The impact of authoritarian leadership on employee creativity: the joint moderating roles of benevolent leadership and power distance

Purpose This research explores the influence of authoritarian leadership on employee creativity as mediated by employee creative self-efficacy, moderated by benevolent leadership and power distance. Design/methodology/approach A survey sample of 325 employees was collected from Chinese companies in different industries. The hypotheses were tested adopting a hierarchical regression and a bootstrapping test. Findings Employee creative self-efficacy partially mediated the association between authoritarian leadership and employee creativity. The negative impacts of authoritarian leadership on employee creative self-efficacy can be moderated by benevolent leadership. Additionally, the moderation effects of benevolent leadership can be moderated by power distance, which means that these moderation effects of benevolent leadership are significant only in subordinates with low levels of power distance. Practical implications An organization should be conscious of the perniciousness of an authoritarian leader and is better for leaders not to show contradictory behaviors to employees. Moreover, when leaders exhibit inconsistent behaviors, they should be sensitive to employee power distance. Originality/value Previous studies have been done to explore the predictors of employee creativity. Yet, studies for the impacts of destructive leadership styles on employee creativity are lacking. This study introduces employee creative self-efficacy as a mediator of the relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee creativity. In addition, benevolent leadership and power distance are identified as two boundary conditions to explore the impacts of authoritarian leadership.