Carrot or stick? The impact of paternalistic leadership on the behavioral integration of top management teams in megaprojects
International Journal of Managing Projects in Business
ISSN: 1753-8378
Article publication date: 7 May 2020
Issue publication date: 22 June 2020
Abstract
Purpose
Following the call to explore what leadership theory could be applicable in temporary organizations, the purpose of this study was to develop an integrative model linking the effects of paternalistic leadership styles (i.e. authoritarian, benevolent and moral) on the behavioral integration (BI) of top management teams (TMTs) in megaproject settings.
Design/methodology/approach
The performance of the research model was tested based on empirical data collected from a sample of 43 megaproject TMTs.
Findings
The results show that the moral leadership style can significantly stimulate the BI of TMTs, whereas authoritarian leadership has a negative impact and benevolent leadership has no significant impact. Furthermore, trust in leader plays a partial mediating role between paternalistic leadership and BI, and the power distance value of TMT positively moderates the links between authoritarian and moral leadership styles and BI.
Research limitations/implications
The TMT sample was drawn from China's megaprojects, most of which have global influence (e.g. Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge and Shanghai Expo), but the sampling approach limits the generalizability of the research findings to other contexts.
Originality/value
This study introduces the concept of BI into the realm of megaproject management and provides a novel perspective (i.e. paternalistic leadership) for exploring its antecedents. The findings, therefore, contribute to the literature by broadening the megaproject management research with a microfoundation perspective and by extending the extant paternalistic leadership in the context of temporary organizational settings.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This research is funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project Numbers: 71871164, 71901101, 71571137, and 71971161), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China (Program Number: 2662018QD006).Conflict of interest: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Citation
Wan, J., Le, Y., Wang, G., Xia, N. and Liu, X. (2020), "Carrot or stick? The impact of paternalistic leadership on the behavioral integration of top management teams in megaprojects", International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Vol. 13 No. 5, pp. 937-960. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMPB-12-2019-0302
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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