We have emotions but can’t show them! Authoritarian leadership, emotion suppression climate, and team performance

Jack Ting Ju Chiang, Xiao Ping Chen, Haiyang Liu, Satoshi Akutsu and Zheng Wang

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: How do authoritarian leaders in modern organizations influence work team emotional climate and performance? Defining authoritarian leadership as an ambient, demanding, and controlling leadership style, we conducted a survey study of 252 leaders and 765 subordinates matched in 227 work teams in three large public Japanese organizations. The results indicate that authoritarian leaders are more likely to create a team climate of emotion suppression, which induces a higher level of team emotional exhaustion that negatively impacts team performance. Furthermore, we found that authoritarian leaders’ own emotion suppression enhances the above sequential mediation effects, i.e. the more emotion suppression the authoritarian leader him/herself exercises, the stronger the team climate of emotion suppression, the higher the level of team emotional exhaustion, and the lower the team performance. These findings suggest that leadership effectiveness may be improved if leaders can reduce their authoritarian behaviors and identify appropriate channels for employees to release emotions in the workplace.

Keywords: authoritarian leadership; emotional exhaustion; leader emotion suppression; team emotion suppression climate; team performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2020-02-27
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Human Relations, 27, February, 2020, 0(0), pp. 0 - 0. ISSN: 0018-7267

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