Angels and Devils? : How Do Bright and Dark Sides of Paternalistic Leaders Differ in Shaping Ethical Climate via Justice Perceptions Across Cultures?

The current study examines the effects of two major dimensions of Paternalistic Leadership, authoritarian and benevolent, on the perceived workplace ethical climate in different cultural contexts. Based on social influence and organizational justice theories, we illuminate the processes underlying the effects of these leadership styles on ethical climate by proposing perceived procedural and interactional justice as potential mediators. We test how these mediating effects vary in three different countries: Taiwan, Turkey, and the U.S. Based on a sample of 674 Taiwanese, 409 Turkish, and 479 American employees, we identified several interesting mediation and moderation results on leadership – justice – ethical climate paths. To our surprise, while procedural justice was an important mechanism linking benevolent leadership and ethical climate in all three countries, it mediated the relationship between authoritarian leadership and ethical climate only in Turkey. However, interactional justice was found to be a significant mediating mechanism only in the U.S. and for both authoritarian and benevolent leadership. In addition, cultural context moderated the paternalistic leadership-justice link such that the strongest positive benevolent leadership and interactional justice relationship, as well as the strongest negative association between authoritarian leadership and both types of justice, were observed in Turkey