Is servant leadership always good and authoritarian leadership always bad? a group-level model of servant and authoritarian leadership, power distance, interactional justice climate, and OCB

Abstract

Leadership has become an important and hot researching field in the present. Based on social exchange and learning theory, we present the relationship between servant leadership, authoritarian leadership and group-level OCB, which is mediated by interactional justice climate and moderated by group power distance. Servant leadership has positive relationship with OCB mediated by interactional justice climate; on the contrary, authoritarian leadership has negative relationship. Furthermore, the positive relationship between servant leadership and interactional justice climate becomes weaker with high group power distance, while the negative relationship between authoritarian leadership and interactional justice climate becomes weaker with high group power distance. Implications and limitations were discussed in the end.