autocratic leadership research paper

Authoritarian leadership styles and performance: a systematic literature review and research agenda

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• Published: 04 April 2022
• Volume 73 , pages 841–871, ( 2023 )

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• Elia Pizzolitto   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4569-1365 1 ,
• Ida Verna   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3838-341X 1 &
• Michelina Venditti   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7269-0707 1  

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Although authoritarian leadership styles are often associated with negative performance, work climate deterioration, increased power distance, and centralized control, contradictory empirical evidence has emerged in the literature. In this paper, we perform a systematic literature review with three aims: (1) understand the effects of authoritarian leadership styles on performance, (2) study the temporal and geographical evolution of the scientific debate, and (3) establish a research agenda for the future. The results show that in the last two decades, the interest for the field has shifted from Western to Eastern countries. Moreover, many authors encourage leaders to increase or decrease their degree of authoritarian leadership depending on the context to more effectively connect leadership with performance. Therefore, leadership should be studied in light of a more complex approach that considers hybrid leadership styles and their effects on performance. Finally, we discuss our study’s limitations and managerial implications.

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1 Introduction

Authoritarian leadership styles involve high levels of control over subordinates (Chiang et al. 2020 ). Authoritarian leaders tend to use their authority, which is ensured by organizational hierarchies, to demand absolute obedience of their followers (de Hoogh et al. 2015 ). Superiors adopting these leadership styles tend to centralize their power and accentuate the power distance between them and their subordinates (Schaubroeck et al. 2017 ). Evidence in the literature has shown that authoritarian leaders press their subordinates to achieve demanding objectives and to follow the rules (Li et al. 2018 ; Karakitapoğlu-Aygün et al. 2021 ). Although at first glance, these leadership styles may not seem to ensure a good work climate or facilitate high performance (Shen et al. 2019 ), the empirical literature has shown contrasting results during the last decades.

Authoritarian leadership styles are often associated with negative performance, complex leader–follower relationships, and high intentions of followers to leave (Schaubroeck et al. 2017 ). For example, Chiang et al. ( 2020 ) showed that the work climate worsens if authoritarian leaders operate by suppressing subordinates’ emotions. Schuh et al. ( 2012 ) showed that subordinates’ effort could be limited if superiors act as authoritarian leaders. Schaubroeck et al. ( 2017 ) demonstrated the direct relationship between subordinates’ disapproval of power distance and adverse effects of directive leadership on performance. Therefore, authoritarian leadership styles seem to clash with the high dynamism of the new globalized and hyperconnected markets.

Nevertheless, several studies have identified specific conditions under which authoritarian leadership styles can positively affect workgroup performance. For example, positive results can be achieved in workgroups characterized by high levels of traditionality and guided by authoritarian leaders (Shen et al. 2019 ). Directive leadership can ensure good outcomes when rewards are low, group size is large, and failure is not too costly (Rahmani et al. 2018 ). Moreover, authoritarian leaders can succeed in workgroups with low team power struggles (de Hoogh et al. 2015 ) and high participation (Sagie 1996 ). Finally, Karakitapoğlu-Aygün et al. ( 2021 ) highlighted that authoritarian leadership styles can positively affect communication if authority is not exaggerated. These contrasting results highlight the need for a comprehensive review of the evolution of the scientific debate on this topic.

Furthermore, cultural prejudice about the effectiveness of authoritarian leadership styles should be addressed in light of the complexity of new businesses. For example, authoritarian and paternalistic leadership styles are “still predominant in many Asian cultures” (Shen et al. 2019 : 498), where Confucianism is widespread and applied in business (Shen et al. 2019 ). In particular, the literature highlights the “necessity of challenging the deeply rooted beliefs held by many Chinese managers that authoritarian leadership is an effective leadership strategy” (Li et al. 2019 : 951). Nevertheless, authoritarian leadership styles are popular in contemporary business organizations worldwide (Chiang et al. 2020 ). Therefore, empirical evidence reveals a contradiction between organizational theory and practice: even though authoritarian leadership styles are formally considered ineffective, management employs this kind of leadership in practice worldwide. The literature highlights the importance of “leadership styles prevalent in the culture under investigation and examines its cultural roots and dominant psychological mechanisms” (Chen et al. 2014 : 813). Consequently, questions arise about the evolution of the authoritarian leadership concept and applications of authority in leaders’ behaviors.

A considerable number of literature reviews have debated the effects of leadership styles on performance. For example, Yahaya and Ebrahim’s ( 2016 ) review on this topic was limited to transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles. Harrison et al. ( 2016 ) devoted their systematic review to entrepreneurial leadership and its effects on performance. Georgakakis et al. ( 2019 ) analyzed the role assumptions of CEOs and top management teams, organizing them into theoretical categories. However, their research did not classify authoritarian leadership styles depending on these assumptions. Laureani and Antony’s ( 2017 ) comprehensive literature review discussed the effects of a general conceptualization of leadership and its effects on Lean Six Sigma. Servant leadership’s effects on performance were debated by Langhof and Güldenberg ( 2019 ) and Parris and Peachey ( 2013 ). The general effects of leadership on performance were discussed by Asrar-ul-Haq and Anwar ( 2018 ). To summarize, although the literature highlights the importance of leadership for performance, we could not find a review devoted to authoritarian leadership styles and their outcomes.

For these reasons, we concentrated on authoritarian leadership styles–i.e., authoritarian, autocratic, directive, and paternalistic leadership – to explore literature findings of their effects on performance. In particular, we perform a systematic literature review (SLR) to answer the following research questions:

RQ1: What are the effects of authoritarian leadership styles on performance?

RQ2: What has been the temporal and geographical evolution of the scientific debate concerning the effects of authoritarian leadership styles on performance?

RQ3: How does the discussion about authoritarian leadership styles make sense in light of the strong dynamism of new markets?

The article is structured as follows. We define the key concepts, i.e., authoritarian, autocratic, directive, and paternalistic leadership. After that, we describe in detail the methodology employed for the selection and analysis of the literature. The subsequent descriptive analysis shows the results of publications’ years, typologies, and fields and the evolution of authors’ and statistical units’ origins over time. Then, we develop the content analysis with a conceptual map of the field, an analysis of the most employed theories, the themes that emerged, and the future research opportunities identified by the authors of selected articles. Finally, we conclude our article with a general discussion of the results and indications for the future expansion of this study.

2 Definitions of key concepts

In this study, we refer to four leadership styles: authoritarian, autocratic, directive, and paternalistic. In this section, we present four definitions derived from the extracted articles' content in our dataset. In the past, the literature treated authoritarian, autocratic, and directive leadership styles interchangeably (Chiang et al. 2020 ). However, commonalities and differences have emerged during the most recent debate.

Authoritarian leadership styles “include exercising discipline, authority, and control over followers” (Karakitapoğlu-Aygün et al. 2021 : 475). They demand that employees meet high work standards and reprimand employees for poor performance (Wang et al. 2013 ; Lee et al. 2019 ). To achieve these goals, authoritarian leaders exhibit high self-confidence and plan their actions to ensure that their subordinates do not challenge their authority. Authoritarian, autocratic, and directive leaders limit “followers’ autonomy and self-determination, whereby leaders control followers via impersonal procedures and rules” (Li et al. 2019 : 931). They provide “clear directions and expectations regarding compliance with instructions” (Sanchez-Manzanares et al. 2020 : 840). After that, they tend to centralize decisions and limit subordinates’ opportunities to express their opinions (Yun et al. 2005 ).

In addition to revealing commonalities among authoritarian leadership styles, the literature shows substantial differences. According to Chiang et al. ( 2020 ), authoritarian and autocratic leadership styles differ in two main characteristics. First, evidence in the literature does not associate autocratic with destructive leadership styles, while authoritarian leadership is often associated with the ‘dark side’ of leadership. Second, autocratic leaders are task-oriented and therefore are accepted by subordinates. Authoritarian leaders, instead, trigger feelings such as fear of distrust. Moreover, authoritarian and directive leaders differ in the way they give subordinates feedback. In particular, “a directive leader focuses on providing guidance”, while an authoritarian leader “focuses on controlling and making demands of subordinates” (Chiang et al. 2020 : 1085).

Moreover, authoritarian behaviors are part of the construct of paternalistic leadership, which “combines strong discipline and authority with fatherly benevolence and moral integrity in a personalistic atmosphere” (Wu et al. 2012 : 97). Therefore, paternalistic leaders have a genuine interest in subordinates’ well-being in both their professional and private lives (Hiller et al. 2019 ). The construct of paternalistic leadership consists of three dimensions: authoritarianism, benevolence, and morality (Chen et al. 2014 ; Chou et al. 2015 ; Hiller et al. 2019 ). The most crucial difference between paternalistic leaders and authoritarian, autocratic, and directive leaders is the benevolent side of this style. While morality could be associated with directive leadership and authority could be ascribed to authoritarian and autocratic styles, benevolence can be ascribed only to paternalistic behaviors.

3 Methodology

SLR is a methodology characterized by a rigorous protocol (Denyer and Tranfield 2009 ; Post et al. 2020 ), in which authors’ interpretation and creativity are limited to achieve the highest possible level of objectivity (Boell and Cecez-Kecmanovic 2015 ; Snyder 2019 ). According to most authors who have debated the SLR methodology, the SLR procedure is a fit when a researcher seeks proof in the literature to answer specific research questions. Our research examines a small group of leadership styles, i.e., authoritarian styles, and their effects on firm and employee performance. Given this level of specificity, the SLR was the best available methodology for answering our questions.

The protocol we chose for our SLR was proposed by Wolfswinkel et al. ( 2013 ), who introduced the application of grounded theory (GT) for developing content analyses in SLRs. GT (Corbin and Strauss 1990 ; Strauss and Corbin 1997 ) is a research method based on the interpretative paradigm about sociological research, which interprets the processes underlying a specific phenomenon. Using open, axial, and selective coding (Table 1 ), the research starts from a set of documents and organizes their contents into subthemes, themes, and, eventually, superordinate structures.

The advantage of using GT is that researchers concentrate on concepts and theories to reveal themes debated in the literature during the analysis; the themes are not decided before the study (Wolfswinkel et al. 2013 ). Given that our research was not driven by any previous convictions about the effects of authoritarian leadership styles on performance and was not influenced by cultural prejudice, GT was the best possible choice to develop our content analysis. Table 1 shows the detailed steps of the protocol we followed, and Fig.  1 shows a PRISMA 2020 (Page et al. 2021 ) flowchart that displays the process of the extraction and selection of relevant articles.

Extraction and inclusion of relevant contributions: PRISMA 2020 (Page et al. 2021 )

4 Descriptive analysis of the dataset

4.1 publications’ years, typologies, authors, and fields.

Figure  2 shows the number of theoretical (orange) and empirical (blue) publications per year. From 1966 to 2000, the average number of publications was 0.49 per year. During the following decade, the average was one per year. Finally, from 2011 to 2021, the average number of publications was 2.45 per year. Moreover, the average number of authors per document increased over time. From 1966 to 2000, the average number of authors per publication was 2.06. From 2001 to 2010, the average was 3.00. Finally, from 2011 to 2021, the average was 3.85. Therefore, the increasing number of publications and authors involved in the debate demonstrates the increasing interest in the topic. In particular, the distribution of articles per year shows a considerable focus on empirical research. In the dataset, 47 articles are empirical, and only seven are theoretical.

Number of publications per year

Our research covered a wide range of journals and fields. The fields interested in the topic also changed over time, as shown in Fig. 3 a and b. From 1966 to 2010, 48% of the articles were published in organizational psychology journals. In the next decade, this percentage decreased to 29%. Organization studies journals published 19% of the articles from 1966–2010, while from 2011 to 2021, this percentage increased to 22%. From 1966 to 2010, there were two articles published in general psychology journals, and in the next decade, there were none. General management, ethics, and social responsibility journals published 11% of the articles from 1966 to 2010 and 18% from 2011 to 2021. Finally, a new considerable area emerged during the last decade of analysis: international business and area studies journals published 15% of the articles from 2011 to 2021.

a Fields (1966–2010). b Fields (2011–2021)

To summarize, during the analyzed period, the topic was debated in journals in the fields of psychology, organization studies, general management, ethics, and social responsibility. During the last decade, international business and area studies journals emerged as a new and relevant field interested in debating issues related to authoritarian leadership styles. The wide range of fields that debate the topic reflect its multifaceted nature. More specifically, the considerable number of viewpoints considered in discussing authoritarian leadership styles and their effects on performance reveal the complexity of the topic. Moreover, the influences of so many different fields on the scientific debate justify the vast number of contradictory results in empirical research. The considerable number of different scientific viewpoints demonstrates the phenomenological nature of the field. Therefore, the wide variety of areas and the increasing amount of contrasting empirical evidence should be seen as an opportunity and not as a limitation.

4.2 Evolution of authors’ origins over time

The total number of authors included in the dataset is 148. The authors’ origins evolved over time (Fig.  4 a and b). Between 1966 and 2010, most authors were from the USA (43, 66.15%), 6 were from Switzerland (although they were all concentrated in one article), five were from Canada (7.69%), four were from Israel (6.15%), and the rest were from Norway, Australia, France, or Finland.

a Authors’ origins (1966–2010). b Authors’ origins (2011–2021)

During the following decade, interest in the field shifted from Western to Eastern countries. Although most of the authors remained from the USA (29, 27.88%), China emerged with 23 authors (22.12%), Taiwan with 12 authors (11.54%), and Hong Kong with five authors. Together, Eastern countries contributed 40 authors, representing 38.46% of the total. Other countries represented during this period included the UK with ten authors (9.62%) and the Netherlands with four authors (3.85%).

To summarize, Western authors dominated the field of authoritarian leadership from 1966 to 2011, but Eastern countries emerged in the field during the last decade. The rapid development of Eastern economies, together with the increasing scientific competencies of the Eastern population, allowed these countries to participate in this debate. Comparing the current situation with the future conditions of the field in the next ten years would be interesting to verify whether this shift in scientific interest will be amplified by the continuous improvement of the Eastern scientific community’s participation. Moreover, authoritarian leadership styles are typical in most Eastern businesses. Therefore, it would be interesting to verify whether research on authoritarian leadership by Eastern authors will improve the empirical knowledge of the field.

4.3 Evolution of statistical units’ origins over time

A statistical unit is the unit of research observation: it is an entity–or set of entities–for which data are collected. The evolution of statistical units’ origins over time was similar to the evolution of the authors’ origins (Fig. 5 a and b). Many of the 47 empirical papers in our dataset involved collaboration between authors from different countries (e.g., Chiang et al. 2020 ). Similarly, some papers used a sample of statistical units from different countries (e.g., Sutcliffe 1999 ; Wang et al. 2018 ).

a Statistical units’ origins (1966–2010). b Statistical units’ origins (2011–2021)

Before 2011, more than 70% of the empirical papers employed statistical units from North America: 62.50% from the USA and 8.33% from Canada. Only three papers employed statistical units from Israel. After 2010, the data shifted. Only four studies employed statistical units from North America, and all of them were from the USA. The presence of Eastern countries increased substantially. Nine papers employed Chinese statistical units, five used statistical units from Taiwan, one used statistical units from Japan, and one used statistical units from Turkey. Therefore, after 2010, 66.67% of empirical papers employed Eastern or Middle-Eastern statistical units.

5 Content analysis

In this section, we present the content analysis of the articles included in our dataset. We start with a conceptual map based on the work of Menz ( 2011 ) (Fig.  6 ). After that, we show the most commonly used theories in the articles. Further, we identify the results of our grounded analysis of themes that emerged during the content analysis. Finally, authors’ suggestions for future research are discussed.

Conceptual map of the field

To design the conceptual map in Fig.  6 , we identified the main aim of each article in the database. We thus revealed three of the most significant general components of the scientific debate, i.e., context, actions, and consequences/outcomes, and we grouped the evidence that emerged from the content analysis into these three elements. After that, we found that mediators and moderators of leadership effects on outcomes/consequences were analyzed in detail by the considered literature.

5.1 Theories employed in the extracted articles

Table 2 shows the employed theories that appeared more than once in the dataset. Moreover, we show the leadership styles considered by the articles in which we found the theories.

Paternalistic leadership is associated with Confucianism. Chen et al. ( 2014 referred to two pillars of Confucianism, i.e., hierarchy and relationalism. The former pillar involves respect for superiors, and the latter indicates that individuals with close relationships tend to “exchange favors beyond instrumental purposes” (Chen et al. 2014 : 799). Wei et al. ( 2016 ) considered Confucian concepts of reflection ( si ), heart ( qing ), and mind-heart ( xin ) to achieve a more comprehensive framework of leaders’ compassionate actions. Specifically, through these three concepts, the authors integrated the framework of compassion with the Confucian perspective.

Attribution theory aims to explain how subordinates or followers react to their perception of their leaders’ behavior. Kipnis et al. ( 1981 ) used attribution theory to study employee evaluation. In particular, they referred to the power usage model to highlight that managers’ perceptions of “who is in charge of employee’s behavior” (Kipnis, 1981 : 324) are the most critical variable for managers’ evaluation of their employees. Moreover, Schuh et al. ( 2012 ) used attribution theory to study how followers seek leaders’ signals to perceive their behaviors. Finally, Wang et al. ( 2013 ) used this theory to understand the impact of leaders’ gender on subordinates’ performance.

Chang et al. ( 2003 ) used path-goal theory to identify four categories of leadership: participative, supportive, directive, and achievement-oriented. Kahai et al. ( 2004 ) added path-goal theory to adaptive structuration theory to predict the effects of two kinds of leadership, i.e., participative and directive.

Finally, contingency theory and cognitive resource theory were among the most used theories. For example, Yun et al. ( 2005 ) used contingency theory to show the different effects of leadership styles that adapt to different trauma conditions. Murphy et al. ( 1992 ) used cognitive resource theory to relate leaders’ technical training to group members’ performance.

5.2 Identified themes

This paragraph describes the results of our grounded analysis of the 43 articles’ contents. In particular, we show the effects of authoritarian leadership style on the different typologies of performance highlighted by the authors. Figure  7 summarizes the results, highlighting the differences within the four leadership styles analyzed in terms of authority, power, attitude towards followers, and effectiveness. In the following section, we start from the authoritarian leadership style, and finish with paternalistic leadership.

Authoritarian, autocratic, directive, and paternalistic leadership styles

5.2.1 Authoritarian leadership style and performance

Authoritarian leadership exercises control and authority over followers, limiting their autonomy and self-determination, and is often associated with the “dark side” of leadership (Chiang et al. 2020 ). The articles considered in this literature review which were devoted explicitly to this leadership style are relatively recent, and, in most cases, authors present studies in which the analyzed samples comprise Asian participants.

Authoritarian leadership and team performance In general, results in regard to the effects of authoritarian leadership on performance are coherent. In particular, most of the publications in our sample showed that authoritarian leadership had adverse (e.g., Scully et al. 1994 ), or, in some cases, insignificant (e.g., Chen et al. 2017 ) effects. A positive relation between authoritarian leadership and team performance was found by Fodor ( 1976 ), but this is a relatively isolated result.

Moreover, authoritarian leadership affects followers’ organizational and relational identity, often reducing their intention to stay (e.g., Schaubroeck et al. 2017 ; Shen et al. 2019 ) and suppressing emotions (e.g., Chiang et al. 2020 ). In particular, authoritarian leaders’ lack of any emotional side leads to negative team performance, as verified by Chiang et al. ( 2020 ), who recently analyzed this phenomenon in relation to three large public Japanese companies.

Authoritarian leadership and in-role and extra-role performance Two articles debated the relations between authoritarian leadership style and in-role and extra-role performance. Schuh et al. ( 2012 ) considered a sample of 114 Chinese subordinate–supervisor dyads, finding that the leaders’ authoritarian behavior had adverse effects on the two typologies of performance in the context of highly transformational leadership. In the context of low transformational leadership, however, the effects were not significant.

More recently, Karakitapoğlu-Aygün et al. ( 2021 ) considered Turkish, Taiwanese, and US employees and found that, although in the Asian context people are more willing to tolerate authoritarian leadership styles, leaders’ authoritarian behavior can compromise the quality of communication, which is a critical moderator of followers’ performance.

Authoritarian leadership and job performance Schaubroeck et al. ( 2017 ) considered the Chinese high-tech field and its employees and supervisors, demonstrating that an authoritarian leadership style promoted the worst job performance within contexts in which subordinates’ power distance was not accepted by subordinates. In contexts in which the power distance was accepted, authoritarian leadership had no significant effects on job performance. Moreover, Shen et al. ( 2019 ) monitored how the indirect adverse effects of authoritarian leadership style on job performance varied according to the traditionality of groups and found significant effects, at least for groups with a low level of traditionality.

Authoritarian leadership style limits followers’ self-efficacy and proactivity, as demonstrated by Li et al. ( 2019 ) in the context of the dyadic relations between Chinese leaders and followers. Moreover, an authoritarian leadership style can limit innovation and creativity (Lee et al. 2019 ).

5.2.2 Autocratic leadership style and performance

Although autocratic leadership shares its main characteristics with authoritarian leadership, it is less destructive and it is task-oriented; therefore, it tends to be associated with a higher level of acceptance by followers. In the set of articles we studied, autocratic leadership was not considered in Eastern Countries, although some authors hypothesized that it could be more accepted in such contexts (e.g., Misumi & Peterson 1985 ).

In general, autocratic leadership style can have both positive and negative effects on performance, depending on the contextual conditions (De Hoogh et al. 2015 ). In 1971, Rosenbaum and Rosenbaum considered the effects of autocratic leadership on task performance. Through an experiment which involved US students, they verified that the effects of this leadership style were positive on performance in a highly stressed condition but not on satisfaction. Ten years later, Kipnis et al. ( 1981 ) analyzed the effects of autocratic behaviors on leaders’ evaluation of their followers. Given this leadership style does not leave decision-making power to followers, it leads to a worse performance, both at team and individual level. This condition leads leaders to evaluate followers more poorly.

Finally, autocratic leadership, like authoritarian leadership, promotes better performance in contexts in which hierarchy is well-accepted by followers (De Hoogh et al. 2015 ). Nevertheless, autocratic leadership can compromise the team’s psychological self-confidence, worsening performance.

5.2.3 Directive leadership style and performance

Directive leaders exercise discipline and control over followers but, instead of focusing on making demands, they focus on providing guidance and feedback (Chiang et al. 2020 ). A coherent baseline can be identified during the entire period of directive leadership development in the literature, from Shaw and Blum ( 1966 ) to Yi et al. ( 2021 ). In particular, the latter made a critical contribution to the interpretation of directive leadership and its effects on performance, identifying an inverse U relation between the two variables. Although Yi et al.’s ( 2021 ) article is not a review, its results represent one of the more effective summaries to have emerged in the worldwide empirical literature to date. In fact, most of the literature has concentrated on finding specific situations in which a directive leadership style can have negative and positive effects on different typologies of performance.

Although the positive effects of directive leadership on performance and satisfaction could be considered counterintuitive at first sight, a convincing reason for their existence was provided by Kahai et al. ( 2004 ) through an analysis of cognitive evaluation theory. In particular, “structures external to an individual, such as leader directiveness, have control and informational components” (Kahai et al. 2004 : 94). The two components affect, respectively, the conformity of behaviors and perceived competence. The informational component allows a reduction of perceived role ambiguity and an increase in followers’ trust in leaders and motivation (Kahai et al., 2004 ; Chen et al., 2017 ).

Few articles explicitly found situations in which directive leadership leads only to adverse performance effects. For example, in the context of car dealers in North Europe, Chang et al. ( 2003 ) identified that customer focus could be compromised by a directive leadership style, adversely affecting quantitative parameters of performance measurement (e.g., productivity and profitability).

Directive leadership and task performance When the directive leadership literature first began to develop, academic analysis was concentrated in North America, especially the United States. In particular, tests in the first years were performed through laboratory experiments that involved undergraduates, and directive leadership was already seen to produce positive and negative effects on performance depending on the context. Shaw and Blum ( 1966 ) analyzed the effectiveness of directive leadership for task performance by studying changes in the task structures, and their experiment found that directive leaders managed more structured tasks better.

Nevertheless, not all studies have supported this finding. For example, Kahai et al. ( 2004 ) found a reduction of the positive effects of directive leadership for highly structured tasks. Therefore, the level of task structure which causes directive leadership to be more or less effective on performance remains an open issue.

Directive leadership and team performance: highly technical contexts Another relevant example is the work published by Murphy et al. ( 1992 ) that analyzed highly technical contexts. In particular, they demonstrated how, in such contexts, directive leadership could be effective in terms of team performance, but it has to be associated with the technical knowledge of leaders. This finding was confirmed by Sutcliffe ( 1999 ), who analyzed performances in business process reengineering through quantitative methods and the participation of IT executives from North America and Europe. The highly technical content of the context determined the greater efficacy of directive leadership in assignment and task facilitation, objective definition, and team performance. These findings were confirmed more recently by Rahmani et al. ( 2018 ), who verified how projects characterized by high knowledge intensity need directive leadership to be completed effectively.

Moreover, Hansen and Nørup ( 2017 ) considered a Danish ICT context and found that the concurrent employment of directive and participative leadership was the best possible strategy for perceived performance during project implementation. Similar results have been presented in the past. For example, Tjosvold ( 1984 ) identified that directive leaders’ warmth and sincere interest in followers’ productivity were effective mediators of work-related performance.

Further information on highly technical circumstances was provided by Yun et al. ( 2005 ) in a US medical context. In particular, their work highlighted how the directive leadership style promoted different effects depending on specific contextual elements. The study showed that such effects changed depending on the seriousness of the problem and teams’ experience, with positive effects found at high levels of problem seriousness and low levels of team experience.

The same context was considered by Tschan et al. ( 2006 ) in Switzerland, where the authors identified positive effects of directive leadership on team performance. The study was performed in two phases, and it was found, in particular, that directive leadership had an additive effect, showing more effectiveness in the second phase for groups that had already obtained good results in the first.

Directive leadership and team performance: unstable and dynamic contexts Hmieleski and Ensley ( 2007 ), who analyzed the context of the fastest-growing US startups, verified that directive leadership is better adapted to dynamic and unstable contexts in which decisions should be taken immediately. This tendency was confirmed by Lorinkova et al. ( 2013 ), who involved some US students in their study and demonstrated that team performance in groups guided by directive leaders was positive in the short run and stabilized thereafter. At the beginning of project implementation, the context is unstable, tasks are not permanently assigned, and competencies are yet to be developed. In such contexts, directive leadership is more effective.

Mossholder et al. ( 1990 ) had already found similar results by integrating time in their study of leadership. In fact, the longer the duration of dyadic relations, the less followers are affected by leaders’ behaviors. In particular, directive leadership is initially more effective in complex contexts (e.g., engineering). Over time, followers become confident in their competencies, and non-directive styles are the best choice for satisfaction and job performance. Sanchez-Manzanares et al. ( 2020 ) further confirmed such effects in the Spanish context. Their study verified that when pressure is strong, directive leadership is more effective for team performance and adaptation.

Given that leadership is a highly phenomenological construct, not all the studies found significant relationships between directive leadership and team performance. For example, Faraj and Sambamurthy ( 2006 ), who also analyzed a technological context (i.e., information systems development projects) in the USA, found nothing to support this relationship.

Directive leadership and team performance: Asian contexts Although there has been a particularly notable recent contribution from Eastern authors to the literature on directive leadership, interesting works have been published by Asian academics previously. These publications suggested that this typology of leadership style is more accepted in Eastern countries than in Western areas. Nevertheless, we identified a tendency among Eastern authors to suggest that smoothing the directive side of leadership can foster better performance. For example, Sagie ( 1996 ) developed a study which involved the participation of students in Israel and underlined that directive leadership produced positive results but that, at the same time, when leaders used a more communicative approach to define goals in a participative way, the positive effects on team performance increased.

An interesting comparison can be made between Somech ( 2006 ) and Hmieleski and Ensley ( 2007 ), who considered the effects of directive leadership on team performance, starting from different levels of team homogeneity. In this sense, interpreting directive leadership as a mediator or moderator of such an effect, Somech ( 2006 ) considered the Israeli context and analyzed in-depth the effects of directive leadership style on in-role performance and team innovation, considering different levels of team homogeneity. In particular, a more homogeneous team, in terms of professional backgrounds and abilities, can put more pressure to achieve conformity. In this case, directive leadership promotes better performance. In contrast, an analysis of the US context by Hmieleski and Ensley ( 2007 ) highlighted that top management team heterogeneity could lead to positive results if a directive leadership style is adopted. Therefore, to achieve better performance, directive leadership should be associated with top management team heterogeneity and low-level team homogeneity.

5.2.4 Paternalistic leadership and performance

The paternalistic leadership style is traditionally described as a construct composed of three dimensions: authority, morality, and benevolence. Nevertheless, Wang et al. ( 2018 ) published an innovative interpretation of this leadership style. In particular, they stated that previous literature joined three separate styles: benevolence-dominant paternalistic leadership, in which benevolence dominates over authority; authoritarianism-dominant paternalistic leadership, in which authority dominates over benevolence; and classical paternalistic leadership, in which no dimension dominates. Therefore, the definition and foundation of paternalistic leadership style can be considered an open issue in the literature.

In general, paternalistic leadership is based on Confucian philosophy, which is particularly studied in Eastern contexts, in which it is present and appreciated (Shen et al. 2019 ). In the set of articles we studied, almost all the articles analyzed Asian statistical units, and there was a general tendency to consider paternalistic leadership an effective style in terms of performance.

Paternalistic leadership and task performance Chan et al. ( 2012 ) and Chou et al. ( 2015 ) considered the effects of paternalistic leadership on task performance. The former concentrated on the authoritarian and benevolent components of this leadership style in relation to Chinese supervisor–subordinate dyads. The benevolent dimensions were shown to be a moderator of the adverse effects caused by the authoritarian dimension on task performance, organization-based self-esteem, and organizational citizenship behavior toward the organization. The latter, which focused on the Taiwanese military, considered the authoritarian and moral dimensions of paternalistic leadership and found that, in such a context, high levels of both dimensions were the most widespread and appreciated by followers.

Paternalistic leadership, job performance, and trust Numerous studies have considered the effects of the paternalistic leadership style on work and job performance, and Wu et al. ( 2012 ) studied such effects by analyzing supervisor–subordinates dyads in the Chinese context. Although paternalistic leadership has already been associated with positive performance, the researchers identified international justice as a possible mediator of this relation, both for job performance and organizational citizenship behavior.

Wang et al. ( 2018 ), who compared dyads in Taiwanese and US contexts through their innovative vision of paternalistic leadership, verified that if the authoritarian dimension dominates leaders’ style, the effects on job performances are adverse. In contrast, if benevolence is dominant, or if there is an equilibrium between the two dimensions, the effects are positive. The same results were obtained by Hiller et al. ( 2019 ), who explained that adverse effects could extend to organizational citizenship behavior, creativity, turnover intention, and counterproductive attitudes.

Chen et al. ( 2014 ) found significant influences of all three dimensions of paternalistic leadership for in-role and extra-role performance. Their results were similar to those of previous studies: the authoritarian dimension negatively affected the two typologies of performance differently from the other two dimensions. Moreover, affective trust was a significant mediator between benevolent and moral dimensions and role performance.

The meta-analysis carried out by Legood et al. ( 2020 ) demonstrated that affective trust could effectively predict followers’ performance. Moreover, this study remarked that specific conditions exist which foster the effectiveness of the paternalistic leadership style. In particular, trust is promoted by a paternalistic leadership style when the power distance is low. When the power distance increases, however, the benevolent dimension should be more and more dominant to ensure a positive work-related performance.

5.2.5 Directive leadership vs. empowering and participative leadership styles

Numerous articles have debated the differences between directive and empowering leadership styles. Specifically, empowering leadership is a style focused on “sharing power with employees and increasing their responsibility and autonomy to perform their work” (Sanchez-Manzanares et al. 2020 : 840). Most articles debating this comparison state that directive and empowering leadership styles have different and significant effects on performance, with limited exceptions (e.g., Faraj & Sambamurthy 2006 ).

In stressful contexts, directive leadership showed higher effectiveness in regard to team adaptation and performance (Sanchez-Manzanares et al., 2020 ). In contrast, in less complicated situations, empowering leadership has a positive effect on team performance (Yun et al. 2005 ).

Empowering and directive leadership were also compared according to levels of team homogeneity. In particular, Hmieleski and Ensley ( 2007 ) examined the US startup context. They found that, in unstable environments, a directive leadership style was more effective for firm performance when top management teams were heterogeneous, while empowering leadership positively affected performance when top management teams were homogeneous. In stable environments, however, the effects were the opposite.

Other studies performed in similar contexts gave different results in regard to comparisons of directive and participative leadership styles. Rahmani et al. ( 2018 ) found that directive leadership is more effective than participative leadership in fields with high knowledge intensity, whereas Hansen and Nørup ( 2017 ) found that employing a directive and participative leadership style combination is the best strategy for implementing projects in ICT environments. The same results were obtained in an experiment performed by Sagie ( 1996 ).

Moreover, through experiments, Sauer ( 2011 ) found that the effectiveness of leaders depends on their position in the firm. In particular, low-status leaders are perceived as more effective if they adopt a directive style, while high-status leaders are perceived as more effective if they adopt a participative leadership style. Somech ( 2006 ) found that when groups are functionally heterogeneous, the participative leadership style is more effective than the directive style, which is ineffective in functionally homogeneous groups. Directive leadership can reduce role ambiguity and, therefore, increase the quantity of communication. Thus, directive and participative leadership can positively affect group performance and satisfaction (Kahai et al. 2004 ).

5.3 Further research opportunities

This section presents further research opportunities that selected articles’ authors identified in their research. We found four main areas of interest (Table 3 ). First, replications of studies in different cultural contexts were widely suggested by authors. Second, further research opportunities examining novel and multiple leadership styles were identified. Third, emotions and perception were suggested as promising further research opportunities. Finally, authors identified the need to analyze the power of moderator and mediator variables influencing the relationship between leadership styles and performance.

6 Discussion

In this paper, we performed an SLR to achieve a better understanding of authoritarian leadership styles on the different typologies on performance considered in the literature. Although the literature presents considerable evidence highlighting the need for leaders to adapt to different contexts (e.g., Yun et al., 2005 ; Chiang et al., 2020 ), our findings showed that, when leaders limit the authoritarian component of their styles, there are more contexts in which the considered leadership styles can be effective. The level of authority, discipline, and control over followers decreases as leaders move from authoritarian to paternalistic leadership styles, passing through autocratic and directive styles.

There is a general consensus among researchers that the authoritarian style is the worst leadership style for performance. Differenly, the autocratic leadership style is more task-oriented and tends to be more accepted by followers (Chiang et al. 2020 ). It has positive effects on performance in very stressful environments. In contrast, the directive leadership style has been shown to produce positive effects on performance in a considerable number of contexts, and it has been most frequently demonstrated to be an effective strategy for numerous typologies of performance in unstable, dynamic, and highly technical environments. Paternalistic leadership has been shown to be the most balanced style. Its three dimensions (i.e., authority, morality, and benevolence) lead to better effects on performance, especially when the benevolent and moral dimensions dominate the authority one.

Finally, although authoritarian leadership styles are more accepted in Eastern countries (e.g., Karakitapoğlu-Aygün et al. 2021 ), the literature showed a tendency to ask that the “dark side” of leadership style be smoothed, even in Asian contexts. Smoothing the authoritarian side of leadership could be obtained through better communication (e.g., Karakitapoğlu-Aygün et al. 2021 ; Sagie 1996 ) or through leaders’ sincere interest in their followers’ lives and productivity (Tjosvold 1984 ).

In the following section, we present the limitations of our work, propose a research agenda for further in-depth analysis in line with our study, and discuss the practical implications of our paper.

6.1 Limitations and research agenda

The principal outcome of our study is the finding that a considerable number of mediators, moderators, and specific conditions can change the effects of authoritarian leadership styles on performance. In particular, the leadership style appears to be a complex condition that cannot be superficially ascribed to a single and peculiar style detached from other leadership models that supervisors may apply. It is, instead, a changing condition: leaders are often able to change their degree of authority in line with objectives, followers’ behaviors, and other specific conditions (Kahai et al. 2004 ). For example, paternalistic leaders can increase or decrease leadership dimensions (i.e., authoritarian, benevolence, and morality) depending on the context, actions, subordinates’ behaviors, and desired outcomes.

Given that a discussion about single and detached leadership styles does not make sense in light of the dynamism of the new globalized and hyperconnected markets, the study of hybrid leadership styles is still open and promising. The in-depth analysis of specific circumstances in which leaders can change the degree of a specific dimension of their leadership styles is a critical stimulus for future researchers. In particular, authoritarian leaders are suitable units of analysis: the literature widely recognizes that more democratic leadership styles (e.g., empowering) positively affect performance. Instead, authoritarian leaders have to increasingly adapt their style, which collides with the changing conditions of jobs, markets, and diffuse beliefs about the negative impact of exaggerated authority (Sauer 2011 ). Therefore, in future research, examining authoritarian leadership styles will probably be the key to achieving an in-depth understanding of hybrid leadership styles.

Moreover, we encourage future researchers to overcome two limitations of our paper. The first relates to the conceptual map we drawn in Fig.  6 . The thematic map shows three main groups of evidence: context, actions, and consequences/outcomes. These three dimensions are connected in a linear relationship that starts from the context and produces the effects on performance. Nevertheless, Dourish ( 2004 ) suggests that in fields where the phenomenological nature of results is undeniable (as it is for leadership), context is much more than a starting point. In particular, “from a phenomenological perspective […] context does not describe a setting; it is something that people do. It is an achievement, rather than an observation; an outcome, rather than a premise” (Dourish 2004 : 22). Therefore, we encourage further research to find theoretical and empirical evidence of performance effects on leadership. In particular, are leaders willing and able to change their style depending on previous performance?

The second limitation of our work is that the comparison we made between authoritarian and non-authoritarian leadership styles (§5.2.5) was not the final aim of our article. It was a secondary result. However, it underlined a critical starting point for further research opportunities. In particular, we encourage future researchers to explore in much more detail the differences among leadership styles in their effects on performance. We call for research reviewing a broader range of leadership styles to highlight the main differences in their outcomes. We are aware that this is a demanding objective. Therefore, in our opinion, meta-analyses should help organize the considerable number of papers published on the topic. In particular, a restriction in the time range of articles extracted could support researchers in limiting bias and reducing the time needed for the analysis.

6.2 Managerial implications

While the theoretical implications of our study are clear, since we fill the gap concerning the effects of authoritarian leadership styles on performance, this review also has relevant practical implications. In particular, we identified three groups that could benefit form the managerial implications: leaders, top management teams, and recruiters and human resources management (HRM).

Leaders should be aware of their leadership styles (Chiang et al. 2020 ; Karakitapoğlu-Aygün et al. 2021 ). Given that under specific conditions, authoritarian leadership is effective, leaders have to be trained to understand the nature of their behaviors. To achieve this demanding objective, they have to gain in-depth knowledge of each leadership style’s positive and negative effects. As a consequence, they should be able to limit the degree of their authority and their centralizing tendency. There are several opportunities to help leaders achieve this goal. For example, HRM can design jobs with autonomous features (Li et al. 2019 ) and encourage regular feedback between superiors and subordinates (Karakitapoğlu-Aygün et al. 2021 ).

Top management teams should design the work environment to enhance creativity, share ideas, incentivize collaboration and information sharing, and encourage participation (Lee et al. 2019 ; Shen et al. 2019 ) to stimulate authoritarian leaders to reduce the power distance between them and subordinates. Planning work activities in line with democratic ideas can help followers identify with their leaders. Moreover, supervisors should be trained to clearly express their projects for their subordinates, especially in terms of their learning and professional achievements (Chen et al. 2017 ). Furthermore, leaders should be subjected to psychological training to improve their ability to understand the structure of their teams and the personality of their subordinates.

Finally, in the last decade, the literature has reconsidered the strategic role of HRM (e.g., Pizzolitto and Verna 2020 ; 2022 ). Given the evidence that emerged during this review, the fundamental effects of strategic HRM interventions can dramatically affect leadership and, consequently, performance. Recruiters should select managers depending on the leadership styles required by the specific conditions of workgroups, markets, and business needs. For example, evidence in the literature suggests that changing and complex conditions can be better managed through directive leaders (e.g., Lorinkova et al. 2013 ; Sanchez-Manzanares et al. 2020 ). In calmer situations, more empowering leadership styles are more effective. Therefore, recruiters have to be careful in their selections, considering the training and compensation needed for adapting managers’ leadership styles to business needs. In specific situations, hiring a directive leader can be an efficient choice (e.g., Yun et al. 2005 ; Lorinkova et al. 2013 ).

7 Conclusions

We performed this study to answer three research questions. The first concerned the effects of authoritarian leadership styles on performance. Although there is a consensus that an exceedance of authority, power distance, pressure, and impositions on subordinates can worsen performance, contrasting results about the specific effects of authoritarian leadership styles emerged in the literature. In particular, several publications highlight positive and negative outcomes of authoritarian, autocratic, and directive behaviors. A considerable number of specific conditions can indeed affect the effects of authoritarian styles on performance. The conditions of leadership are changing, and leaders should adapt and combine their styles to enhance performance (Hansen & Nørup 2017 ; Sanchez-Manzanares et al. 2020 ; Yun et al. 2005 ).

The second research question concerned the temporal and geographical evolution of the scientific debate on authoritarian leadership styles. We identified a revolution in the origins of interest for this topic during the last two decades. In particular, while before 2000, authors from Western countries were the most prolific in the field, after 2000, Eastern authors emerged with a considerable number of contributions. Given the diffusion of these leadership typologies in Asia, these publications enriched the scientific debate with important empirical papers and novel ideas for further research opportunities.

Finally, the third research question reflected on the effectiveness of scientific discussion on authoritarian leadership in light of the high dynamism of new and hyperconnected markets. In our opinion, the scientific debate has to concentrate on hybrid leadership styles and their effects on performance. Moreover, researchers should focus on leaders’ ability to change the degree of authority in their leadership styles depending on the specific conditions of their workgroups. Therefore, the discussion about authoritarian leadership styles still makes sense, but it should be ascribed to a viewpoint inspired by complexity.

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Pizzolitto, E., Verna, I. & Venditti, M. Authoritarian leadership styles and performance: a systematic literature review and research agenda. Manag Rev Q 73 , 841–871 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11301-022-00263-y

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Authoritarian leadership and task performance: the effects of leader-member exchange and dependence on leader

• Zhen Wang 1 ,
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This study examines how and when authoritarian leadership affects subordinates’ task performance. Using social exchange theory and power dependence theory, this study proposes that authoritarian leadership negatively influences task performance through leader-member exchange (LMX). This study further proposes that the effect of authoritarian leadership on LMX is stronger when a subordinate has less dependence on a leader. A two-wave survey was conducted in a large electronics and information enterprise group in China. These hypotheses are supported by results based on 219 supervisor-subordinate dyads. The results reveal that authoritarian leadership negatively affects subordinates’ task performance via LMX. Dependence on leader buffers the negative effect of authoritarian leadership on LMX and mitigates the indirect effect of authoritarian leadership on employee task performance through LMX. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed.

Introduction

The dark or destructive side of leadership behavior has attracted the attention of many scholars and practitioners in recent years (Liao and Liu 2016 ). Much of the research has focused on authoritarian leadership (e.g., Chan et al. 2013 ; Li and Sun 2015 ; Schaubroeck et al. 2017 ), which is prevalent in Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific business organizations (Pellegrini and Scandura 2008 ). Authoritarian leadership refers to the leadership that stresses the use of authority to control subordinates (Cheng et al. 2004 ). In general, authoritarian leadership has a negative connotation in the literature; this type of leadership is negatively related to employees’ attitudes, emotions and perceptions, for example, regarding organizational commitment, job satisfaction, tacit knowledge-sharing intentions (Chen et al. 2018 ), team identification (Cheng and Wang 2015 ), intention to stay and organizational justice (Pellegrini and Scandura 2008 ; Schaubroeck et al. 2017 ). A substantial body of empirical research has also explored the influence of authoritarian leadership on followers’ work-related behavior and outcomes. Authoritarian leadership is negatively related to employee voice (Chan 2014 ; Li and Sun 2015 ), organizational citizenship behavior (Chan et al. 2013 ), employee creativity (Guo et al. 2018 ), and employee performance (Chan et al. 2013 ; Schaubroeck et al. 2017 ; Shen et al. 2019 ; Wu et al. 2012 ), and such leadership is positively associated with employee deviant workplace behavior (Jiang et al. 2017 ). In particular, studies concerning authoritarian leadership and employee performance have suggested that authoritarian leadership is negatively related to employee performance because subordinates of authoritarian leaders are likely to have low levels of the following: trust-in-supervisor, organization-based self-esteem, perceived insider status, relational identification, and thus, little motivation to improve performance (Chan et al. 2013 ; Schaubroeck et al. 2017 ; Shen et al. 2019 ; Wu et al. 2012 ).

Although previous studies have explored the effect of authoritarian leadership on employee performance from the perspective of self-evaluation or perception, such as organization-based self-esteem or perceived insider status, the underlying mechanism remains unclear (Chan et al. 2013 ; Schaubroeck et al. 2017 ). To fully understand the effect of authoritarian leadership on employee performance, it is critical to investigate alternative influencing mechanisms of authoritarian leadership from other perspectives (Hiller et al. 2019 ). For example, Wu et al. ( 2012 ) reveal that trust-in-supervisor mediates the relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee performance; Shen et al. ( 2019 ) show that relational identification also mediates this relationship. These findings suggest that authoritarian leadership may lead to a poor exchange between leaders and followers, whereby followers of authoritarian leaders may reciprocate by withholding their efforts at work. These studies use a social exchange perspective to understand the effect of authoritarian leadership on employee performance but fail to examine the exchange relationship explicitly. To summarize, little is known about how authoritarian leadership impacts the ongoing social exchange relationship between leaders and subordinates and how such social exchange affects subordinates’ performance. Therefore, we adopt a social exchange perspective to explore the relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee task performance to gain a deep understanding of employees’ reaction to authoritarian leadership behavior.

From the perspective of social exchange, leader-member exchange (LMX) is most often chosen to examine how leadership affects followers’ behavior and outcomes (Dulebohn et al. 2012 ). Thus, we specifically posit that LMX mediates the relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee task performance.

Moreover, Wang and Guan ( 2018 ) suggest that the effects of authoritarian leadership on employees depend on certain conditions and, thus, may influence the relationship between authoritarian leadership and performance. Literature concerning the relationship between mistreatment and employees’ response find that employees are less likely to respond to perceived mistreatment with deviant behavior when their power status is lower than that of the offender or when they depend more on the perpetrator (Aquino et al. 2001 ; Tepper et al. 2009 ). Since employees have less power than the offender, vengeful or deviant employee behavior may incur a punitive response or trigger future downward hostility (Tepper et al. 2009 ). Thus, the second purpose of this research is to examine how subordinates’ dependence on a leader impacts the responses of subordinates to authoritarian leadership. Specifically, we posit that subordinates’ dependence on a leader moderates the relationship between authoritarian leadership and LMX.

By examining the relationship between authoritarian leadership and subordinates’ task performance, this research makes several contributions to the literature. First, we directly examine the social exchange relationship between authoritarian leaders and their subordinates, which helps further clarify the mediating mechanism of authoritarian leadership on employee task performance (Chan et al. 2013 ; Schaubroeck et al. 2017 ). Second, this study contributes to the LMX literature by exploring the role of LMX in destructive or dark leadership. Indeed, most studies on LMX focus on how constructive leadership leads to a positive and high-quality LMX relationship, which then impacts followers’ behavior and outcomes (Chan and Mak 2012 ; Lin et al. 2018 ; Qian et al. 2017 ; Wang et al. 2005 ). Therefore, exploring and determining how destructive or dark leadership behavior influences the exchange relationship between leaders and followers is imperative (Harvey et al. 2007 ; Xu et al. 2012 ). Third, this study helps clarify the boundary condition of the effect of authoritarian leadership on subordinate outcomes. By investigating and demonstrating the moderating effect of employee dependence on a leader, our research offers some of the first insights into how dependence influences the effect of authoritarian leadership and the social exchange relationship as well.

Theoretical background and hypotheses development

• Authoritarian leadership

Authoritarian leadership refers to leader behavior that exerts absolute authority and control over subordinates and demands unconditional obedience (Farh and Cheng 2000 ; Pellegrini and Scandura 2008 ). Authoritarian leaders expect their subordinates to obey their requests without disagreement and to be socialized to accept and respect a strict and centralized hierarchy (Redding 1990 ).

Authoritarian leadership reflects the cultural characteristics of familial ties, paternalistic control, and submission to authority in Chinese culture (Farh and Cheng 2000 ; Farh et al. 2008 ). Influenced by Confucian doctrine, a father has absolute authority and power over his children and other family members in a traditional Chinese family (Cheng and Wang 2015 ). In business organizations, leaders often enforce this patriarchal value by establishing a vertical hierarchy and by playing a paternal role in an authoritarian leadership style (Peng et al. 2001 ). Authoritarian leadership is prevalent in Chinese organizations and its construct domain remains relatively unchanged regardless of rapid modernization (Farh et al. 2008 ).

According to Farh and Cheng’s ( 2000 ) research, authoritarian leadership has four kinds of typical behavior. First, authoritarian leaders exercise tight control over their subordinates and require unquestioning submission. To maintain their absolute dominance in organizations, authoritarian leaders are unwilling to empower their subordinates. In addition, higher authoritarian leaders share relatively little information with employees and adopt a top-down communication style. Second, authoritarian leaders tend to deliberately ignore subordinates’ suggestions and contributions. Such leaders are more likely to attribute success to themselves and to attribute failure to subordinates. Third, authoritarian leaders focus very much on their dignity and always show confidence. Such leaders control and manipulate information to maintain the advantage of power distance and create and maintain a good image through manipulation. Fourth, highly authoritarian leaders demand that their subordinates achieve the best performance within the organization and make all the important decisions in their team. In addition, such leaders strictly punish employees for poor performance.

Authoritarian leadership and task performance

In this study, we posit that authoritarian leadership harms employee performance according to the four kinds of typical behavior of authoritarian leaders. First, authoritarian leaders try to maintain a strict hierarchy, are unwilling to share information with followers, and adopt a top-down communication style (Farh and Cheng 2000 ). All of these behaviors create distance and distrust between subordinates and leaders, thus leading to poor employee performance (Cheng and Wang 2015 ). Second, authoritarian leaders tend to ignore followers’ contributions to success and to attribute failure to followers (Farh and Cheng 2000 ). These behaviors greatly undermine subordinates’ self-evaluation and are harmful to improving employee performance (Chan et al. 2013 ; Schaubroeck et al. 2017 ). Third, it is typical for leaders with an authoritarian leadership style to control and manipulate information to maintain the advantage of power distance and create and maintain a good image (Farh and Cheng 2000 ). Such behaviors set a bad example for subordinates and are not conducive to improving employee performance (Chen et al. 2018 ). Fourth, leaders with a highly authoritarian leadership style focus strongly on the supreme importance of performance. Subordinates are commanded to pursue high performance and surpass competitors. If subordinates fail to reach the desired goal, leaders will rebuke and punish them severely (Farh and Cheng 2000 ). Leaders’ emphasis on high performance and possible severe consequences enhance subordinates’ sense of fear (Guo et al. 2018 ), which is detrimental to performance improvement. To summarize, we posit that authoritarian leadership is negatively related to employee performance.

Authoritarian leadership and LMX

Building on social exchange theory (Blau 1964 ), LMX refers to the quality of the dyadic exchange relationship between a leader and a subordinate and the degree of emotional support and exchange of valued resources (Graen and Uhl-Bien 1995 ; Liden and Maslyn 1998 ; Wayne and Green 1993 ). Low-quality relationships are characterized by transactional exchanges based on employment contracts. High-quality relationships are characterized by affect, loyalty, perceived contribution and professional respect (Dienesch and Liden 1986 ; Liden et al. 1997 ; Liden and Maslyn 1998 ). There are several reasons why authoritarian leadership is related to a lower quality of LMX. First, since authoritarian leaders demonstrate authoritarian behaviors, such as controlling information, maintaining a strict hierarchy and high power distance, ignoring followers’ contributions and suggestions, and attributing losses to subordinates and punishing them, employees who perceive highly authoritarian leadership tend to strongly fear their leaders (Guo et al. 2018 ). These employees follow their leaders because of the need to work instead of affective commitment, which is a relationship based on an employment contract and leads to lower LMX. Second, subordinates of authoritarian leaders are less likely to identify with their leaders and teams because these leaders focus on obtaining the best performance from their subordinates while controlling information. Without identification with their leaders and teams, employees can hardly be loyal to their leaders and can be less motivated to maintain high-quality relationships with them, thus leading to lower LMX. Third, both authoritarian leaders and their subordinates perceive that the other contributes little to the performance of the team. Authoritarian leaders tend to ignore subordinates’ advice and contributions, while the subordinates perceive that leaders contribute little because they focus more on controlling information and maintaining the hierarchy instead of helping subordinates attain high performance (Farh and Cheng 2000 ). Fourth, since authoritarian leaders and their subordinates each perceive that the other contributes little, they cannot sincerely show professional respect to each other, thereby leading to lower LMX (Liden and Maslyn 1998 ). Therefore, we expect a negative relationship between authoritarian leadership and LMX.

Hypothesis 1: Authoritarian leadership is negatively related to LMX.

Authoritarian leadership, LMX, and task performance

As described by Blau ( 1964 ), unspecified obligations are very important in social exchange. When one person helps another, some future return is expected, though it is often uncertain when it will happen and in what form (Gouldner 1960 ). The premise of social exchange theory is that in a dyadic relationship (e.g., leader and follower), something given creates an obligation to respond with behavior that has equal value (Gouldner 1960 ; Perugini and Gallucci 2001 ). According to social exchange theory, high-quality LMX is considered as rewards or benefits from the leaders for the employees. This may create obligations for the employees to reciprocate with equivalent positive behaviors to maintain the high quality of the LMX (Blau 1964 ; Emerson 1976 ). Since one of the requirements and expectations from authoritarian leaders is high task performance (Cheng et al. 2004 ; Farh and Cheng 2000 ), after perceiving a high LMX as involving the receipt of rewards and benefits from the leader, employees with high-quality LMX are more likely, in return, to consider high task performance as a way to meet supervisors’ requirements and expectations. Here, the exchange currency of employees to reciprocate the rewards and benefits from their leaders is to pursue high task performance. The desire to reciprocate may motivate subordinates to exert more effort in achieving high task performance. Conversely, where there is low-quality LMX, subordinates are not obligated to increase effort to benefit supervisors and organizations (Gouldner 1960 ). In addition, according to the principle of negative reciprocity, which states that those who receive unfavorable treatment will respond with unfavorable behaviors (Gouldner 1960 ), because subordinates of authoritarian leaders receive unfavorable treatment, such as being strictly controlled and being compelled to obey unconditionally, these subordinates may respond with undesirable behaviors, such as withholding their effort and engaging in more deviant workplace behavior (Jiang et al. 2017 ).

To summarize, the typical behaviors of authoritarian leaders produce low-quality LMX. Consequently, subordinates do not feel obligated or motivated to strive for high task performance. In accordance with the principle of negative reciprocity, subordinates even engage in deviant workplace behavior, and employee task performance decreases. Therefore, authoritarian leadership is likely to be negatively related to employee task performance by creating low-quality LMX.

Hypothesis 2: LMX mediates the negative relationship between authoritarian leadership and subordinates’ task performance.

The moderation of subordinate dependence on leader

This study posits that the relationship between authoritarian leadership and LMX is moderated by dependence on a leader. Studies that investigate revenge and retaliation in organizations reveal that employees may be constrained in responding to perceived mistreatment with deviant behavior when their power status is lower than the offender and when they are largely dependent on their leaders (Aquino et al. 2001 ; Tepper et al. 2009 ). Therefore, the corresponding behavior of subordinates is affected by their dependence on their leaders and by the power relationship between them. The effect of dependence can be explained from a power dependence perspective. According to Emerson’s ( 1962 ) power dependence theory, dependence of individuals on others makes the former relatively powerless. In contrast, individuals on whom others depend but who do not depend on those others in return are relatively powerful. The powerful have many benefits, such as being able to reserve support or to exit from relationships at lower costs than the less powerful (Cook and Emerson 1978 ; Giebels et al. 2000 ), having more transaction alternatives (Brass 1981 ), and being able to engage in counter-revenge against the less powerful (Aquino et al. 2006 ). Therefore, taking their future conditions into consideration, those with greater dependence or less power are restricted from performing behaviors that are in their self-interest (Molm 1988 ).

This dependence and power relationship between leaders and their followers can be captured by the construct of “subordinate dependence on leader.” It refers to subordinates’ material and psychological dependence on leaders because subordinates believe that only by obeying their leader can they obtain the necessary work resources and support (Chou et al. 2005 ). We posit that subordinate dependence on leader moderates the relationship between authoritarian leadership and LMX. Specifically, a leader’s authoritarian behavior is rooted in the dependence of subordinates, that is, the dependence of subordinates rationalizes and strengthens the authoritarian leadership of superiors (Cheng et al. 2004 ; Farh and Cheng 2000 ). In circumstances where employees are highly dependent on their leaders, authoritarian leaders control much valuable information and many resources related to subordinates’ competence and development at work. Taking their future conditions into consideration, subordinates are more likely to be obedient. These reluctant employees take conciliatory action or withhold their anger and respond with desirable behaviors to meet the requirements and expectations of leaders, thereby hoping to have good relations with supervisors and maintain a high relationship quality. In contrast, subordinates who have a low dependence on their leaders tend to act self-interestedly. Such subordinates are not motivated to meet the expectations of authoritarian leaders at the cost of harming their self-interest, such as their self-esteem, and the relationship with the leader becomes worse. These arguments produce a moderation prediction:

Hypothesis 3: Subordinate dependence on leader moderates the negative relationship between authoritarian leadership and LMX such that this negative relationship is weaker in cases where subordinate dependence on leader is higher.

Based on the above argument, we further propose that subordinate dependence on leader will moderate the indirect effect of authoritarian leadership on employee task performance through LMX. Subordinates with high levels of dependence on their leader will have higher LMX under authoritarian leadership; thus, they are more likely to work to reciprocate rewards or benefits provided by leader and to get more valued resources, thereby increasing their task performance. In contrast, those with low levels of dependence on leader reciprocate less and have fewer resources, since they do not develop high-quality relationships with their authoritarian leaders, and will not improve their task performance. Thus, we hypothesize the following:

Hypothesis 4: The indirect relationship between authoritarian leadership and task performance through LMX is stronger for those with lower dependence on leader. Figure 1 depicts the conceptual model.

Research setting, participants, and procedures

This research was conducted in a large electronics and information enterprise group in China. Under the permission of the companies’ directors, we met with the companies’ personnel directors and explained the study objectives. The personnel directors helped us contact group supervisors and each group supervisor was instructed about the study objectives and procedure.

We used two sets of questionnaires to minimize common method bias: one for subordinates and the other for their immediate supervisors. First, we delivered surveys to employees (time 1). During the survey, we explained the purpose of the study and noted that participation was voluntary and their responses would be kept confidential. This survey included questions about measures of subordinates for their immediate supervisor’s authoritarian leadership, self-reported dependence on the leader, the LMX relationship and personal information. After 2 months, we administered questionnaires to supervisors to obtain their assessments of subordinates’ task performance (time 2).

Data on a total of 258 supervisor-subordinate dyads were collected. Among these responses, 20 cases were not included in the analysis because they could not be reliably matched. Nine cases were excluded because the supervisors’ rating of task performance was missing. In the other 10 cases, the reaction tendency was very obvious. These omissions resulted in a final sample set of 219 supervisor-subordinate dyad data. An independent t test was used to examine the difference between the final sample and the dropped sample in terms of demographic features. The results show that there is no significant difference between these two samples in terms of demographic features.

In the sample, 68.9% were male; 68.5% were Chinese. As for age distribution, 31.1% were aged 30 or younger; 63.9% were aged between 31 and 50; 5.0% were aged 51 or older. 83.6% of the employee respondents had received at least a college education. The mean tenure of the employee respondents was 6.42 years.

All scales used in this study are widely accepted by the academic community. Because participants were recruited from 18 companies in China and from overseas, it was necessary to have scales in both languages. Translation and back-translation procedures were followed to translate the English-based measures into the corresponding Chinese-English comparison scales.

Authoritarian leadership . Authoritarian leadership was measured using the nine-item scale developed by Cheng et al. ( 2004 ) at time 1. Authoritarian leadership has two dimensions: Zhuanquan and Shangyan . Zhuanquan stresses the use of authority to control subordinates and subordinates’ unquestioning compliance. Shangyan emphasizes the strict discipline and the supreme importance of high performance (Cheng et al. 2004 ; Chen and Farh 2010 ; Li et al. 2013 ). A sample item is “Our supervisor determines all decisions in the organization whether they are important or not” ( α  = 0.90). All items used six-point Likert-type response categories (ranging from 1 = few to 6 = very frequent).

LMX . LMX was measured at time 1 and each subordinate described the quality of his/her exchange relationship with the leader. We used the seven-item scale developed by Scandura and Graen ( 1984 ). A sample item is “My line manager is personally inclined to use power to help me solve problems in my work” ( α  = 0.88). All items used six-point Likert-type response categories (ranging from 1 = totally disagree to 6 = totally agree).

Subordinate dependence on leader . Subordinate dependence on leader was measured using the eight-item scale developed by Chou et al. ( 2005 ) at time 1. Subordinate dependence on leader has two dimensions: job dependence and affective dependence (Chou et al. 2005 ). A sample item is “I rely on my supervisor to obtain the necessary work resources (i.e., budget and equipment, etc.)” ( α  = 0.75). All items used six-point Likert-type response categories (ranging from 1 = totally disagree to 6 = totally agree).

Task performance . Subordinates’ task performance was measured using the four-item scale at time 2 (Chen et al. 2002 ). Leaders rated their subordinates’ performance respectively. A sample item is “Performance always meets the expectations of the supervisor” ( α  = 0.91). All items used six-point Likert-type response categories (ranging from 1 = totally disagree to 6 = totally agree).

Control variables . This study controls for the age, gender and tenure of the subordinates. These demographic variables are widely used as control variables in the study of authoritarian leadership mechanisms (e.g., Li and Sun 2015 ; Wang and Guan 2018 ). Gender was coded as 0 = male and 1 = female. Age and tenure were measured by the number of years.

Confirmatory factor analyses

We conducted confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) in Mplus 7 to test the distinctiveness of the variables included in the study: authoritarian leadership, LMX, subordinate dependence on leader, and employee task performance. To reduce the model size, we created two parcels based on the two subdimensions of authoritarian leadership to indicate the factors of authoritarian leadership. In addition, we created two parcels based on the two subdimensions of subordinate dependence on leader. As indicated in Table  1 , the hypothesized four-factor model fits the data well: χ 2 ( df  = 84) = 181.29, RMSEA = 0.07, SRMR = 0.06, CFI = 0.94, and TLI = 0.92. Against this baseline model, we test three alternative models: a three-factor model combining authoritarian leadership and LMX into one factor; a two-factor model combining authoritarian leadership, LMX and subordinate dependence on leader into one factor; and a single-factor model combining all four variables into one factor. As shown in Table  1 , the hypothesized four-factor model fits the data significantly better than all three alternative models, indicating that the four variables show good discriminant validity. Thus, we retained the hypothesized four-factor model for our analyses.

Proposed conceptual model

Descriptive statistics

We present the means, standard deviations, and correlations among all the variables in Table  2 . The results show that authoritarian leadership is negatively related to LMX ( r  = − 0.26, p  < 0.01) and employee task performance ( r  = − 0.22, p  < 0.01). The results also support that there is a positive relationship between LMX and employee task performance ( r  = 0.25, p  < 0.01).

Hypotheses testing

We performed a mediation and moderation analysis to further examine the joint effects of authoritarian leadership, LMX, and subordinate dependence on leader on employee task performance. More specifically, to test the four hypotheses, we tested moderated mediation models using conditional process analysis. Conditional process analysis is an integrative approach that estimates the mediation and moderation effects simultaneously and yields estimates of the conditional indirect and conditional direct effects. Scores for authoritarian leadership and dependence on leader were mean centered in the following analysis to avoid the problem of multicollinearity when their interaction terms were included.

As shown in Table  3 , after controlling for age, tenure and gender, authoritarian leadership has a negative relationship with LMX (B = − 0.27, SE = 0.08, p  < 0.001) and employee task performance (B = − 0.21, SE = 0.06, p  < 0.01). The positive relationship between LMX and employee task performance is also significant (B = 0.15, SE = 0.06, p  < 0.05). The bootstrapping results further suggest that the indirect effect of authoritarian leadership on employee task performance via LMX is significant (indirect effect = − 0.04; SE = 0.02; 95% CI = [− 0.0922, − 0.0116], excluding zero). These findings support Hypotheses 1 and 2.

Hypothesis 3 proposes a moderating effect of subordinate dependence on the relationship between authoritarian leadership and LMX. We examined this hypothesis by adding an interaction term of authoritarian leadership and subordinate dependence on leader into the model. The results reveal that the predicted interaction is significant (B = 0.25, SE = 0.07, p  < 0.001). To further interpret the nature of this significant interaction, we plotted the relationship between authoritarian leadership and LMX at 1 SD above and below the mean of the moderator. Figure  2 shows the moderating role of subordinate dependence on leader: When subordinate dependence on leader was higher, the negative effect of authoritarian leadership on LMX was weaker (B = − 0.21, t  = − 2.67, p  < 0.01), supporting our hypothesis. However, when subordinate dependence on leader was lower, the negative effect of authoritarian leadership on LMX was stronger (B = − 0.63, t  = − 6.69, p  < 0.001). Furthermore, we examined whether subordinate dependence on leader moderated the indirect effect of authoritarian leadership on employee task performance through LMX. The findings reveal that the indirect effect was significant in cases where subordinate dependence on leader was higher (B = − 0.03; SE = 0.02; 95% CI = [− 0.0867, − 0.0063], excluding zero), and the indirect effect was also significant in cases where subordinate dependence on leader was lower (B = − 0.10; SE = 0.04; 95% CI = [− 0.1768, − 0.0339], excluding zero). The moderated mediation index was 0.0358 (95% CI = [0.0084, 0.0748], excluding zero). Therefore, the results are consistent with Hypotheses 3 and 4.

Moderating role of subordinate dependence on leader. Notes. AL = Authoritarian leadership; LMX = Leader-member exchange

Discussion and conclusion

Based on theories of social exchange and power dependence, this study investigates the relationship between authoritarian leadership and its negative effects on employee task performance. In examining a moderated mediation model with two-wave data collected from subordinates and their leaders, we find that authoritarian leadership negatively relates to task performance; LMX mediates the negative relationship; subordinate dependence on leader buffers the negative effect of authoritarian leadership on LMX and mitigates the indirect effect of authoritarian leadership on employee task performance through LMX.

Theoretical implications

These findings contribute to the literature on authoritarian leadership, LMX and task performance and expand our understanding of why authoritarian leadership harms task performance. In terms of literature on leadership, the results may represent the first attempt to understand the relationship between authoritarian leadership and task performance via LMX. A flourishing number of studies explain the relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee performance from the perspective of self-evaluation or perception (e.g., Chan et al. 2013 ; Schaubroeck et al. 2017 ). There is a need to explore the divergent influencing mechanisms of authoritarian leadership on employee performance from other perspectives. Our study contributes to the literature by directly introducing LMX as a mediating variable in the relationship between authoritarian leadership and task performance from a social exchange perspective.

In addition, we offer important contributions to the literature on LMX. Most previous research on LMX focuses on how constructive leadership leads to a high-quality leader-member exchange relationship, which then affects employee behaviors and outcomes (Chan and Mak 2012 ; Lin et al. 2018 ; Qian et al. 2017 ; Wang et al. 2005 ). With the increasing attention given to destructive or dark leadership in recent years (e.g., Liao and Liu 2016 ; Tepper et al. 2009 ), it is imperative to explore and determine how destructive or dark leadership styles impact the quality of the exchange relationship between leaders and followers (Harvey et al. 2007 ; Xu et al. 2012 ). We fill this void by investigating how authoritarian leadership creates a low-quality social exchange, thereby leading to worse task performance.

Our study also extends current knowledge about the negative relationship between authoritarian leadership and task performance by uncovering the mechanisms whereby this effect is amplified or attenuated. Based on power dependence theory (Emerson 1962 ), we introduce subordinate dependence on leader as a moderating variable into the model. Our research offers some of the first insights into how dependence and power between leaders and subordinates (e.g., subordinate dependence on leader) influence the effect of authoritarian leadership and the social exchange relationship between leaders and subordinates as well.

Practical implications

Our results also provide some suggestions for practice. First, our study observes that authoritarian leadership is related to lower levels of LMX and is, therefore, related to lower employee task performance. These relationships suggest the importance of curbing leaders’ authoritarian behavior. Organizations could invest in leadership training programs that help control negative leadership behavior, establish a high-quality exchange relationship between supervisors and subordinates and thus enhance subordinates’ task performance.

Second, programs aimed at strengthening exchange relationships between supervisors and subordinates may also be conducive to improving employee task performance, because LMX is an important predictor of performance. To develop a higher-quality LMX, organizations could hold more social activities for supervisors and followers, providing them with more opportunities to deeply interact.

Third, our test of the moderating effects of subordinate dependence on leader reveals that the negative relationship between authoritarian leadership and LMX is weaker for employees that highly depend on their leader, thus implying that work background influences the interaction between leaders and subordinates. In business organizations where employees depend less on their leaders, it is more urgent to curb authoritarian behavior; for those business organizations where employees depend more on their leaders, the negative effect of authoritarian leadership on LMX and task performance is attenuated, but authoritarian leadership still negatively affects LMX and performance. As a result, organizations should avoid using an authoritarian leadership style to boost their employee performance.

Limitations and future directions

This study has several limitations. First, the samples in this research were all obtained from the same subsidiary of a large electronics and information enterprise group, which is a relatively traditional business organization. Although it is beneficial to control the potential impacts of factors such as industry and organization, thereby increasing the internal validity of research findings while, at the same time, weakening their external validity, future research can further verify the conclusions of this research with different types of industries. Second, although we collected data from leaders and followers at two time points, it is difficult to draw any causal conclusions. To validate our suggested moderated mediation process, a longitudinal design is required. Third, we introduce LMX perceived by subordinates into the relationship between authoritarian leadership and task performance. It is also necessary to consider the role of LMX as perceived by leaders. It is interesting to explore whether LMX perceived by subordinates and LMX perceived by authoritarian leaders are the same or not and how they interact and affect the relationship between authoritarian leadership and work outcomes. Fourth, we explore how authoritarian leadership affects employee task performance from a social exchange perspective and specifically choose LMX as the mediator. It is possible that alternative mediating processes exist. Future research can verify the conclusions of this research by investigating alternative mediating processes simultaneously.

Availability of data and materials

Please contact author for data requests.

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This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71971211) and the Humanity and Social Science Youth Foundation of Ministry of Education of China (18YJC630192).

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Wang, Z., Liu, Y. & Liu, S. Authoritarian leadership and task performance: the effects of leader-member exchange and dependence on leader. Front. Bus. Res. China 13 , 19 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s11782-019-0066-x

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• Task performance
• Leader-member exchange (LMX)
• Subordinate dependence on leader
• Social exchange theory
• Power dependence theory

Autocratic Leadership Style

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Charlotte Nickerson is a student at Harvard University obsessed with the intersection of mental health, productivity, and design.

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The autocratic leadership style is characterized by individual control over all decisions and little input from group members. Autocratic leaders typically make choices based on their ideas and judgments and rarely accept advice from followers.

This leadership style involves clear direction, unilateral decision-making, and strict control over organizational activities. While it can lead to quick decision-making, it may discourage creative collaboration and lower employee morale.

Characteristics

Scholars generally agree that autocratic leadership styles share three major characteristics in common:

Limited input from stakeholders

Autocratic leaders make most, if not all, group decisions, leaving little room for feedback. This leadership style may voice efficiency when decisions need to be made quickly; however, this can potentially have repercussions on group morale.

For example, according to traditional management advice (Harms et al., 2018), employees who are not trusted with decisions or important tasks may question the value to bring to a company — a journalist who spends weeks doing extensive research for a story may face lowered morale if an autocratic editor decides not to publish the story simply because it was not to their taste.

Highly structured environment

Autocratically structured groups and organizations tend to be rigid in a way that clearly defines who has power. This, again, increases efficiency.

However, the strangeness of autocratic environments may also demotivate those working under the leader. For instance, a team member who knows their manager is constantly monitoring their activity may be motivated to complete their job solely out of fear.

Clearly defined rules and processes

Groups under autocratic leadership tend to have clearly defined roles, rules, and processes.

This may, however, result in those under the leader feeling as though their input is not valued. Overall, clearly defined rules and processes tend to discourage creativity and differential thinking.

Autocratic Leadership in Nursing

Traditionally, many nurses have been led using autocratic leadership styles, and these historical influences still permeate contemporary practice (Murphy, 2005). Autocratic leadership can be mirrored in organizational philosophies and disempowered staff.

Several researchers, such as Maboko (2011), have conducted studies of the impact of various leadership styles on nurse performance and morale. According to Koukkanen and Kaatajisto (2003), authoritarian leadership is an obstacle to empowerment in nursing, as it is detrimental to important functions of nursing management such as listening, conflict management champion nurses, communication, and the feeling that workers are agents of change.

Maboko attempted to examine the nursing leadership style at an academic hospital in Gauteng, South Africa, where approximately 37% of nurses leave their jobs because they did not receive support from their managers (Strachota et al., 2003).

Using qualitative methods, the researcher found that autocratic leadership tended to cause resentment among nurses and that the style often arose out of hospitals having limited information about other leadership styles — such as transformational and visionary leadership (Maboko, 2011).

Climate, Wealth, and Leadership Culture

Some scholars have described leadership styles as arising from cultural adaptations to noncultural components of the national environment, such as the harshness of a country’s climate or level of national wealth.

Van de Vliert, in an analysis of managerial survey data from 62 cultures, found that autocratic leadership at the organizational level was most prevalent in poorer countries with harsh climates. Meanwhile, autocratic leadership was seen as less effective in rich cultures with harsh climates.

Autocratic Leadership and Job Satisfaction

Numerous studies have drawn links between leadership styles and job satisfaction. Nadarasa and Thuraisingam (2012) studied the impacts of autocratic leadership styles on public and private and public school teachers.

As in other studies, the researchers found that autocratic leadership styles correlated negatively with job satisfaction.

Autocratic Leadership and Group Stability

Many scholars view autocratic leadership as the most efficient solution to group conflicts that involve the distribution of scarce resources or the provision of public goods (Hardin, 1968; Hobbes, 1651; Messick and Brewer, 1983; Solson, 1965; Vugt et al., 2003).

However, Vugt et al. (2003) have tried to challenge this view by studying the longer-term consequences of autocratic leadership styles.

In particular, the researchers hypothesized that autocratic leaders would threaten group stability by provoking members to evict the group, thus removing resources.

In Vugt et al.’s study, people worked together in small groups on a task involving the distribution of public goods. They had either autocratic, democratic, or laissez-faire leaders .

In the autocratic and democratic conditions, participants received success feedback at random, whereas in the laissez-faire condition, they received either fake success feedback or no feedback on the outcome. After engaging in each investment task, the group members could leave and join a different group for a subsequent task.

As predicted, those in the autocratic condition were more likely to choose to switch groups than those in other leadership conditions. The proportion of exciters in the autocratic condition was high enough that many groups would have failed due to not having enough members needed to produce the goods.

Thus, at least in conditions where it is straightforward to leave a group, Vugt et al. (2003) argued that autocratic leadership is not a viable solution (Ziller, 1965). These results persisted regardless of whether or not the group ultimately succeeded.

When polled, the group members in the autocratic leader condition tended to give the same reasoning for their stay or exit choices: under autocratic leadership, group members were unhappy about the amount of control they could exercise over the decision-making process (Vugt et al., 2003).

Broader research supports these findings. Some, such as Bass (1990) and Yukl (1989), have argued that the primary difference between autocratic and democratic leadership lies in the amount of control that group members have over the decision-making process.

Researchers have also found that how much people feel like they have control over the process of decision-making has more of an effect than how much people feel like they have control over the decisions themselves.

According to the exit-voice hypothesis (Hirschman, 1970), there is a trade-off in how much people are willing to exit the group and voice their dissatisfaction in a dysfunctional group.

Namely, if group members lack opportunities to voice their concerns, they will resort to exit; in situations where they are absent, they resort to voice (Vugt et al., 2003).

Advantages 

Although it has been called “obsolete” (Weiskittel, 1999) and garners largely negative attention, the autocratic style of leadership can be beneficial in some instances, such as when decisions need to be made quickly and without consulting large groups of people.

Provides Direction

Autocratic leadership can provide direction. For example, consider a small group of students that has a tendency to miss deadlines for an upcoming assignment. In this case, a strong leader — perhaps a student particularly keen on receiving a high mark — may either be assigned the role of leader or take on the task on their own.

The student may then break down the assignment into tasks, assign their peers clear roles and responsibilities, and establish deadlines, making it more likely that the group will finish a project on time with equal contributions on each member’s part.

Relieves Pressure

Autocratic leadership can also relieve pressure in cases where decisions have potentially momentous consequences. For example, military leadership may prefer an autocratic style during a country’s civil war.

This autocratic style allows group members to become highly skilled in performing their duties — rather than diffusing their time and resources into decision-making. Ultimately, this may contribute to group success when the group must perform at a higher level and under greater stress levels than usual.

Offers Structure

The autocratic leadership style can also offer structure in highly complex systems. For example, say that a drama teacher must coordinate an entire school play — from the actors to the costuming and set design.

Through a strong leadership style where all group members have been assigned specific tasks, a deadline, and rules to follow, the teacher may be able to ensure that the play runs smoothly with less confusion than would occur if the group members came to decisions democratically.

Disadvantages 

Although autocratic leadership can occasionally be useful for group efficiency and organization, there are many cases where it can be problematic, ultimately leading to low group morale, resentment, and possible group instability.

Discourages Group Input

Autocratic leadership, by definition, discourages group input. In response, group members may feel that they cannot contribute creative solutions to group problems and that their knowledge and expertise have been overlooked. Research has supported this conclusion.

For instance, Guo (2018), in a study of supervisors in Nigeria and China, found a significant negative relationship between authoritarian leadership and creativity. This became especially evident in environments where employees feared their workers and chose to be silent for fear of reprimand.

This relationship also had a strong effect when employees had little “psychological capital” — low scores on traits such as self-assurance.

Key Takeaways

• Autocratic or authoritarian leadership is characterized by the control of an individual over the decisions that impact a group with little-to-no input from group members.
• Kurt Lewin and his colleagues were the first to characterize autocratic leadership as one of three leadership styles — the other two being democratic and laissez-faire.
• By most definitions, autocratic leadership involves limited input from stakeholders, a highly structured environment, and clearly defined rules and processes. This generally makes subordinates feel they cannot contribute to the decision-making process.
• Autocratic leadership is useful in certain situations, such as when decisions need to be made quickly and efficiently — for example, in resource allocation during a natural disaster. However, autocratic leadership often decreases group member morale and endangers group stability.

Further Information

• Wang, H., & Guan, B. (2018). The positive effect of authoritarian leadership on employee performance: The moderating role of power distance. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 357.
• Gastil, J. (1994). A meta-analytic review of the productivity and satisfaction of democratic and autocratic leadership. Small Group Research, 25(3), 384-410.

Which group would use an autocratic leadership style?

An autocratic leadership style might be utilized in environments that require strong direction and unquestionable authority. This could include the military, law enforcement agencies, or manufacturing sectors where safety and procedure adherence are paramount.

It might also be used in crisis situations where swift and decisive action is necessary. However, it’s less suitable in settings that require creativity, innovation, and collaborative decision-making, like many tech or design firms.

What is the difference between authoritarian and autocratic leadership?

Authoritarian and autocratic leadership styles share similarities in that they both involve a high degree of control and decision-making power concentrated in the leader. However, there are subtle differences.

Autocratic leaders make decisions without input or consultation from others. They set policies and procedures and expect subordinates to follow without question.

While making most decisions themselves, authoritarian leaders can be more manipulative or coercive, maintaining control by creating an environment of fear or through strict discipline. This style may involve more feedback (although largely one-way) than the autocratic style.

In practice, these terms are often used interchangeably, and the exact definitions can vary slightly depending on the source.

What are the disadvantages of autocratic leadership?

Disadvantages of autocratic leadership include stifling creativity and innovation, as input from team members is rarely sought. It can also lead to low employee morale, high turnover, and a lack of personal growth for team members.

Lastly, it relies heavily on the leader, creating a risk if the leader is absent or makes poor decisions.

What are the advantages of autocratic leadership?

Autocratic leadership can result in quick decision-making, as only one person makes the decisions. It can be effective in situations requiring strong direction and control, like crisis management.

This style can also ensure consistency in operations, and it’s beneficial when team members are inexperienced and need clear, direct instructions.

Anthony M.K., Standing T.S., Glick J., et al. (2005) Leadership and nurse retention. Journal of Nursing Administration 35 (3),146–155.

Bass, B. M., & Stogdill, R. M. (1990). Bass & Stogdill’s handbook of leadership: Theory, research, and managerial applications . Simon and Schuster.

Cherry K. (2006). Leadership Styles. Retrieved from: http://psychology.about.com/od/leadership/

Guo, L., Decoster, S., Babalola, M. T., De Schutter, L., Garba, O. A., & Riisla, K. (2018). Authoritarian leadership and employee creativity: The moderating role of psychological capital and the mediating role of fear and defensive silence. Journal of Business Research, 92, 219-230.

Hardin (1968). The tragedy of the commons.. Science (New York, N.Y.), 162(3859), 1243–1248.

Harms, P. D., Wood, D., Landay, K., Lester, P. B., & Lester, G. V. (2018). Autocratic leaders and authoritarian followers revisited: A review and agenda for the future. The  Leadership Quarterly, 29 (1), 105-122.

Hirschman, A. O. (1970). Exit, voice, and loyalty: Responses to decline in firms, organizations, and states (Vol. 25). Harvard university press. Hobbes, T (1651/1939).

Leviathan. New York: Modern Library Koukkanen L. & Katajisto J. (2003) Promoting or impending empowerment? Nurses assessment of their work environment Journal of Nursing Administration 33 , 209–215.

Lewin, K., Lippitt, R., & White, R. K. (1939). Patterns of aggressive behavior in experimentally created “social climates”. The Journal of Social Psychology, 10 (2), 269-299.

 Maboko, D. R. (2012). Nursing leadership in an academic hospital in Gauteng. Journal of nursing management, 20 (7), 912-920.

Messick, D. M., Wilke, H., Brewer, M. B., Kramer, R. M., Zemke, P. E., & Lui, L. (1983). Individual adaptations and structural change as solutions to social dilemmas. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44 (2), 294.

 Murphy, L. (2005). Transformational leadership: a cascading chain reaction. Journal of Nursing Management, 13 (2), 128-136.

Nadarasa, T., & Thuraisingam, R. (2014). The influence of principals’ leadership styles on school teachers’ job satisfaction–study of secondary school in Jaffna district. International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, 4 (1), 1-7.

Olson, M. (1965). The logic of collective action: Public goods and the theory of groups . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Strachota, E., Normandin, P., O’Brien, N., Clary, M., & Krukow, B. (2003). Reasons registered nurses leave or change employment status. JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration, 33 (2), 111-117.

Van Vugt, M., Jepson, S. F., Hart, C. M., & De Cremer, D. (2004). Autocratic leadership in social dilemmas: A threat to group stability. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40 (1), 1-13.

Weiskittel, P. (1999). The concept of leadership. Nephrology Nursing Journal, 26 (5), 467.

Yukl, G. A. (1989). Leadership in organizations. Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: 1364 Prentice-Hall.

Ziller, R. C. (1965). Toward a theory of open and closed groups. Psychological Bulletin, 6 4(3), 164.

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Importance of Leadership Style towards Quality of Care Measures in Healthcare Settings: A Systematic Review

Danae f. sfantou.

1 2nd Department of Cardiology, Attikon University Hospital, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Medical School, Athens 12462, Greece; moc.liamg@032seanad

Aggelos Laliotis

2 Department of Upper Gastrointestinal and Bariatric Surgery, St. Georges, NHS Foundation Hospitals, London SE170QT, UK; moc.liamg@casitoilal

Athina E. Patelarou

3 Department of Anesthesiology, University Hospital of Heraklion, Crete 71500, Greece; [email protected]

Dimitra Sifaki- Pistolla

4 Clinic of Social and Family Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Crete, Crete 71500, Greece; moc.liamg@11imidps

Michail Matalliotakis

5 Department of Obstretics and Gynaecology, Venizeleio General Hospital, Heraklion, 71409, Greece; moc.liamtoh@tamsilahim

Evridiki Patelarou

6 Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, King’s College, London SE18WA, UK

Effective leadership of healthcare professionals is critical for strengthening quality and integration of care. This study aimed to assess whether there exist an association between different leadership styles and healthcare quality measures. The search was performed in the Medline (National Library of Medicine, PubMed interface) and EMBASE databases for the time period 2004–2015. The research question that guided this review was posed as: “Is there any relationship between leadership style in healthcare settings and quality of care?” Eighteen articles were found relevant to our research question. Leadership styles were found to be strongly correlated with quality care and associated measures. Leadership was considered a core element for a well-coordinated and integrated provision of care, both from the patients and healthcare professionals.

1. Introduction

Nowadays, both evidence-based medicine and nursing are widely recognized as the tools for establishing effective healthcare organizations of high productivity and quality of care. Management and leadership of healthcare professionals is critical for strengthening quality and integration of care. Leadership has been defined as the relationship between the individual/s who lead and those who take the choice to follow, while it refers to the behaviour of directing and coordinating the activities of a team or group of people towards a common goal [ 1 , 2 ]. There are many identified styles of leadership, while six types appear to be more common: transformational, transactional, autocratic, laissez-faire, task-oriented, and relationship-oriented leadership. Transformational leadership style is characterized by creating relationships and motivation among staff members. Transformational leaders typically have the ability to inspire confidence, staff respect and they communicate loyalty through a shared vision, resulting in increased productivity, strengthen employee morale, and job satisfaction [ 3 , 4 ]. In transactional leadership the leader acts as a manager of change, making exchanges with employees that lead to an improvement in production [ 3 ]. An autocratic leadership style is considered ideal in emergencies situation as the leader makes all decisions without taking into account the opinion of staff. Moreover, mistakes are not tolerated within the blame put on individuals. In contrary, the laissez-faire leadership style involves a leader who does not make decisions, staff acts without direction or supervision but there is a hands-off approach resulting in rare changes [ 4 ]. Task-oriented leadership style involves planning of work activities, clarification of roles within a team or a group of people, objectives set as well as the continuing monitoring and performance of processes. Lastly, relationship-oriented leadership style incorporates support, development and recognition [ 5 ].

Quality of care is a vital element for achieving high productivity levels within healthcare organizations, and is defined as the degree to which the probability of achieving the expected health outcomes is increased and in line with updated professional knowledge and skills within health services [ 6 ]. The Institute of Medicine OM has described six characteristics of high-quality care that must be: (1) safe, (2) effective, (3) reliable, (4) patient-centred, (5) efficient, and (6) equitable. Measuring health outcomes is a core component of assessing quality of care. Quality measures are: structure, process, outcome, and patient satisfaction [ 6 ]. According to the National Quality Measures Clearing House (USA), a clinical outcome refers to the health state of a patient resulting from healthcare. Measures on patient outcomes and satisfaction constitute: shorter patient length of stay, hospital mortality level, health care-associated infections, failure to rescue ratio, restraint use, medication errors, inadequate pain management, pressure ulcers rate, patient fall rate, falls with injury, medical errors, and urinary tract infections [ 7 ].

There are numerous publications recognizing leadership style as a key element for quality of healthcare. Effective leadership is among the most critical components that lead an organization to effective and successful outcomes. Significant positive associations between effective styles of leadership and high levels of patient satisfaction and reduction of adverse effects have been reported [ 8 ]. Furthermore, several studies have stressed the importance of leadership style for quality of healthcare provision in nursing homes [ 9 ]. Transformational leadership is strongly related to the implementation of effective management that establishes a culture of patient safety [ 10 ]. In addition, the literature stresses that empowering leadership is related to patient outcomes by promoting greater nursing expertise through increased staff stability, and reduced turnout [ 11 ]. Effective leadership has an indirect impact on reducing mortality rates, by inspiring, retaining and supporting experienced staff. Although there are many published studies that indicate the importance of leadership, few of these studies have attempted to correlate a certain leadership style with patient outcomes and healthcare quality indicators.

Therefore, the aim of this review was to identify the association between leadership styles with healthcare quality measures.

2. Materials and Methods

This systematic review was designed and conducted in line with the published guidelines for reporting systematic reviews and meta-analyses [ 12 ]. Systematic review of the existing literature on leadership style and quality of healthcare provision was performed. The main review question was: “Which is the relationship between styles of leadership in healthcare settings and quality of care?” A systematic, comprehensive bibliographic search was carried out in the National Library of Medicine (Medline) and EMBASE databases for the time period between 2004–2015 in the PubMed interface. Search terms used were chosen from the USNML Institutes of Health list of Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) for 2015. The included MeSH terms were: “Nurse Administrators”; “Nurse Executives”; “Physician Executives”; “Leaders”; “Leadership”; “Managers”; “Management style”; “Leadership style”; “Organizational style”; “Organizational culture/climate”; “Leadership Effectiveness”; “Quality of healthcare”; “Patient outcome Assessment”; “Quality indicators, Healthcare”; “Healthcare quality, Access and Evaluation”; and “Quality Assurance, Healthcare”. References used by each identified study were also checked and included in the study according to the eligibility criteria.

Five major inclusion criteria were adopted:

• Papers published in peer-reviewed journal
• Papers written in the English language
• Papers published from 2004 to 2015 (focus on more recent knowledge)
• Human epidemiological studies
• Studies used a quantitative methodology reporting the leadership style and healthcare quality measures

Studies that did not meet the above criteria were excluded, while those that complied with the inclusion criteria were listed and further reviewed.

Studies were evaluated and critically appraised (Aveyard critical appraisal tool) by two independent reviewers. Literature screening (a three-stage approach-exclusion by reading the title, the abstract, and the full text) and extraction of the data were conducted by two reviewers, independently. In cases of uncertainty, a discussion was held among the members of the team to reach a common consensus. Data were extracted systematically from each retrieved study, using a predesigned standard data collection form (extraction table). The following information was extracted from each one of the included studies ( Table 1 ): authors, year of conduction, country, study design, subjects, population, research purpose, leadership style definition, outcome definition, and main findings.

An overview of studies’ characteristics, outcome definitions and main findings.

3.1. Bibliographic Search

A total of 2824 records were retrieved through our searches in Medline and EMBASE databases. Following reading the titles and abstracts of the retrieved records 212 remained for further evaluation. Another 194 articles were excluded after reading the full article. Figure 1 shows the exact sequence and process of study identification, selection and exclusion in each step of the search. Finally, 18 studies were considered to be appropriate for answering our primary research question.

Prisma flowchart.

3.2. Overview of the Included Studies

Among 18 included studies, seven were conducted in the USA, six in Canada, two in Finland, one in Saudi Arabia, one in Kuwait, and one in Norway. Among the relevant studies, 14 were cross-sectional, two were descriptive correlation studies, one was a secondary analysis of data, and one was an exploratory investigation. Diverse care settings were represented in the studies. Identified settings included: hospitals/healthcare settings ( n = 16), acute and critical care units ( n = 1), and oncology settings ( n = 1). In addition, study samples consisted exclusively of employees ( n = 16), or combination of employees and managers ( n = 2). Patient safety climate, patient satisfaction, mortality, and quality of care were the main outcomes of interest. Leadership was assessed in these studies according to leadership styles, behaviors, perceptions, and practices. The most commonly used tool to measure leadership was the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, MLQ, ( n = 7). The variety of the quality measures and different definitions/scales used among a limited number of included studies did not allow the performance of a meta-analysis of the retrieved findings.

3.3. Leadership Style and Patients Outcomes

Improved quality of healthcare services (moderate-severe pain, physical restraint use, high-risk residents having pressure ulcers, catheter in bladder) was reported for consensus manager leadership style [ 28 ]. Resonant leadership influenced the quality of safety climate which, in turn, impacted on medication errors [ 27 ]. Resonant leadership style was related to lower 30-day mortality and presented a strong association of 28% lower probability of 30-day mortality comparing with high-dissonant (14% lower) followed by hospitals with mixed leadership styles [ 24 ]. The task-oriented leadership style was found to relate to higher levels of quality of care based on the assessment made by relatives and staff [ 9 ]. Furthermore, formal leadership style was positively associated with learning from minor and moderate patient safety events, while informal leadership presented no effect [ 25 ]. Patients were more satisfied when the manager followed a transactional leadership style [ 24 ]. However, Raup found that there was no association between leadership style and patient satisfaction [ 19 ].

3.4. Organizational Culture and Quality of Care

Important relationships between workplace enforcement and practice environmental conditions for staff nurses and patient safety were observed [ 14 ]. Authentic hands-on leadership style, behaviors and organizational practices of distinctive leadership were associated with significant differences in patient level measure of quality and safety; such as mortality patterns, patient safety, equity and effectiveness in care [ 15 ]. Transformational leadership was found to positively relate with effective nursing unit organization culture, while transactional leadership had a weak relationship. In addition, laissez-faire leadership was negatively related to nursing unit organization culture [ 18 ]. Findings confirmed that the higher total structural empowerment score was correlated to a higher safety level and empowering workplaces contributed to positive effects on nursing quality of care [ 23 , 26 ]. Higher entrepreneurial culture was also related to higher levels of safety climate for the patient [ 30 ]. Alahmadi also found that the variables that contributed to patient safety score included management role, organization learning, continuous improvement, communication, teamwork, and feedback about errors [ 22 ]. Singer et al. found that higher group culture was associated with higher safety climate overall but more hierarchical culture was correlated with lower safety climate suggesting that general organizational culture is important to organizations’ climate of safety [ 21 ]. Role ambiguity and role conflict on the units were found to relate to higher turnover rates for nurses. The increased likelihood of medical error was related to the higher level of role ambiguity and a higher turnover rate. Finally, lack of employer care and team support were the most common reasons for leaving [ 31 ].

4. Discussion

Effective leadership in health services has already been extensively studied in the literature, especially during the last decades [ 32 ]. Several societal challenges have revealed the urgent need for effective leadership styles in health and social services. Nevertheless, studies that use quantitative data or assess the impact of leadership in health care quality measures are neglected, while most studies have adopted a qualitative approach [ 33 ]. The present literature review attempted to fill this gap, while it managed to identify the most recent publications to assess the correlation between leadership styles with healthcare quality measures.

Among the main findings, correlation of leadership with quality care and a wide range of patient outcomes (e.g., 30-day mortality, safety, injuries, satisfaction, physical restraint use, pain, etc.) were stressed in most of the identified articles [ 9 , 24 , 27 , 28 ]. Therefore, leadership is considered a core element for a well-coordinated and integrated provision of care, both from the patients and healthcare professionals. It is essential regardless of where care is delivered (e.g., clinics or inpatient units, long-term care units, or home care facilities), especially for those who are directly involved with patients for long periods of time [ 34 ].

Additionally, effects of leadership style on patient outcomes were evident in the aforementioned findings. Other studies [ 35 ] agree with our main findings and stress the theoretical interactions of effective leadership and patient outcome as follow; effective leadership fosters a high-quality work environment leading to positive safety climate that assures positive patient outcomes. Failure of leadership to create a quality work place ultimately harms patients [ 29 , 35 ]. Most of these studies are focusing on nursing leadership. Particularly, as also reported by the current study, transformational and resonant leadership styles are associated with lower patient mortality, while relational and task-oriented leadership are significantly related to higher patient satisfaction [ 35 , 36 , 37 ]. Furthermore, increased patient satisfaction in acute care and homecare settings has been found to be closely related to transformational, transactional, and collaborative leadership [ 36 , 37 ]. Overall, the vast majority of studies assessing patient outcomes in the literature, have reported adverse outcomes defined as unintentional injuries or complications associated with clinical management, rather than the patient’s primary condition, resulting in death, disability, or extended stay in hospital [ 17 , 37 ].

Furthermore, leadership has been recognized as a major indicator for developing qualitative organizational culture and effective performance in health care provision [ 14 ]. Similarly to our study, other studies that used primary quantitative data revealed a strong correlation of leadership and safety, effectiveness, and equity in care. For instance, transformational leadership increases nursing unit organization culture and structural empowerment [ 18 ]. This has an impact on organizational commitment for nurses and in return higher levels of job satisfaction, higher productivity, nursing retention, patient safety, and overall safety climate, and positive health outcomes [ 18 , 23 , 38 ]. In addition, safety climate was among the main findings of our study. As supported by the literature [ 38 ], a safety climate connected to transformational leadership style is strongly linked to improved process quality, high organization culture and positive patient outcomes. Therefore, safety climate is directly associated with improved patient safety outcomes and the overall quality of care.

The literature has identified the significance of leadership styles and practices on patient outcomes, health care workforce and organizational culture. Setting effective leadership as a priority in health care units is expected to enhance a variety of measurable indicators, even in fragmented health systems [ 39 ]. Nowadays, more and more regional and national health systems tend to undergo structural changes and redesign their functions and priorities in order to face modern societal, economic, and health challenges and needs [ 17 ]. Medical leadership in decision-making is a key component in order to develop a successful and qualitative priority setting process in health care. Most importantly, engagement of non-medical clinical leaders, such as nursing leadership, is considered to ensure the legitimacy and validity of priority setting [ 40 ]. As shown in the present study, the leadership styles that proved to be more effective and promoted positive outcomes were those that conceptualize management as a collaborative, multifaceted, and dynamic process (e.g., transformational, employee-oriented leadership).

Future research has to focus on the development, feasibility and implementation of robust leadership styles models in diverse health care settings. These studies should include multidisciplinary professional teams, strengthen the role of nurses and other health care professionals, explore additional quality of life and healthy ageing indicators (both for professionals and patients), and address organizational parameters and individual wishes, preferences, and expectations towards quality in health care [ 17 , 37 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 ].

5. Conclusions

Leadership styles play an integral role in enhancing quality measures in health care and nursing. Impact on health-related outcomes differs according to the different leadership styles, while they may broaden or close the existing gap in health care. Addressing the leadership gap in health care in an evolving and challenging environment constitutes the current and future goal of all societies. Health care organizations need to ensure technical and professional expertise, build capacity, and organizational culture, and balance leadership priorities and existing skills in order to improve quality indicators in health care and move a step forward. Interpretation of the current review’s outcomes and translation of the main messages into implementation practices in health care and nursing settings is strongly suggested.

Acknowledgments

Open access for this article was funded by King’s College London.

Author Contributions

A.P. and E.P. conceived the idea, wrote the review protocol and performed the search. D.S.P. and M.M. selected and reviewed the papers and also drafted the Table. D.S. and A.L. wrote the paper. All authors have read and approved the content of the paper.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

• DOI: 10.5901/JESR.2014.V4N7P148
• Corpus ID: 154873826

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