Comparative Study of Servant Leadership and Paternalistic Leadership on Employee’s Performance

Abstract

This paper challenges a commonly believed academic view that paternalistic leadership is more suitable than other types of leadership style in the context of Chinese enterprises. Based on the analysis of the data collected from 302 employees using SPSS and LISREL software, the study has found that both leadership styles have significant and positive impact on employee's job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behaviors, as well as negative impact on employee's workplace deviance. However, servant leadership appears to have better outcomes than paternalistic leadership in the improvement of employee's job satisfaction and OCB, and the former is also more effective in controlling employee's workplace deviance than the latter. The results indicate that servant leadership seems to be more effective than paternalistic leadership to increase employee’s job satisfaction and OCB and reduce their workplace deviance in the enterprises in Mainland China.