H.M.

Basit Feroz
SP18-RMS-001

Impact of paternalistic leadership on employee’s work engagement: The

moderating role of emotional intelligence, emotional exhaustion and emotional
labor
Leadership has always been the most debatable topic in the international research and its biggest
quest is to find the most appropriate and effective style of leadership (House, Hanges, Javidan,
Dorfman & Gupta, 2004). But when this discussion is drifted towards differences of cultures and
behaviors in different countries then our current knowledge seems to be limited due to contrasts
of these behaviors. Leadership is need of today because it can direct people to do their job
effectively and efficiently because people tend to respond only to suitable leadership style and
approaches (Likhitwonnawut, 1996). Leaders possess different styles and approaches according
to differences of cultures and context (Jing & Avery, 2008). There have been different types of
leaders explained by the researchers based on their traits such as assertive leaders, cooperative,
decisive, and dependable possessing skills like intelligence, creativity and persuasiveness etc.
Others explained leaders can be: autocratic, charismatic, bureaucratic, participative, laissez-faire,
transformational democratic and transactional leadership etc. (Mosadeghrad, 2003). However it
has not resolved yet that what is the most suitable and effective style of leadership in every
situation.

One such area of leadership is paternalistic leadership. A paternalistic leader acts as a parental
figure by taking care of its employees as a parent would and acts like a father with a combination
of authority (Westwood & Chan, 1992). Paternalistic leadership is said to be a “style that
combines strong discipline and authority with fatherly benevolence and moral integrity” (Farh &
Cheng, 2000). A paternalistic leader has a great concern for his people and provide them
guidance, support, nurturance and care and in turn he receives complete trust and loyalty of his
workers. A paternalistic leadership is divided into three dimensions: authoritarianism,
benevolence and morality where authoritarianism refers to absolute authority, benevolence refers
to concern and care for people and morality refers to virtue, self-discipline and unselfishness.

There have been numerous researches by different researchers examining the impact of
paternalistic leadership on employee’s work engagement, commitment, and satisfaction or
performance level of employees and also many studies explained this leadership style on the
basis of culture context arguing the contradiction of results according to differences in cultures.
In spite of many researches, there is gap in the literature that how emotional intelligence,
emotional exhaustion and emotional labor plays their part in influencing paternalistic leadership
style? This relation has been omitted by researchers and needs investigation to better understand
impact of PL style on employee’s psychologically and how it impacts their work engagement
level (Tuan, 2018).
This study attempts to explain the impact of PL style on employee’s work engagement and the
moderating role of emotional intelligence, emotional exhaustion and emotional labor in this
aspect.