“Everything for family? Exploring the influences of paternalistic leadership as a multi-dimensional concept on Organizational commitment” a quantitative study on paternalistic leadership and its influence on organizational commitment amongst Dutch multi-national employees

Abstract

Despite its extensive use within non-Western organizations, paternalistic leadership has been found to be severely understudied within the West. The rise in demand for employee-oriented leadership and greater fostering of organizational commitment is what prompted this research. As such, this research used the three-dimensional conceptualization of paternalistic leadership, containing benevolence, moralism, and authoritarianism to research its relationship with organizational commitment. For this, a survey was sent out to a sample of multi-national Dutch employees, asking them to rate the perceived level of paternalism within their leadership as well as its effect on their organizational commitments. The total sample size was of 127 respondents, of which 24 were removed due to not filling out the survey entirely (N=103). It was found that only benevolence had a significant positive relationship with OGC, while the other dimensions were non-significant. However, PL’s construct scored a to low Cronbach’s Alpha to consider its usability as a global concept in a Western context. Additionally, the dimension of authoritarianism had a negative correlation with benevolence and moralism. These findings do confirm that benevolence is a suitable dimension to enhance OGC. Yet, more research is sorely needed to study paternalistic leadership and its efficiency within a Western context.