Paternalistic leadership in Chinese organizations: research progress and future research directions

Paternalistic leadership (PL) is an indigenous Chinese leadership style that is rooted in China's patriarchal tradition and has been found to be prevalent in overseas Chinese family businesses. Farh and Cheng (2000) proposed a model of PL that has three components: authoritarianism, benevolence, and moral leadership. Since then, a series of empirical studies have been conducted by Cheng and his colleagues to examine the validity of Farh and Cheng's PL model using a variety of samples from Taiwan and mainland China. In this chapter, we review this body of research and identify promising areas for future research.