The Effect of Authoritarian Leadership on Creativity: The Mediating Effect of Psychological Ownership and The Moderating Effect of Calling

Abstract

Many organizations are striving for the continuous survival and development of the organization in a complex and unpredictable environment. In particular, as the creative performance of members is the basis of organizational performance and success, research interest in the factors affecting member's creativity is increasing. Among them, positive leadership is a major area of research interest. However, there is also a negative form of leadership in the organization. Authoritarian leadership is one of the type that can be easily found due to the hierarchical nature of the organization. Nonetheless, previous studies have several limitations. First, there are limited studies that investigate the relationship between the supervisor's authoritarian leadership and member creativity, and in particular, studies on the mechanism of explaining the relationship between the two variables are insufficient. Second, research on moderating variables influencing on the process of influencing authoritarian leadership is insufficient. This study was conducted with two research purposes to supplement this. First, it examines the influence process inherent in the relationship between the supervisor's authoritarian leadership and creativity. Specifically, in this study, we consumed psychological ownership as an important channel of influence according to social exchange theory. Second, this study verify the moderating effect of the member's calling in the impact process of authoritarian leadership on creativity through the member's psychological ownership. To verify this, 154 pairs of military officers (commissioned officers and noncommissioned officers) were surveyed with 6-week time interval, and hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to verify the hypothesis. As a result of the analysis, authoritarian leadership hinders creativity through the psychological ownership of members. In addition, the higher the member's calling, the weaker the negative relationship between authoritarian leadership and psychological ownership, and the moderated mediating effect was also significant. Based on the research results, the theoretical and practical implications of this study were presented, and in the conclusion section, the limitations of the study and future research directions were mentioned.