁎⁎

(0.07) 0.32

⁎⁎⁎

(0.08)

0.22

⁎⁎

(0.08)

−0.04 (0.10)

Abusive

Supervision

0.17

⁎

(0.07) 0.11 (0.07) 0.06 (0.07) −0.11 (0.09)

Fear 0.24

⁎⁎

(0.07)

−0.20

⁎

(0.10)

Defensive Silence −0.21

⁎

(0.09)

0.23 0.13 0.18 0.12

Unstandardized coeﬃcients are reported. Standard errors are in the brackets.

⁎

p≤.05.

⁎⁎

p≤.01.

⁎⁎⁎

p≤.001.

Table 6

Moderated mediation results for Study 2.

Predictors Criterion variable

Employee fear Employee

defensive silence

Employee

creativity

Intercept 3.63

⁎⁎⁎

(0.25) 3.18

⁎⁎⁎

(0.37) 6.22

⁎⁎⁎

(0.55)

AL 0.45

⁎⁎⁎

(0.07) 0.23

⁎⁎

(0.08) −0.08 (0.11)

Psychological Capital −0.16 (0.11) −0.10 (0.11) 0.22 (0.14)

AL × Psychological

Capital

−0.13

⁎

(0.06) −0.03 (0.07) 0.07 (0.08)

Abusive Supervision 0.16

⁎

(0.07) 0.06 (0.07) −0.10 (0.09)

Fear 0.23

⁎⁎

(0.08) −0.18 (10)

Defensive Silence −0.20

⁎

(0.09)

0.25 0.18 0.13

Unstandardized coeﬃcients are reported. Standard errors are in the brackets.

⁎

p≤.05.

⁎⁎

p≤.01.

⁎⁎⁎

p≤.001.

Fig. 2. The eﬀect of AL on Employees' Felt Fear at diﬀerent levels of PsyCap.

L. Guo et al. Journal of Business Research 92 (2018) 219–230

226

such that the relationship was stronger when PsyCap was low rather

than high. These moderated mediation results were strongly supported

even after controlling for abusive supervision, providing evidence for

the robustness of our ﬁndings. Below, we discuss the implications of

these ﬁndings.

3.1. Theoretical implications

Our research ﬁndings oﬀer important contributions to extant lit-

erature. First, our study corroborates emerging research suggesting that

AL can hinder employee creativity (Wang et al., 2013;Zhang et al.,

2011). Despite existing research, there is still a lack of a cogent theo-

retical framework that provides an in-depth understanding of precisely

why and when authoritarian leadership may inhibit individual em-

ployee creativity. Accordingly, we developed a transactional theory of

stress perspective (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) to advance our under-

standing of the link between AL and individual employee creativity.

Our ﬁndings suggest that employees form a stressful and demanding

appraisal of AL to the extent that it becomes detrimental for stimulating

employee creativity. Our study therefore provides an alternative theo-

retical perspective that future research interested in exploring other

consequences of AL can draw upon.

Second, rather than portraying just a direct relationship, our re-

search provides a richer insight into why authoritarian leaders aﬀect

individual employee creativity. In doing so, we address the insuﬃcient

attention devoted to the underlying mechanisms linking the AL -

creativity relationship by examining both fear and defensive silence.

Until now, the AL literature has been limited in that it speculates that

fear and fear-based coping mechanisms trigger employees' behavioral

reactions to such leadership without explicitly testing this speculation

(e.g., Cheng et al., 2004;Farh et al., 2006). By drawing on the trans-

actional theory of stress (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) and empirically

testing this perspective, our study demonstrates that fear and fear-based

coping mechanisms (defensive silence) play a central role in linking AL

to employee creativity. That is, the pressure to obey and submit to an

authoritarian leader induces the emotion of fear in employees, which

results in defensive silence and further makes it less likely for them to

engage in creative behaviors. In doing so, we also answer the call for

more research on the role of emotions within leadership literature (e.g.,

Gooty et al., 2010).

More broadly, our study provides additional insights and expands

what we know about employees' behavioral reactions to AL. In this

regard, we also emphasize the importance of investigating more than

one mechanism in the same study to deepen our understanding of the

processes through which leadership inﬂuences work outcomes

(Hannah, Schaubroeck, & Peng, 2016). On the ﬂip side, even though we

showed that AL could reduce employee creativity via fear and defensive

silence, it would be interesting to examine whether AL can also reduce

or enhance deviant creativity (i.e., the violation of a leader's order to

stop pursuing a new idea; Mainemelis, 2010). Deviant creativity is set

to occur when an employee already generates new ideas and violates

the leader's instructions to stop pursuing such ideas. As we found that

AL negatively inﬂuences creativity, employees working under author-

itarian leaders may also engage in less creative deviance. In contrast, it

could also be possible that employees engage in deviant creativity to

“get back”to or impress the leader (Mainemelis, 2010). Exploring both

possibilities would be a fruitful line of research.

Third, we also add to the literature on silence by examining the

antecedents and consequences of defensive silence in our model. With

our ﬁndings suggesting both AL and employee fear as antecedents, and

employee creativity as a consequence of defensive silence, we address

the recent calls made by Brinsﬁeld (2013) and Morrison (2014) for

scholars to devote more attention to this line of research because of its

potential to help reduce its occurrence and potential negative eﬀects.

The present research presents a signiﬁcant contribution to silence lit-

erature in this regard as our ﬁndings suggests that authoritarian

leaders, by pressuring employees to obey “their last command”, are

even more capable of inhibiting creativity than a related leadership

style approach, abusive supervision, which we controlled for in both

studies. As such, our research underscores the need to encourage lea-

ders to be less authoritative in their approaches.

Fourth, we also contribute to the literature by examining employee

PsyCap as a moderator of AL's impact. Although PsyCap has been

identiﬁed as an important personal resource that could be useful in

navigating diﬀerent leadership –employee relationships (see Dawkins

et al., 2013;Newman et al., 2014), to date, we only found two studies

focusing on these relationships. For instance, Li et al. (2016) found that

abusive supervision resulted in more psychological distress for fol-

lowers who have low rather than high levels of PsyCap. Wang et al.

(2014) also found that the relationship between authentic leadership

and followers' job performance was stronger for those low rather than

high in PsyCap. Wang et al. (2014) reasoned that although authentic

leadership has a positive eﬀect on followers' performance, this eﬀect

becomes less strong when followers already have a high level of

PsyCap, and thus are less in need of positive psychological resources

from their leader. Here, our research suggests that not all employees are

susceptible to the same degree to the fear triggered by authoritarian

leaders. In particular, it suggests that employees low in PsyCap are

more likely to experience fear resulting from AL, whereas high PsyCap

mitigates such detrimental eﬀect. Accordingly, our study oﬀers new

insights into individual factors that may make employees more sus-

ceptible to the negative eﬀects of AL. This also corroborates the

emerging research showing the importance of PsyCap in helping em-

ployees deal with destructive leadership at work (e.g., Li et al., 2016).

Finally, by examining AL in both the African and Chinese contexts,

our study also contributes to AL literature. To date, extant literature has

examined the eﬀects of AL in an Asian, especially Chinese, context. As

such, little is known about the eﬀects of AL beyond this context, par-

ticularly where AL is equally prevalent (e.g., Africa) (Zagorsek, Jaklic,

& Stough, 2004). Chen et al. (2014) noted that more research on AL is

needed in cultures outside of the Chinese context, especially in cultures

that share similar characteristics to examine the theory's general-

izability. Given that Nigeria is a society that is also characterized by

high power distance where people generally accept authority dom-

inance (Hofstede, 2001), our study responds to Chen et al.'s call by

examining the consequences of AL on employee creativity using a

sample from Nigeria. In fact, China and Nigeria both have an identical

power distance index score of 80. Considering its rapidly growing

economy and burgeoning presence of both Eastern and Western mul-

tinational companies in the country (Babalola, Stouten, Euwema, &

Ovadje, 2016), Nigeria provides an ideal setting for extending AL re-

search. Thus, our study enriches our understanding of AL outside the

Chinese context and serves as a useful starting point to establishing the

generalizability of the construct in other societies.

3.2. Practical implications

Beyond the theoretical implications of the present study, our ﬁnd-

ings also hold signiﬁcant practical implications. Although a recent

study suggests that AL behavior could be eﬀective in soliciting con-

formity and potentially improving productivity (Huang et al., 2015),

our ﬁndings suggest that authoritarian leaders fall short in enhancing

employees' creativity by unintentionally silencing them based on fear

and triggering defensive silence. Hence, our ﬁndings serve as a caution

to organizations about the potentially detrimental eﬀects of AL and

suggest that they pay closer attention to the overly controlling manner

of their leaders. That is, leaders should be encouraged to give room for

employees' inputs and feedback to stimulate creativity. In addition,

organizations could also implement training programs to educate

people holding leadership positions about the importance of building

an appropriate climate that encourages positive interpersonal treat-

ments and relationships at work (Walumbwa, Hartnell, & Misati, 2017)

L. Guo et al. Journal of Business Research 92 (2018) 219–230

227

as well as pay more attention to the selection criteria of new leaders to

avoid AL.

The signiﬁcance of the AL–fear relationship for employee and or-

ganizational functioning cannot be overstated, as fear resulting from

working under intimidating and authoritative supervisors can trigger

defensive silence, which in turn inhibits creativity in the workplace.

Given that creativity plays a vital role in organizational success and

survival (Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009), our ﬁndings that AL induces fear

and defensive silence thus suggest the need for practical interventions

aimed at creating a psychologically safe work environment. Beyond this

practical intervention, top management themselves can create work

environments that encourage employees to express their opinions and

be proactive. This is especially important, because middle and lower-

level managers tend to draw from the actions of their top management

teams to derive cues about existing work climates and norms for ap-

propriate behaviors (Mayer, Kuenzi, Greenbaum, Bardes, & Salvador,

2009). A more psychological safe and open climate can be helpful in

reducing employee fear (Edmondson, 2003) and in doing so, increase

the creativity in the workplace.

In addition, employees should also be assisted to develop their

abilities to cope with stressors and potentially demanding workplace

relationships (such as AL). Our ﬁndings in this regard suggests that

organizations could beneﬁt from helping employees develop their

PsyCap as it was found to buﬀer the negative impact of AL. The de-

velopment of PsyCap seems viable as it is considered to be ‘state-like’in

nature. On a continuum perspective dichotomized by ‘pure’poles of

state and trait, PsyCap is positioned as midrange and therefore a ‘state-

like’construct that is relatively malleable and open to development and

performance management (Luthans et al., 2007;Newman et al., 2014).

Indeed, empirical evidence has demonstrated signiﬁcant increases in

PsyCap through external inﬂuences such as interventions in as little as

one to three hours of training (Dawkins et al., 2013;Luthans, Avey,

Avolio, & Peterson, 2010;Luthans & Youssef, 2017), even if these

training sessions happen online (Luthans, Avey, & Patera, 2008). In-

terestingly research has shown that leaders' PsyCap are also ‘contagious’

and can result in higher levels of followers' PsyCap (Chen, Wen, Kong,

Niu, & Hau, 2017;Story, Youssef, Luthans, Barbuto, & Bovaird, 2013).

As such, organizations would beneﬁt from not only focusing on devel-

oping subordinates' PsyCap, but also the PsyCap of their daily super-

visors. Developing organizational members' PsyCap could alleviate the

negative impact of AL and thus foster employee creativity over time.

3.3. Potential limitations, future research directions, and conclusions

The strengths of our research lie in testing our hypothesized model

across two studies, utilizing two complementary research designs, as

well as obtaining data from multiple sources (i.e., employees and their

direct supervisors) and multiple waves, which reduces same-source bias

(Podsakoﬀet al., 2012). Moreover, we also controlled for employees'

ratings of abusive supervision to assess the robustness of our ﬁndings.

Despite these strengths, our study is not without some limitations. One

of the limitations is that the cross-sectional design of Study 1 precludes

us from fully drawing causal conclusions. In order to overcome this

limitation, we separated our measurements across three diﬀerent times

in Study 2. Even though the relationship order of our model is theo-

retically driven, future research should consider an experimental re-

search design or collect all data included in our model repeatedly across

time to strengthen causal inferences.

An interesting next step for future research is to test how our the-

oretical model could help shed light on other outcomes of AL, such as

employee performance, deviance, and organizational citizenship be-

haviors. Future research along this line could also focus on the impact

of the other dimensions of paternalistic leadership such as benevolent

leadership. While it is useful to include these dimensions in future re-

search, research suggests that the overall paternalistic leadership con-

struct is not very useful and that its scales should be used separately

(Chou, Cheng, & Jen, 2005;Farh et al., 2006). Recent studies have

equally yielded to this suggestion by focusing solely on AL (e.g.,

Schaubroeck et al., 2017). For example, it may be that leader bene-

volence can buﬀer the negative consequences of AL, as benevolence

refers to an individualized concern for subordinates' personal well-

being (Pellegrini & Scandura, 2008). This reasoning is in line with a

study that showed that leader benevolence facilitates employee crea-

tivity (Wang & Cheng, 2010).

Future research should also explore the role of other theoretically

driven moderating variables that could impact the AL –creativity link.

For example, future research could focus on the impact of, for example,

individual power distance orientation or other personal resources that

enhance employees' ability to deal with stressors. This suggestion is in

line with recent research suggesting that, under certain circumstances,

AL may be positively related to followers' outcomes (Huang et al., 2015;

Wang & Guan, 2018). That is, AL may not always be detrimental for

followers or the organization. For example, Huang et al. (2015) showed

that AL had a positive impact on revenue growth at the ﬁrm level in a

harsh economic environment (i.e., when external resources are scarce).

Wang and Guan (2018) also showed a positive relationship between AL

and employee performance, but especially when power distance is high.

Examining under which circumstances AL may be less detrimental, or

even positive, for employees is something future research should ex-

plore.

For instance, it would be interesting to examine employee mind-

fulness as a buﬀer for fearful reactions to AL. Research indicates that

“mindfulness”- a conscious state of mind that allows individual to stay

in the present moment without expressing judgment or reaction

(Glomb, Duﬀy, Bono, & Yang, 2011) - mitigates defensive reactions

(Niemiec et al., 2010) and emotional responses (Long & Christian,

2015) to stressors. Thus, it is possible that mindfulness buﬀers the

mediating roles of fear and defensive silence in the relationship be-

tween AL and employee creativity. Therefore, examining the role of

mindfulness on the AL –creativity link would be a valuable line of

research.

We tested our model in Nigeria and China, which are societies

characterized as high power distance cultures. Power distance may be

associated with high tolerance for authoritarian leaders, and thus may

reduce the adverse employee reactions to such leaders. Even though we

expect our ﬁndings to be applicable for organizations in Western cul-

ture where AL is predominant, future research should replicate and

extend our current ﬁndings to other cultures. For future studies con-

ducted in low power distance cultures, such as most Western cultures, it

could be that the predicted relationships are stronger. For instance,

authoritarian leaders might have more detrimental eﬀects on employee

creativity in Western cultures, because of followers' low tolerance for

hierarchy and authority dominance (Zagorsek et al., 2004). Such re-

search could for instance not only examine power distance orientation

at the national level but also examine the role of individually held

cultural orientations in employee reactions to AL.

In conclusion, our study of how AL undermines employee creativity

through its relationship with fear and defensive silence makes sig-

niﬁcant contributions to leadership and creativity literatures by of-

fering a more elaborate view on how AL hinders employee creativity.

Moreover, we also highlight the role of employee PsyCap, mitigating

the negative eﬀect of AL. We urge researchers to devote more attention

to this line of research, considering the potential opportunities for fu-

ture research in this area especially focusing on antecedents of AL,

other psychological mechanisms, and potential boundary conditions on

important work and organizational outcomes.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge Talya N. Bauer for her va-

luable insights and developmental feedback towards strengthening an

earlier version of this manuscript.

L. Guo et al. Journal of Business Research 92 (2018) 219–230

228

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Liang Guo is Professor of Computational Social Science at the Institute of Computational

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appeared in journals such as Journal of Management and Journal of Business Ethics.

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individual human behavior aﬀects organizational performance and avidly follows

methodological trends in the ﬁeld of management and psychology. He has published his

research in journals such as Journal of Applied Psychology,Social Psychological and

Personality Science,Harvard Business Review,and European Business Review.

Omale A. Garba is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for African Studies in Boston

University. His research focuses on leadership and work engagement. His recent research

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Management.

Katrin Riisla is a PhD candidate at the University of Leuven, Belgium, where she focuses

on unethical leadership in organizations and its implications on employee functioning,

misconduct and wellbeing. Her research has been presented at top management con-

ferences such as The Academy of Management Annual Meeting.

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230

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Based on goal setting theory, this study explores the positive effect and influencing process of authoritarian leadership on employee performance, as well as the moderating role of individual power distance in this process. Data from 211 supervisor-subordinate dyads in Chinese organizations indicates that authoritarian leadership is positively associated with employee performance, and learning goal orientation mediates this relationship. Furthermore, power distance moderates the effect of authoritarian leadership on learning goal orientation, such that the effect was stronger when individual power distance was higher. The indirect effect of authoritarian leadership on employee performance via learning goal orientation is also moderated by power distance. Theoretical and managerial implications and future directions are also discussed.

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We investigated the relationships between leaders' and their followers' psychological capital and organizational identification in a Chinese community. Participants included 423 followers on 34 work teams, each with its respective team leader. Hierarchical linear models (HLM) were used in the analyses to delineate the relationships among participants' demographic background (gender, age, marital status, and educational level), human capital, and tenure. The results revealed that leaders' psychological capital positively influenced their followers' psychological capital through the mediation effect of enhancing followers' organizational identification. The implications of these findings, the study's limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.

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When and why do people engage in different forms of proactive behavior at work? We propose that, as a result of a process of trait activation, employees with different types of self-construal engage in distinct forms of proactive behavior if they work in environments consistent with their self-construals. In an experimental Study 1 (N = 61), we examined the effect of self-construals on proactivity and found that people primed with interdependent self-construals engaged in more work unit-oriented proactive behavior when job interdependence also was manipulated. Priming independent self-construals did not enhance career-oriented proactive behavior, even when we manipulated job autonomy. In a field Study 2 (N = 205), we found that employees with interdependent self-construals working in jobs with high interdependence reported higher work unit commitment and higher work unit-oriented proactive behavior than employees in low interdependent jobs. Employees with independent self-construals working in jobs with high autonomy also exhibited stronger career commitment and more career-oriented proactive behavior than those in jobs with low autonomy. This research offers a theoretical framework to explain how dispositional and situational factors interactively shape people's engagement in different forms of proactive behavior.

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