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Authoritarian Leader: Analysis

Categories: Leadership Leadership Styles

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Published: Mar 20, 2024

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Characteristics of an authoritarian leader, impact of authoritarian leadership, implications for followers and subordinates.

Centralized Decision-Making: Authoritarian leaders tend to make decisions without seeking input from subordinates or other stakeholders. They often believe that they know what is best for the organization and rely on their own judgment to guide decision-making processes.
Strict Control: Authoritarian leaders maintain tight control over their subordinates, often using strict rules and regulations to enforce compliance. They may also exert control through fear or intimidation, creating a hierarchical power dynamic within the organization.
Limited Feedback: Authoritarian leaders are often resistant to feedback or criticism from subordinates. They may view dissenting opinions as a threat to their authority and may punish or marginalize those who challenge their decisions.
Focus on Authority: Authoritarian leaders prioritize maintaining their authority and control over the organization above all else. They may be less concerned with fostering collaboration or empowering their subordinates, instead prioritizing their own power and status.

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How an Authoritarian Leadership Style Blocks Effective Negotiation

An authoritarian leadership style tends to cut off communication, information sharing, and trust building. as a result, it can backfire on the powerful and prevent win-win agreements..

By Katie Shonk — on October 31st, 2023 / Leadership Skills

Those who favor an authoritarian leadership style, also known as an autocratic leadership style , tend to believe their approach to management is more efficient and decisive than a more collaborative leadership style. But because a top-down approach can heighten the power differential between leaders and those who report to them, it often backfires, generating resentment and ill will among followers. In particular, highlighting the role of leadership in negotiation , an authoritarian leadership style may cause leaders to miss out on opportunities to reach mutually beneficial agreements, both inside their organization and beyond.

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A Top-Down Style

Since taking office in 2019, Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has worked with the state legislature to consolidate power at the state level while also blocking local public-health mandates during the Covid-19 pandemic, as an article on DeSantis’s leadership style in the Washington Post reports.

Many Republicans in Florida and beyond view DeSantis as an effective leader who has pushed back against what they view as overreactions to the Covid-19 pandemic by mayors and other officials. But some local leaders in Florida have been frustrated by what they see as DeSantis’s top-down leadership style and insufficient communication. For example, speaking to the Post, Hialeah mayor Carlos Hernandez, a Republican, called DeSantis “a dictator,” while Democratic St. Petersburg mayor Rick Kriseman said he had never been able to reach the governor on the phone.

Lack of communication, a hallmark of an authoritarian leadership style, frequently backfires on leaders, as followers often resist complying with orders they don’t understand or support.

Unchecked Power

A top-down, or authoritarian, leadership style is often carried out in a fully professional manner. But at times, an authoritarian leadership style can cross the line into unfair and even abusive behavior.

Take the case of another recent U.S. governor, Andrew Cuomo, who resigned after numerous employees accused him of fostering a toxic workplace culture. According to a state investigation , Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women while in office. And many people who worked for Cuomo, men and women alike, have accused him of creating a toxic workplace where he regularly yelled at and insulted employees.

Cuomo’s replacement, Kathy Hochul, told the New York Times she would bring a “collaborative approach to government,” saying she was “hard-wired to view everything that Albany does through the lens of a local town, city, county official.” She added, “I know that is going to be a breath of fresh air.”

How Does an Authoritarian Leadership Style Affect Negotiation?

Notably, an authoritarian leadership style is often at odds with best practices for leadership and negotiation. Consider that those who favor an authoritarian style tend to be powerful leaders negotiating with less powerful parties. In their approach to negotiation and leadership, the powerful often veer toward asserting their will—and make the following mistakes:

They underestimate those with less power. Powerful negotiators tend to discount the power of less powerful players, Notre Dame professor Ann E. Tenbrunsel and the late Northwestern University professor David Messick found in their research. Overly self-confident perceptions can lead powerful negotiators to offer fewer concessions than needed to get a deal and to treat others with less respect and recognition than they may deserve. The result? Impasse, suboptimal deals, or retaliation by the less powerful.

They are less prepared. The key to negotiation success is preparation, yet powerful negotiators often tend to undervalue the need to thoroughly prepare to negotiate, according to Tenbrunsel. Those with power are more likely to fall back on cognitive shortcuts when processing information—which leads them to ignore their counterparts’ interests and pass up opportunities to create value for both sides. The powerful, including authoritarians, may also end up being out-strategized by counterparts who spent more time preparing to negotiate.

They fail to anticipate a backlash. Power can trigger resentment, jealousy, and competitiveness in those with less power. As a result, parties with less power are likely to approach negotiations with more powerful parties more aggressively than they would negotiations with less powerful parties. But the powerful are often unaware that they tend to inspire animosity, Tenbrunsel and Messick found in their research; in fact, the more powerful people are, the more trustworthy they expect others to be. Yet those with an authoritarian leadership style are unlikely to take the time needed to build trust with negotiating partners. As a result, they could find that their counterparts are less trustworthy than they expected them to be.

For these reasons and others, an authoritarian leadership style is typically antithetical to effective negotiation . Generally, leaders will benefit from taking a more collaborative approach to leadership and negotiation. That includes taking time to build trusting relationships, preparing thoroughly for negotiation, and never underestimating counterparts. In addition, it means approaching both leadership and negotiation with humility, understanding that everyone has something to contribute and that power can be measured in different ways.

By shifting their stance toward collaboration and cooperation, the powerful will not only set themselves up to construct win-win agreements but also embody more effective leadership.

Have you had experience with an authoritarian leadership style? If so, how did it affect negotiations in your organization or industry?

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What Is Autocratic Leadership?

Characteristics, Strengths, and Weaknesses of Autocratic Leadership

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Characteristics

Are You an Autocratic Leader?

Autocratic leadership, also known as authoritarian leadership, is a leadership style characterized by individual control over all decisions and little input from group members.

Autocratic leaders typically make choices based on their ideas and judgments and rarely accept advice from followers. Autocratic leadership involves absolute, authoritarian control over a group.

Like other leadership styles, the autocratic style has both some benefits and some weaknesses. While those who rely on this approach too heavily are often seen as bossy or dictator-like, this level of control can have benefits and be useful in certain situations.

When and where the authoritarian style is most useful can depend on factors such as the situation , the type of task the group is working on, and characteristics of the team members. If you tend to utilize this type of leadership with a group, learning more about your style and the situations in which this style is the most effective can be helpful.

Characteristics of Autocratic Leadership

Some of the primary characteristics of autocratic leadership include:

Allows little or no input from group members
Requires leaders to make almost all of the decisions
Provides leaders with the ability to dictate work methods and processes
Leaves the group feeling like they aren't trusted with decisions or important tasks
Tends to create highly structured and very rigid environments
Discourages creativity and out-of-the-box thinking
Establishes rules and tends to be clearly outlined and communicated

There are also three primary types of autocratic leadership: Directing (rigid), permissive (slightly more flexible), and paternalistic (strict but balanced with care and concern).

Allows for quick decision-making especially in stress-filled situations

Offers a clear chain of command or oversight

Works well where strong, directive leadership is needed

Discourages group input

Hurts morale and leads to resentment

Ignores or impairs creative solutions and expertise from subordinates

Benefits of Autocratic Leadership

The autocratic style tends to sound quite negative. It certainly can be when overused or applied to the wrong groups or situations. However, autocratic leadership can be beneficial in some instances, such as when decisions need to be made quickly without consulting with a large group of people.

Some projects require strong leadership to get things accomplished quickly and efficiently. When the leader is the most knowledgeable person in the group, the autocratic style can lead to fast and effective decisions. The autocratic leadership style can be useful in the following instances:

Provides Direction

Autocratic leadership can be effective in small groups where leadership is lacking . Have you ever worked with a group of students or co-workers on a project that got derailed by poor organization, a lack of leadership and an inability to set deadlines?

If so, the chances are that your grade or job performance suffered as a result. In such situations, a strong leader who utilizes an autocratic style can take charge of the group, assign tasks to different members, and establish solid deadlines for projects to be finished.

These types of group projects tend to work better when one person is either assigned the role of leader or simply takes on the job on their own. By setting clear roles, assigning tasks, and establishing deadlines, the group is more likely to finish the project on time and with everyone providing equal contributions.

Relieves Pressure

This leadership style can also be used well in cases where a great deal of pressure is involved. In situations that are particularly stressful, such as during military conflicts, group members may prefer an autocratic style.

This allows members of the group to focus on performing specific tasks without worrying about making complex decisions. This also allows group members to become highly skilled at performing certain duties, which is ultimately beneficial to the success of the entire group.

Offers Structure

Manufacturing and construction work can also benefit from the autocratic style. In these situations, it is essential that each person have a clearly assigned task, a deadline, and rules to follow.

Autocratic leaders tend to do well in these settings because they ensure that projects are finished on time and that workers follow safety rules to prevent accidents and injuries.

Downsides of Autocratic Leadership

While autocratic leadership can be beneficial at times, there are also many instances where this leadership style can be problematic. People who abuse an autocratic leadership style are often viewed as bossy, controlling, and dictatorial. This can sometimes result in resentment among group members.

Group members can end up feeling that they have no input or say in how things or done, and this can be particularly problematic when skilled and capable members of a team are left feeling that their knowledge and contributions are undermined. Some common problems with autocratic leadership:

Discourages Group Input

Because autocratic leaders make decisions without consulting the group, people in the group may dislike that they are unable to contribute ideas. Researchers have also found that autocratic leadership often results in a lack of creative solutions to problems, which can ultimately hurt the group from performing.

Autocratic leaders tend to overlook the knowledge and expertise that group members might bring to the situation. Failing to consult with other team members in such situations hurts the overall success of the group.

Hurts Morale

Autocratic leadership can also impair the morale of the group in some cases. People tend to feel happier and perform better when they feel like they are making contributions to the future of the group. Since autocratic leaders typically do not allow input from team members, followers start to feel dissatisfied and stifled.

Is autocratic leadership good or bad?

Autocratic leadership is generally a bad thing when it is used excessively. However, it is important to note that this type of leadership can be useful in certain situations. When group members lack knowledge, need direction, and time is of the essence, autocratic leadership can provide guidance, relieve pressure, and offer the structure that group members need to succeed.

How to Be Successful With Autocratic Leadership

The autocratic style can be beneficial in some settings, but also has its pitfalls and is not appropriate for every setting and with every group. If this tends to be your dominant leadership style, there are things that you should consider whenever you are in a leadership role.

Listen to Team Members

You might not change your mind or implement their advice, but subordinates need to feel that they can express their concerns. Autocratic leaders can sometimes make team members feel ignored or even rejected.

Listening to people with an open mind can help them feel like they are making an important contribution to the group's mission.

Establish Clear Rules

In order to expect team members to follow your rules, you need to first ensure that guidelines are clearly established and that each person on your team is fully aware of them.

Provide Tools

Once your subordinates understand the rules, you need to be sure that they actually have the education and abilities to perform the tasks you set before them. If they need additional assistance, offer oversight and training to fill in this knowledge gap.

Be Reliable

Inconsistent leaders can quickly lose the respect of their teams. Follow through and enforce the rules you have established. Establish that you are a reliable leader and your team is more likely to follow your guidance because you have built trust with them.

Recognize Success

Your team may quickly lose motivation if they are only criticized when they make mistakes but never rewarded for their successes. Try to recognize success more than you point out mistakes. By doing so, your team will respond much more favorably to your correction.

Try our fast and free quiz to find out if you tend towards autocratic leadership or one of the other styles.

While autocratic leadership does have some potential pitfalls, leaders can learn to use elements of this style wisely. For example, an autocratic style can be used effectively in situations where the leader is the most knowledgeable member of the group or has access to information that other members of the group do not.

Instead of wasting valuable time consulting with less knowledgeable team members, the expert leader can quickly make decisions that are in the best interest of the group. Autocratic leadership is often most effective when it is used for specific situations. Balancing this style with other approaches including democratic or transformational styles can often lead to better group performance.

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By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

The virtue of a controlling leadership style: Authoritarian leadership, work stressors, and leader power distance orientation

Published: 19 November 2022

Cite this article

Leni Chen ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8268-8117 1 ,
Xu Huang ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3472-6822 2 ,
Jian-min Sun ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7696-3231 3 ,
Yuyan Zheng ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9340-4626 4 ,
Les Graham ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0560-2305 5 &
Judy Jiang 6

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This article has been updated

We developed and tested a theoretical model showing that authoritarian leadership has both positive and negative influences on employees’ work performance. We posited that authoritarian leadership may shape both challenge stressors and hindrance stressors, which compel and undermine in-role and extra-role performance, respectively. We found consistent results across two studies. In Study 1, our results from two samples in different cultures showed that authoritarian leadership was positively related to objective performance (Sample 1: n = 402 Chinese chain restaurant managers) and extra-role performance (Sample 2: n = 369 U.K. police officers) via challenge stressors. Authoritarian leadership was negatively related to objective performance and extra-role performance via hindrance stressors. In Study 2 (n = 195 Chinese power industry employees), we replicated the findings of Study 1. Further, we found that authoritarian leadership behaviors among leaders who scored low on power distance orientation were not negatively related to in-role and extra-role performance via hindrance stressors.

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Whipping into shape: Construct definition, measurement, and validation of directive-achieving leadership in Chinese culture

Tingting Chen, Fuli Li & Kwok Leung

Authoritarian leadership styles and performance: a systematic literature review and research agenda

Elia Pizzolitto, Ida Verna & Michelina Venditti

Authoritarian leadership and task performance: the effects of leader-member exchange and dependence on leader

Zhen Wang, Yuan Liu & Songbo Liu

Availability of data and material

The raw data from Study 1a and Study 2 are available and will be submitted to the reviewers when they request it. The raw data from Study 1b are not available because participants are police officers and we signed a contract with a confidentiality clause specifying that we cannot share the raw data with others.

Code availability

All Mplus input and output codes are available and will be submitted to the reviewers when they request them.

Change history

25 november 2022.

The original version of this paper was updated to reflect the ORCID ID of authors Xu Huang, Jian-min Sun, Yuyan Zheng, and Les Graham.

We calculated the statistical power of our model in the three samples following Faul et al., (2007). In each case, the statistical power was above the threshold of .80. Specifically, in Sample 1 , the results showed a statistical power of .87 for the mediating effects of authoritarian leadership on in-role performance via the two stressors. In Sample 2 , the statistical power for the mediating effects on extra-role performance was .99. In Sample 3, the statistical power for the mediating effects on in-role performance was .95 and for extra-role performance, it was .99. The statistical power for the moderating effect of leaders’ power distance orientation on the relationship between authoritarian leadership and hindrance stressors was .99.

We ran several additional analyses using our samples to prove that challenge/hindrance stressor framework works better for authoritarian leadership than for other leadership styles. We aimed to examine (1) whether the challenge/hindrance stressor framework could work for other leadership styles and (2) whether the challenge/hindrance stressor framework could still work for authoritarian leadership after controlling for other leadership styles. Therefore, we examined the effects of transformational, benevolent, and moral leadership on work performance via shaping challenge and hindrance stressors. We also retested our theoretical model after controlling for the effects of transformational leadership (Sample 1), benevolent leadership (Sample 3), and moral leadership (Sample 3).

The results showed that transformational leadership was not related to challenge stressors ( B = -.19, SE = .17, n.s. ), but it was negatively related to hindrance stressors ( B = -.60 , SE = .18 , p < .01). Benevolent leadership was not related to challenge stressors (B = -.17, SE = .20, n.s .), but it was negatively related to hindrance stressors ( B = -.42, SE = .21, p < .05). Moral leadership was not related to either challenge stressors ( B = -.13, SE = .22, n.s .) or hindrance stressors ( B = -.15, SE = .21, n.s. ). Further, after controlling for benevolent and moral leadership, the indirect effects of authoritarian leadership on in-role performance ( B = .08, SE = .04, 95% CI = [.01, .17]) and extra-role performance ( B = .06, SE = .03, 95% CI = [.01, .13]) via challenge stressors were significant. Also, after controlling for transformational leadership, the indirect effect of authoritarian leadership on in-role performance via challenge stressors was significant ( B = .03, SE = .02, 95% CI = [.001, .06]).

Overall, we found no empirical evidence that challenge/hindrance stressors function as the underlying mechanisms for the effects of transformational, benevolent, or moral leadership on in-role and extra-role performance. Furthermore, most of our hypotheses held after controlling for other leadership styles. These results indicate that challenge and hindrance stressors may be distinct mechanisms that transmit the effects of authoritarian leadership to performance.

We used employee power distance orientation instead of leaders’ power distance orientation as the moderator in our model. The results showed that the moderating effects of employee power distance orientation are not significant on either the relationship between authoritarian leadership and challenge stressors ( B = -.38, SE = .25, n.s. ) or the relationship between authoritarian leadership and hindrance stressors ( B = -.09, SE = .22, n.s. ). Therefore, we cannot find evidence supporting moderating effects of employee power distance orientation.

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Chen, L., Huang, X., Sun, Jm. et al. The virtue of a controlling leadership style: Authoritarian leadership, work stressors, and leader power distance orientation. Asia Pac J Manag (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-022-09860-7

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Authoritarian leadership and task performance: the effects of leader-member exchange and dependence on leader

Zhen Wang 1 ,
Yuan Liu 1 &
Songbo Liu 1

Frontiers of Business Research in China volume 13 , Article number: 19 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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This study examines how and when authoritarian leadership affects subordinates’ task performance. Using social exchange theory and power dependence theory, this study proposes that authoritarian leadership negatively influences task performance through leader-member exchange (LMX). This study further proposes that the effect of authoritarian leadership on LMX is stronger when a subordinate has less dependence on a leader. A two-wave survey was conducted in a large electronics and information enterprise group in China. These hypotheses are supported by results based on 219 supervisor-subordinate dyads. The results reveal that authoritarian leadership negatively affects subordinates’ task performance via LMX. Dependence on leader buffers the negative effect of authoritarian leadership on LMX and mitigates the indirect effect of authoritarian leadership on employee task performance through LMX. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed.

Introduction

The dark or destructive side of leadership behavior has attracted the attention of many scholars and practitioners in recent years (Liao and Liu 2016 ). Much of the research has focused on authoritarian leadership (e.g., Chan et al. 2013 ; Li and Sun 2015 ; Schaubroeck et al. 2017 ), which is prevalent in Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific business organizations (Pellegrini and Scandura 2008 ). Authoritarian leadership refers to the leadership that stresses the use of authority to control subordinates (Cheng et al. 2004 ). In general, authoritarian leadership has a negative connotation in the literature; this type of leadership is negatively related to employees’ attitudes, emotions and perceptions, for example, regarding organizational commitment, job satisfaction, tacit knowledge-sharing intentions (Chen et al. 2018 ), team identification (Cheng and Wang 2015 ), intention to stay and organizational justice (Pellegrini and Scandura 2008 ; Schaubroeck et al. 2017 ). A substantial body of empirical research has also explored the influence of authoritarian leadership on followers’ work-related behavior and outcomes. Authoritarian leadership is negatively related to employee voice (Chan 2014 ; Li and Sun 2015 ), organizational citizenship behavior (Chan et al. 2013 ), employee creativity (Guo et al. 2018 ), and employee performance (Chan et al. 2013 ; Schaubroeck et al. 2017 ; Shen et al. 2019 ; Wu et al. 2012 ), and such leadership is positively associated with employee deviant workplace behavior (Jiang et al. 2017 ). In particular, studies concerning authoritarian leadership and employee performance have suggested that authoritarian leadership is negatively related to employee performance because subordinates of authoritarian leaders are likely to have low levels of the following: trust-in-supervisor, organization-based self-esteem, perceived insider status, relational identification, and thus, little motivation to improve performance (Chan et al. 2013 ; Schaubroeck et al. 2017 ; Shen et al. 2019 ; Wu et al. 2012 ).

Although previous studies have explored the effect of authoritarian leadership on employee performance from the perspective of self-evaluation or perception, such as organization-based self-esteem or perceived insider status, the underlying mechanism remains unclear (Chan et al. 2013 ; Schaubroeck et al. 2017 ). To fully understand the effect of authoritarian leadership on employee performance, it is critical to investigate alternative influencing mechanisms of authoritarian leadership from other perspectives (Hiller et al. 2019 ). For example, Wu et al. ( 2012 ) reveal that trust-in-supervisor mediates the relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee performance; Shen et al. ( 2019 ) show that relational identification also mediates this relationship. These findings suggest that authoritarian leadership may lead to a poor exchange between leaders and followers, whereby followers of authoritarian leaders may reciprocate by withholding their efforts at work. These studies use a social exchange perspective to understand the effect of authoritarian leadership on employee performance but fail to examine the exchange relationship explicitly. To summarize, little is known about how authoritarian leadership impacts the ongoing social exchange relationship between leaders and subordinates and how such social exchange affects subordinates’ performance. Therefore, we adopt a social exchange perspective to explore the relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee task performance to gain a deep understanding of employees’ reaction to authoritarian leadership behavior.

From the perspective of social exchange, leader-member exchange (LMX) is most often chosen to examine how leadership affects followers’ behavior and outcomes (Dulebohn et al. 2012 ). Thus, we specifically posit that LMX mediates the relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee task performance.

Moreover, Wang and Guan ( 2018 ) suggest that the effects of authoritarian leadership on employees depend on certain conditions and, thus, may influence the relationship between authoritarian leadership and performance. Literature concerning the relationship between mistreatment and employees’ response find that employees are less likely to respond to perceived mistreatment with deviant behavior when their power status is lower than that of the offender or when they depend more on the perpetrator (Aquino et al. 2001 ; Tepper et al. 2009 ). Since employees have less power than the offender, vengeful or deviant employee behavior may incur a punitive response or trigger future downward hostility (Tepper et al. 2009 ). Thus, the second purpose of this research is to examine how subordinates’ dependence on a leader impacts the responses of subordinates to authoritarian leadership. Specifically, we posit that subordinates’ dependence on a leader moderates the relationship between authoritarian leadership and LMX.

By examining the relationship between authoritarian leadership and subordinates’ task performance, this research makes several contributions to the literature. First, we directly examine the social exchange relationship between authoritarian leaders and their subordinates, which helps further clarify the mediating mechanism of authoritarian leadership on employee task performance (Chan et al. 2013 ; Schaubroeck et al. 2017 ). Second, this study contributes to the LMX literature by exploring the role of LMX in destructive or dark leadership. Indeed, most studies on LMX focus on how constructive leadership leads to a positive and high-quality LMX relationship, which then impacts followers’ behavior and outcomes (Chan and Mak 2012 ; Lin et al. 2018 ; Qian et al. 2017 ; Wang et al. 2005 ). Therefore, exploring and determining how destructive or dark leadership behavior influences the exchange relationship between leaders and followers is imperative (Harvey et al. 2007 ; Xu et al. 2012 ). Third, this study helps clarify the boundary condition of the effect of authoritarian leadership on subordinate outcomes. By investigating and demonstrating the moderating effect of employee dependence on a leader, our research offers some of the first insights into how dependence influences the effect of authoritarian leadership and the social exchange relationship as well.

Theoretical background and hypotheses development

Authoritarian leadership

Authoritarian leadership refers to leader behavior that exerts absolute authority and control over subordinates and demands unconditional obedience (Farh and Cheng 2000 ; Pellegrini and Scandura 2008 ). Authoritarian leaders expect their subordinates to obey their requests without disagreement and to be socialized to accept and respect a strict and centralized hierarchy (Redding 1990 ).

Authoritarian leadership reflects the cultural characteristics of familial ties, paternalistic control, and submission to authority in Chinese culture (Farh and Cheng 2000 ; Farh et al. 2008 ). Influenced by Confucian doctrine, a father has absolute authority and power over his children and other family members in a traditional Chinese family (Cheng and Wang 2015 ). In business organizations, leaders often enforce this patriarchal value by establishing a vertical hierarchy and by playing a paternal role in an authoritarian leadership style (Peng et al. 2001 ). Authoritarian leadership is prevalent in Chinese organizations and its construct domain remains relatively unchanged regardless of rapid modernization (Farh et al. 2008 ).

According to Farh and Cheng’s ( 2000 ) research, authoritarian leadership has four kinds of typical behavior. First, authoritarian leaders exercise tight control over their subordinates and require unquestioning submission. To maintain their absolute dominance in organizations, authoritarian leaders are unwilling to empower their subordinates. In addition, higher authoritarian leaders share relatively little information with employees and adopt a top-down communication style. Second, authoritarian leaders tend to deliberately ignore subordinates’ suggestions and contributions. Such leaders are more likely to attribute success to themselves and to attribute failure to subordinates. Third, authoritarian leaders focus very much on their dignity and always show confidence. Such leaders control and manipulate information to maintain the advantage of power distance and create and maintain a good image through manipulation. Fourth, highly authoritarian leaders demand that their subordinates achieve the best performance within the organization and make all the important decisions in their team. In addition, such leaders strictly punish employees for poor performance.

Authoritarian leadership and task performance

In this study, we posit that authoritarian leadership harms employee performance according to the four kinds of typical behavior of authoritarian leaders. First, authoritarian leaders try to maintain a strict hierarchy, are unwilling to share information with followers, and adopt a top-down communication style (Farh and Cheng 2000 ). All of these behaviors create distance and distrust between subordinates and leaders, thus leading to poor employee performance (Cheng and Wang 2015 ). Second, authoritarian leaders tend to ignore followers’ contributions to success and to attribute failure to followers (Farh and Cheng 2000 ). These behaviors greatly undermine subordinates’ self-evaluation and are harmful to improving employee performance (Chan et al. 2013 ; Schaubroeck et al. 2017 ). Third, it is typical for leaders with an authoritarian leadership style to control and manipulate information to maintain the advantage of power distance and create and maintain a good image (Farh and Cheng 2000 ). Such behaviors set a bad example for subordinates and are not conducive to improving employee performance (Chen et al. 2018 ). Fourth, leaders with a highly authoritarian leadership style focus strongly on the supreme importance of performance. Subordinates are commanded to pursue high performance and surpass competitors. If subordinates fail to reach the desired goal, leaders will rebuke and punish them severely (Farh and Cheng 2000 ). Leaders’ emphasis on high performance and possible severe consequences enhance subordinates’ sense of fear (Guo et al. 2018 ), which is detrimental to performance improvement. To summarize, we posit that authoritarian leadership is negatively related to employee performance.

Authoritarian leadership and LMX

Building on social exchange theory (Blau 1964 ), LMX refers to the quality of the dyadic exchange relationship between a leader and a subordinate and the degree of emotional support and exchange of valued resources (Graen and Uhl-Bien 1995 ; Liden and Maslyn 1998 ; Wayne and Green 1993 ). Low-quality relationships are characterized by transactional exchanges based on employment contracts. High-quality relationships are characterized by affect, loyalty, perceived contribution and professional respect (Dienesch and Liden 1986 ; Liden et al. 1997 ; Liden and Maslyn 1998 ). There are several reasons why authoritarian leadership is related to a lower quality of LMX. First, since authoritarian leaders demonstrate authoritarian behaviors, such as controlling information, maintaining a strict hierarchy and high power distance, ignoring followers’ contributions and suggestions, and attributing losses to subordinates and punishing them, employees who perceive highly authoritarian leadership tend to strongly fear their leaders (Guo et al. 2018 ). These employees follow their leaders because of the need to work instead of affective commitment, which is a relationship based on an employment contract and leads to lower LMX. Second, subordinates of authoritarian leaders are less likely to identify with their leaders and teams because these leaders focus on obtaining the best performance from their subordinates while controlling information. Without identification with their leaders and teams, employees can hardly be loyal to their leaders and can be less motivated to maintain high-quality relationships with them, thus leading to lower LMX. Third, both authoritarian leaders and their subordinates perceive that the other contributes little to the performance of the team. Authoritarian leaders tend to ignore subordinates’ advice and contributions, while the subordinates perceive that leaders contribute little because they focus more on controlling information and maintaining the hierarchy instead of helping subordinates attain high performance (Farh and Cheng 2000 ). Fourth, since authoritarian leaders and their subordinates each perceive that the other contributes little, they cannot sincerely show professional respect to each other, thereby leading to lower LMX (Liden and Maslyn 1998 ). Therefore, we expect a negative relationship between authoritarian leadership and LMX.

Hypothesis 1: Authoritarian leadership is negatively related to LMX.

Authoritarian leadership, LMX, and task performance

As described by Blau ( 1964 ), unspecified obligations are very important in social exchange. When one person helps another, some future return is expected, though it is often uncertain when it will happen and in what form (Gouldner 1960 ). The premise of social exchange theory is that in a dyadic relationship (e.g., leader and follower), something given creates an obligation to respond with behavior that has equal value (Gouldner 1960 ; Perugini and Gallucci 2001 ). According to social exchange theory, high-quality LMX is considered as rewards or benefits from the leaders for the employees. This may create obligations for the employees to reciprocate with equivalent positive behaviors to maintain the high quality of the LMX (Blau 1964 ; Emerson 1976 ). Since one of the requirements and expectations from authoritarian leaders is high task performance (Cheng et al. 2004 ; Farh and Cheng 2000 ), after perceiving a high LMX as involving the receipt of rewards and benefits from the leader, employees with high-quality LMX are more likely, in return, to consider high task performance as a way to meet supervisors’ requirements and expectations. Here, the exchange currency of employees to reciprocate the rewards and benefits from their leaders is to pursue high task performance. The desire to reciprocate may motivate subordinates to exert more effort in achieving high task performance. Conversely, where there is low-quality LMX, subordinates are not obligated to increase effort to benefit supervisors and organizations (Gouldner 1960 ). In addition, according to the principle of negative reciprocity, which states that those who receive unfavorable treatment will respond with unfavorable behaviors (Gouldner 1960 ), because subordinates of authoritarian leaders receive unfavorable treatment, such as being strictly controlled and being compelled to obey unconditionally, these subordinates may respond with undesirable behaviors, such as withholding their effort and engaging in more deviant workplace behavior (Jiang et al. 2017 ).

To summarize, the typical behaviors of authoritarian leaders produce low-quality LMX. Consequently, subordinates do not feel obligated or motivated to strive for high task performance. In accordance with the principle of negative reciprocity, subordinates even engage in deviant workplace behavior, and employee task performance decreases. Therefore, authoritarian leadership is likely to be negatively related to employee task performance by creating low-quality LMX.

Hypothesis 2: LMX mediates the negative relationship between authoritarian leadership and subordinates’ task performance.

The moderation of subordinate dependence on leader

This study posits that the relationship between authoritarian leadership and LMX is moderated by dependence on a leader. Studies that investigate revenge and retaliation in organizations reveal that employees may be constrained in responding to perceived mistreatment with deviant behavior when their power status is lower than the offender and when they are largely dependent on their leaders (Aquino et al. 2001 ; Tepper et al. 2009 ). Therefore, the corresponding behavior of subordinates is affected by their dependence on their leaders and by the power relationship between them. The effect of dependence can be explained from a power dependence perspective. According to Emerson’s ( 1962 ) power dependence theory, dependence of individuals on others makes the former relatively powerless. In contrast, individuals on whom others depend but who do not depend on those others in return are relatively powerful. The powerful have many benefits, such as being able to reserve support or to exit from relationships at lower costs than the less powerful (Cook and Emerson 1978 ; Giebels et al. 2000 ), having more transaction alternatives (Brass 1981 ), and being able to engage in counter-revenge against the less powerful (Aquino et al. 2006 ). Therefore, taking their future conditions into consideration, those with greater dependence or less power are restricted from performing behaviors that are in their self-interest (Molm 1988 ).

This dependence and power relationship between leaders and their followers can be captured by the construct of “subordinate dependence on leader.” It refers to subordinates’ material and psychological dependence on leaders because subordinates believe that only by obeying their leader can they obtain the necessary work resources and support (Chou et al. 2005 ). We posit that subordinate dependence on leader moderates the relationship between authoritarian leadership and LMX. Specifically, a leader’s authoritarian behavior is rooted in the dependence of subordinates, that is, the dependence of subordinates rationalizes and strengthens the authoritarian leadership of superiors (Cheng et al. 2004 ; Farh and Cheng 2000 ). In circumstances where employees are highly dependent on their leaders, authoritarian leaders control much valuable information and many resources related to subordinates’ competence and development at work. Taking their future conditions into consideration, subordinates are more likely to be obedient. These reluctant employees take conciliatory action or withhold their anger and respond with desirable behaviors to meet the requirements and expectations of leaders, thereby hoping to have good relations with supervisors and maintain a high relationship quality. In contrast, subordinates who have a low dependence on their leaders tend to act self-interestedly. Such subordinates are not motivated to meet the expectations of authoritarian leaders at the cost of harming their self-interest, such as their self-esteem, and the relationship with the leader becomes worse. These arguments produce a moderation prediction:

Hypothesis 3: Subordinate dependence on leader moderates the negative relationship between authoritarian leadership and LMX such that this negative relationship is weaker in cases where subordinate dependence on leader is higher.

Based on the above argument, we further propose that subordinate dependence on leader will moderate the indirect effect of authoritarian leadership on employee task performance through LMX. Subordinates with high levels of dependence on their leader will have higher LMX under authoritarian leadership; thus, they are more likely to work to reciprocate rewards or benefits provided by leader and to get more valued resources, thereby increasing their task performance. In contrast, those with low levels of dependence on leader reciprocate less and have fewer resources, since they do not develop high-quality relationships with their authoritarian leaders, and will not improve their task performance. Thus, we hypothesize the following:

Hypothesis 4: The indirect relationship between authoritarian leadership and task performance through LMX is stronger for those with lower dependence on leader. Figure 1 depicts the conceptual model.

Research setting, participants, and procedures

This research was conducted in a large electronics and information enterprise group in China. Under the permission of the companies’ directors, we met with the companies’ personnel directors and explained the study objectives. The personnel directors helped us contact group supervisors and each group supervisor was instructed about the study objectives and procedure.

We used two sets of questionnaires to minimize common method bias: one for subordinates and the other for their immediate supervisors. First, we delivered surveys to employees (time 1). During the survey, we explained the purpose of the study and noted that participation was voluntary and their responses would be kept confidential. This survey included questions about measures of subordinates for their immediate supervisor’s authoritarian leadership, self-reported dependence on the leader, the LMX relationship and personal information. After 2 months, we administered questionnaires to supervisors to obtain their assessments of subordinates’ task performance (time 2).

Data on a total of 258 supervisor-subordinate dyads were collected. Among these responses, 20 cases were not included in the analysis because they could not be reliably matched. Nine cases were excluded because the supervisors’ rating of task performance was missing. In the other 10 cases, the reaction tendency was very obvious. These omissions resulted in a final sample set of 219 supervisor-subordinate dyad data. An independent t test was used to examine the difference between the final sample and the dropped sample in terms of demographic features. The results show that there is no significant difference between these two samples in terms of demographic features.

In the sample, 68.9% were male; 68.5% were Chinese. As for age distribution, 31.1% were aged 30 or younger; 63.9% were aged between 31 and 50; 5.0% were aged 51 or older. 83.6% of the employee respondents had received at least a college education. The mean tenure of the employee respondents was 6.42 years.

All scales used in this study are widely accepted by the academic community. Because participants were recruited from 18 companies in China and from overseas, it was necessary to have scales in both languages. Translation and back-translation procedures were followed to translate the English-based measures into the corresponding Chinese-English comparison scales.

Authoritarian leadership . Authoritarian leadership was measured using the nine-item scale developed by Cheng et al. ( 2004 ) at time 1. Authoritarian leadership has two dimensions: Zhuanquan and Shangyan . Zhuanquan stresses the use of authority to control subordinates and subordinates’ unquestioning compliance. Shangyan emphasizes the strict discipline and the supreme importance of high performance (Cheng et al. 2004 ; Chen and Farh 2010 ; Li et al. 2013 ). A sample item is “Our supervisor determines all decisions in the organization whether they are important or not” ( α = 0.90). All items used six-point Likert-type response categories (ranging from 1 = few to 6 = very frequent).

LMX . LMX was measured at time 1 and each subordinate described the quality of his/her exchange relationship with the leader. We used the seven-item scale developed by Scandura and Graen ( 1984 ). A sample item is “My line manager is personally inclined to use power to help me solve problems in my work” ( α = 0.88). All items used six-point Likert-type response categories (ranging from 1 = totally disagree to 6 = totally agree).

Subordinate dependence on leader . Subordinate dependence on leader was measured using the eight-item scale developed by Chou et al. ( 2005 ) at time 1. Subordinate dependence on leader has two dimensions: job dependence and affective dependence (Chou et al. 2005 ). A sample item is “I rely on my supervisor to obtain the necessary work resources (i.e., budget and equipment, etc.)” ( α = 0.75). All items used six-point Likert-type response categories (ranging from 1 = totally disagree to 6 = totally agree).

Task performance . Subordinates’ task performance was measured using the four-item scale at time 2 (Chen et al. 2002 ). Leaders rated their subordinates’ performance respectively. A sample item is “Performance always meets the expectations of the supervisor” ( α = 0.91). All items used six-point Likert-type response categories (ranging from 1 = totally disagree to 6 = totally agree).

Control variables . This study controls for the age, gender and tenure of the subordinates. These demographic variables are widely used as control variables in the study of authoritarian leadership mechanisms (e.g., Li and Sun 2015 ; Wang and Guan 2018 ). Gender was coded as 0 = male and 1 = female. Age and tenure were measured by the number of years.

Confirmatory factor analyses

We conducted confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) in Mplus 7 to test the distinctiveness of the variables included in the study: authoritarian leadership, LMX, subordinate dependence on leader, and employee task performance. To reduce the model size, we created two parcels based on the two subdimensions of authoritarian leadership to indicate the factors of authoritarian leadership. In addition, we created two parcels based on the two subdimensions of subordinate dependence on leader. As indicated in Table 1 , the hypothesized four-factor model fits the data well: χ 2 ( df = 84) = 181.29, RMSEA = 0.07, SRMR = 0.06, CFI = 0.94, and TLI = 0.92. Against this baseline model, we test three alternative models: a three-factor model combining authoritarian leadership and LMX into one factor; a two-factor model combining authoritarian leadership, LMX and subordinate dependence on leader into one factor; and a single-factor model combining all four variables into one factor. As shown in Table 1 , the hypothesized four-factor model fits the data significantly better than all three alternative models, indicating that the four variables show good discriminant validity. Thus, we retained the hypothesized four-factor model for our analyses.

Proposed conceptual model

Descriptive statistics

We present the means, standard deviations, and correlations among all the variables in Table 2 . The results show that authoritarian leadership is negatively related to LMX ( r = − 0.26, p < 0.01) and employee task performance ( r = − 0.22, p < 0.01). The results also support that there is a positive relationship between LMX and employee task performance ( r = 0.25, p < 0.01).

Hypotheses testing

We performed a mediation and moderation analysis to further examine the joint effects of authoritarian leadership, LMX, and subordinate dependence on leader on employee task performance. More specifically, to test the four hypotheses, we tested moderated mediation models using conditional process analysis. Conditional process analysis is an integrative approach that estimates the mediation and moderation effects simultaneously and yields estimates of the conditional indirect and conditional direct effects. Scores for authoritarian leadership and dependence on leader were mean centered in the following analysis to avoid the problem of multicollinearity when their interaction terms were included.

As shown in Table 3 , after controlling for age, tenure and gender, authoritarian leadership has a negative relationship with LMX (B = − 0.27, SE = 0.08, p < 0.001) and employee task performance (B = − 0.21, SE = 0.06, p < 0.01). The positive relationship between LMX and employee task performance is also significant (B = 0.15, SE = 0.06, p < 0.05). The bootstrapping results further suggest that the indirect effect of authoritarian leadership on employee task performance via LMX is significant (indirect effect = − 0.04; SE = 0.02; 95% CI = [− 0.0922, − 0.0116], excluding zero). These findings support Hypotheses 1 and 2.

Hypothesis 3 proposes a moderating effect of subordinate dependence on the relationship between authoritarian leadership and LMX. We examined this hypothesis by adding an interaction term of authoritarian leadership and subordinate dependence on leader into the model. The results reveal that the predicted interaction is significant (B = 0.25, SE = 0.07, p < 0.001). To further interpret the nature of this significant interaction, we plotted the relationship between authoritarian leadership and LMX at 1 SD above and below the mean of the moderator. Figure 2 shows the moderating role of subordinate dependence on leader: When subordinate dependence on leader was higher, the negative effect of authoritarian leadership on LMX was weaker (B = − 0.21, t = − 2.67, p < 0.01), supporting our hypothesis. However, when subordinate dependence on leader was lower, the negative effect of authoritarian leadership on LMX was stronger (B = − 0.63, t = − 6.69, p < 0.001). Furthermore, we examined whether subordinate dependence on leader moderated the indirect effect of authoritarian leadership on employee task performance through LMX. The findings reveal that the indirect effect was significant in cases where subordinate dependence on leader was higher (B = − 0.03; SE = 0.02; 95% CI = [− 0.0867, − 0.0063], excluding zero), and the indirect effect was also significant in cases where subordinate dependence on leader was lower (B = − 0.10; SE = 0.04; 95% CI = [− 0.1768, − 0.0339], excluding zero). The moderated mediation index was 0.0358 (95% CI = [0.0084, 0.0748], excluding zero). Therefore, the results are consistent with Hypotheses 3 and 4.

Moderating role of subordinate dependence on leader. Notes. AL = Authoritarian leadership; LMX = Leader-member exchange

Discussion and conclusion

Based on theories of social exchange and power dependence, this study investigates the relationship between authoritarian leadership and its negative effects on employee task performance. In examining a moderated mediation model with two-wave data collected from subordinates and their leaders, we find that authoritarian leadership negatively relates to task performance; LMX mediates the negative relationship; subordinate dependence on leader buffers the negative effect of authoritarian leadership on LMX and mitigates the indirect effect of authoritarian leadership on employee task performance through LMX.

Theoretical implications

These findings contribute to the literature on authoritarian leadership, LMX and task performance and expand our understanding of why authoritarian leadership harms task performance. In terms of literature on leadership, the results may represent the first attempt to understand the relationship between authoritarian leadership and task performance via LMX. A flourishing number of studies explain the relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee performance from the perspective of self-evaluation or perception (e.g., Chan et al. 2013 ; Schaubroeck et al. 2017 ). There is a need to explore the divergent influencing mechanisms of authoritarian leadership on employee performance from other perspectives. Our study contributes to the literature by directly introducing LMX as a mediating variable in the relationship between authoritarian leadership and task performance from a social exchange perspective.

In addition, we offer important contributions to the literature on LMX. Most previous research on LMX focuses on how constructive leadership leads to a high-quality leader-member exchange relationship, which then affects employee behaviors and outcomes (Chan and Mak 2012 ; Lin et al. 2018 ; Qian et al. 2017 ; Wang et al. 2005 ). With the increasing attention given to destructive or dark leadership in recent years (e.g., Liao and Liu 2016 ; Tepper et al. 2009 ), it is imperative to explore and determine how destructive or dark leadership styles impact the quality of the exchange relationship between leaders and followers (Harvey et al. 2007 ; Xu et al. 2012 ). We fill this void by investigating how authoritarian leadership creates a low-quality social exchange, thereby leading to worse task performance.

Our study also extends current knowledge about the negative relationship between authoritarian leadership and task performance by uncovering the mechanisms whereby this effect is amplified or attenuated. Based on power dependence theory (Emerson 1962 ), we introduce subordinate dependence on leader as a moderating variable into the model. Our research offers some of the first insights into how dependence and power between leaders and subordinates (e.g., subordinate dependence on leader) influence the effect of authoritarian leadership and the social exchange relationship between leaders and subordinates as well.

Practical implications

Our results also provide some suggestions for practice. First, our study observes that authoritarian leadership is related to lower levels of LMX and is, therefore, related to lower employee task performance. These relationships suggest the importance of curbing leaders’ authoritarian behavior. Organizations could invest in leadership training programs that help control negative leadership behavior, establish a high-quality exchange relationship between supervisors and subordinates and thus enhance subordinates’ task performance.

Second, programs aimed at strengthening exchange relationships between supervisors and subordinates may also be conducive to improving employee task performance, because LMX is an important predictor of performance. To develop a higher-quality LMX, organizations could hold more social activities for supervisors and followers, providing them with more opportunities to deeply interact.

Third, our test of the moderating effects of subordinate dependence on leader reveals that the negative relationship between authoritarian leadership and LMX is weaker for employees that highly depend on their leader, thus implying that work background influences the interaction between leaders and subordinates. In business organizations where employees depend less on their leaders, it is more urgent to curb authoritarian behavior; for those business organizations where employees depend more on their leaders, the negative effect of authoritarian leadership on LMX and task performance is attenuated, but authoritarian leadership still negatively affects LMX and performance. As a result, organizations should avoid using an authoritarian leadership style to boost their employee performance.

Limitations and future directions

This study has several limitations. First, the samples in this research were all obtained from the same subsidiary of a large electronics and information enterprise group, which is a relatively traditional business organization. Although it is beneficial to control the potential impacts of factors such as industry and organization, thereby increasing the internal validity of research findings while, at the same time, weakening their external validity, future research can further verify the conclusions of this research with different types of industries. Second, although we collected data from leaders and followers at two time points, it is difficult to draw any causal conclusions. To validate our suggested moderated mediation process, a longitudinal design is required. Third, we introduce LMX perceived by subordinates into the relationship between authoritarian leadership and task performance. It is also necessary to consider the role of LMX as perceived by leaders. It is interesting to explore whether LMX perceived by subordinates and LMX perceived by authoritarian leaders are the same or not and how they interact and affect the relationship between authoritarian leadership and work outcomes. Fourth, we explore how authoritarian leadership affects employee task performance from a social exchange perspective and specifically choose LMX as the mediator. It is possible that alternative mediating processes exist. Future research can verify the conclusions of this research by investigating alternative mediating processes simultaneously.

Availability of data and materials

Please contact author for data requests.

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This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71971211) and the Humanity and Social Science Youth Foundation of Ministry of Education of China (18YJC630192).

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Wang, Z., Liu, Y. & Liu, S. Authoritarian leadership and task performance: the effects of leader-member exchange and dependence on leader. Front. Bus. Res. China 13 , 19 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s11782-019-0066-x

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5 Pros & Cons of Authoritative Leadership

Business Leader Presenting to Team During Meeting

12 Nov 2019

Successful companies understand the importance of leadership in bringing about organizational success. That’s why leadership skills often top the list of competencies hiring managers look for when reviewing job applications.

But the concept of “leadership” is not as black and white as you might think. There are many leadership styles , each of which can be leveraged in different scenarios to achieve results. Truly effective leaders are capable of shifting their approach depending on what they're trying to accomplish—tailoring their style to meet the needs of their team.

Authoritative leadership is one style that can be incredibly effective in certain scenarios. Here's an overview of what authoritative leadership is, how it differs from other leadership styles, and the pros and cons you should keep in mind when considering this approach.

What Does It Mean to Be an Authoritative Leader?

The authoritative leadership style was first defined in 2002 by Daniel Goleman in his book Primal Leadership . Typically, it's discussed alongside other leadership approaches defined by the author: Coaching, Affiliative, Democratic, Coercive, and Pacesetting. While all of these styles have the potential to be effective when deployed in the right situation, authoritative leadership is often viewed as one of the more positive and harmonious of them.

Characteristics of Authoritative Leadership

Authoritative leaders , also called visionary leaders , tend to approach leadership like a mentor guiding a mentee. Instead of telling their team to follow instructions and do as they say, authoritative leaders put themselves in the scenario and utilize a “come with me” approach. They have a firm understanding of the challenges to overcome and the goals to reach, and have a clear vision for achieving success.

Authoritative leaders inspire motivation. They offer direction, guidance, and feedback to maintain enthusiasm and a sense of accomplishment throughout a project or endeavor.

At its heart, authoritative leadership depends on a thoroughly developed sense of emotional intelligence . To be effective, authoritative leaders must demonstrate certain emotional intelligence competencies, such as:

Self-confidence, to develop a vision and inspire others to follow it
Empathy, to understand and anticipate the emotions felt by team members at key junctures during a project
Ability to adapt, to identify and remove barriers to change that may be required for success

How to Become a More Effective Leader | Access Your Free E-Book | Download Now

Authoritative vs. Authoritarian Leadership

While the terms “authoritative” and “authoritarian” leadership sound similar—and are often used interchangeably—they are very different.

Authoritative leaders guide their team by example and inspire progression toward a common goal, whereas authoritarian leaders rely on commands and demand compliance without question. Authoritative leaders say, “Come with me;” authoritarian leaders say, “Do what I tell you.” Authoritative leaders view success as something to be shared by the team; authoritarian leaders view success as stemming from themselves.

While authoritarian leadership, also called commanding leadership, is often viewed as a more negative approach, it can be highly effective in the right circumstances, particularly when a company or organization needs firm guidance through a crisis or challenge.

Pros and Cons of Authoritative Leadership

If you're considering incorporating the authoritative leadership style into your management processes, it’s essential to understand the pros and cons of the technique so that you can determine when it is—and isn’t—appropriate to leverage.

Pros of Authoritative Leadership

Authoritative leaders bring clarity: They are effective because of their ability to inspire, motivate, and influence their team. Often, this motivation stems from their ability to understand a company’s strategic goals and communicate them in a way that's easy for employees to follow. When everyone knows what the organization is striving toward, it's easy to ensure everyone is aligned.
Authoritative leaders provide direction and vision: They approach projects and initiatives from a position of confidence. They have a clear vision of what success looks like, and give their team members clear direction and constructive feedback as they work toward organizational goals.
Authoritative leaders breed goodwill: For the authoritative leadership style to work, a person must approach their team from a position of empathy. By understanding the personal and professional emotions, desires, and worries of a team member, an authoritative leader is better able to identify potential roadblocks to performance and remove them, while simultaneously incentivizing success.

Cons of Authoritative Leadership

Authoritative leaders can appear overbearing: For employees who are accustomed to having free reign over how they complete tasks, work toward company goals, and contribute to overhead, the prescriptive approach of the authoritative leadership style can appear somewhat overbearing. This can be especially true for young leaders who are responsible for overseeing older or more experienced colleagues.
Authoritative leaders must own their mistakes: For authoritative leadership to be effective, team members must be given a clear goal to work toward and instructions for getting there. This requires the manager to have the conviction to make a decision and stand by their choice. While other leadership styles may depend upon consensus to identify and prioritize goals, where everyone involved shares in the success and failure, the authoritative approach places the risk of failure purely on the shoulders of the leader.

Leadership Principles | Unlock your leadership potential | Learn More

When to Use an Authoritative Leadership Style

Authoritative leadership can be particularly well suited for businesses undergoing a period of struggle or change. A department or team not meeting its goals in recent quarters; a shift in company ownership, leadership, or structure; a corporate turnaround after a decline; or a desire to innovate and change organizationally can all be appropriate situations for an authoritative approach.

It isn’t, however, applicable to all business challenges. A skilled leader is one who can tailor their leadership style to whatever scenario they find themselves in.

Do you want to enhance your leadership skills? Download our free leadership e-book and explore our online course Leadership Principles to discover how you can become a more effective leader and unleash the potential in yourself and others.

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Authoritarian leadership styles and performance: a systematic literature review and research agenda

2022, Management Review Quarterly

Although authoritarian leadership styles are often associated with negative performance, work climate deterioration, increased power distance, and centralized control, contradictory empirical evidence has emerged in the literature. In this paper, we perform a systematic literature review with three aims: (1) understand the effects of authoritarian leadership styles on performance, (2) study the temporal and geographical evolution of the scientific debate, and (3) establish a research agenda for the future. The results show that in the last two decades, the interest for the field has shifted from Western to Eastern countries. Moreover, many authors encourage leaders to increase or decrease their degree of authoritarian leadership depending on the context to more effectively connect leadership with performance. Therefore, leadership should be studied in light of a more complex approach that considers hybrid leadership styles and their effects on performance. Finally, we discuss our st...

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Authoritarian leadership and nurse presenteeism: the role of workload and leader identification

1 Business School, Henan University, Kaifeng, China

2 Institute of Psychology and Behavior, Henan University, Kaifeng, China

Shengnan Wang

3 Department of Outpatient, Henan Provincial People’s Hospital, People’s Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China

Yongjun Zhang

4 Institute of International Education, Henan University of Animal Husbandry and Economy, Zhengzhou, China

Associated Data

The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author.

Nurses’ health in the workplace is crucial for ensuring the quality of healthcare. However, presenteeism, the behavior of working in a state of ill health, is widespread in the nursing industry. Considering that the origin of authoritarian leadership and the prevalence of presenteeism are inseparable from Chinese workplace culture, this study aimed to explore the impact and mechanism of authoritarian leadership on presenteeism.

A total of 528 nurses were recruited from four grade III level A hospitals in the present survey, which was distributed across 98 nursing teams. Participants were required to complete self-report measures on authoritarian leadership, presenteeism, workload, and leader identification. Description, correlation, and multilevel linear regressions were applied for data analysis.

The present study found that presenteeism was significantly related to participants’ demographic characteristics, such as marital status, educational level, technological title, and general health. There was a positive relationship between authoritarian leadership and presenteeism, and workload acted as a mediator in authoritarian leadership and presenteeism. Furthermore, leader identification moderated the relationship between authoritarian leadership and workload. When nurses were under high leader identification, the positive impact of authoritarian leadership on workload was reinforced.

Conclusions

This study revealed the potential antecedents and mechanisms of nurse presenteeism from the perspective of workplace culture. Results indicated that the excessive authoritarianism of leaders and the heavy workload faced by nurses may be the significant triggers for nurses’ presenteeism. The role of leader identification is not always protective, which may heighten the relationship between dark leadership and its outcomes. These observations contribute to enriching research on presenteeism and authoritarian leadership, and provide valuable insights for cultivating healthy working behaviors.

Health is a fundamental right of every human being, while also being an inevitable requirement for promoting an individual’s overall development. Employees constitute one of the most important resources of organizations [ 1 ]; thus, maintaining employees’ health is crucial for the sustainable development of organizations. However, presenteeism, the behavior of working in a state of ill health [ 2 ], has become a widespread phenomenon in the workplace, which has attracted the attention of multidisciplinary researchers in the fields of industrial and organizational psychology, occupational health psychology, epidemiology, and nursing management in recent years [ 3 ]. Presenteeism has been defined as the behavior of people who still turn up at their jobs despite complaints of ill health that should prompt rest and absence from work [ 4 ]. Its prevalence has been documented in more than a dozen countries, such as the US, Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, and China, with presenteeism rates ranging from 30% to more than 90% [ 5 ]. Existing studies have shown that nurses tend to experience a high incidence of presenteeism [ 4 , 6 ], despite being equipped with abundant health knowledge and high levels of health literacy [ 7 ]. For example, the occurrence of presenteeism among Dutch nurses reached 50% [ 8 ], and the overall presenteeism rate was 85.5% among nursing students in the USA, Japan, and South Korea [ 9 ]. Whereas the incidence of presenteeism among Chinese nurses reached 94.25% [ 7 ]. Furthermore, nurses working under unhealthy conditions (i.e., presenteeism) tends to lead to a series of negative consequences for the health and productivity of individuals, safety of their patients, and development of organizations. For instance, it may affect the healthy recovery of nurses [ 10 ], increase the number of falls in patients and drug errors [ 11 ], and cause financial burden and productivity loss in medical organizations [ 7 ].

Considering the severely negative outcomes that nurses’ presenteeism can cause in multiple fields, it is essential to explore its occurrence mechanism. Previous research has preliminarily examined leader-related factors that are closely related to presenteeism, such as leader behavior, leader pressures, and leader–follower relationships [ 12 – 14 ]. Moreover, the impact of leadership on subordinates’ behaviors is also noticeable in that leadership would likely play a vital role in shaping the healthy work behaviors of subordinates. Limited empirical research showed that health-promoting leadership and supportive leadership behavior were conducive for reducing the incidence of employees’ presenteeism [ 15 , 16 ]. From the theory of paternalistic leadership [ 17 ], the work team is analogous to a family in which a leader acts as the father with two typical characteristics, majesty and mercy, while the subordinates play the role of a child, thereby reflecting the concept of “superior and inferior” in traditional Chinese culture. To some extent, supportive leadership behaviors and health-promoting leadership are more similar to the merciful father side of leaders, which provides guidance and supports work resources for subordinates. However, nursing management is also characterized by a strict rank and authority that embodies the majestic father side of leaders, and its role mechanism on presenteeism has not been extensively examined. To understand the entire picture of the influence of leaders on subordinates in the Chinese cultural context, this study mainly examined the impact mechanism of authoritarian leadership on nurses’ presenteeism. Authoritarian leadership refers to a leadership style that emphasizes the use of authority to control one’s subordinates [ 18 ], which requires employees to obey and follow the leader’s teachings to ensure efficient operation of the organization [ 19 ]. Hence, the authoritarian leadership prevalent in the nursing field may encourage nurses to prioritize their career over their health, leading to presenteeism.

Existing studies have demonstrated that leaders’ particular behaviors or leadership style can inherently be either stressful or positive for subordinates, and can consequently influence their levels of stress and affective wellbeing [ 20 ]. According to the main features of authoritarian leadership, authoritarian leaders expect unquestioning obedience, thereby controlling information and restricting subordinates’ autonomy [ 21 ], which can lead to more job demands for subordinates. Moreover, previous research has demonstrated that a heavy workload is a crucial factor in the occurrence of presenteeism [ 8 , 22 ]. Thus, authoritarian leadership may have an indirect impact on presenteeism through increasing employees’ workload. Meanwhile, identification with leaders implies that the employees consider the leader as a self-reference point or model of self-definition, and have acceptance of the leader’s perception and attitude [ 23 ]. When subordinates strongly identify with their leader, they would respect them, feel proud of them, and will be more likely to exhibit behaviors that are encouraged by the leader [ 24 ]. Therefore, when nurses have high identification with their leader, they may accept more organizational tasks and a heavier workload, as expected by the authoritarian leader. In contrast, when subordinates rarely identify with leaders, despite their workload being affected by authoritarian leaders, they hardly take the initiative to undertake additional tasks according to authoritarian leaders’ expectations. As a consequence, the correlation between authoritarian leadership and workload would be stronger under high leader identification rather than low, and leader identification may moderate the relationship between authoritarian leadership and workload. In summary, the present study aims to explore the occurrence mechanism of presenteeism and focused on the impact of authoritarian leadership in the Chinese workplace culture, which would contribute to examining the impact of a leader’s authoritative side on presenteeism and enrich the application of paternalistic leadership theory. Furthermore, this study draws an overview of the relational mechanism of authoritarian leadership and presenteeism through the combination of the paternalistic leadership theory and conservation of resources theory, which would be instructive in the effective implementation of nursing management to prevent and reduce nurse presenteeism.

Authoritarian leadership and nurse’s presenteeism

Presenteeism is more prevalent among nurses, compared with other occupational groups; this could be attributed to the characteristics of nursing work, such as high stress, night shift work, and low substitutability [ 4 , 25 , 26 ]. Previous studies have indicated that the prevalence of presenteeism reached 94.25% among Chinese nurses [ 7 ]. Furthermore, multiple negative consequences result from presenteeism among nurses who undertake vital tasks in the healthy development of nationals. For example, nurse presenteeism could impair their health and well-being [ 27 ], pose a high risk to their patients and work environment [ 25 ], and even cause productivity and economic losses to organizations and society [ 7 , 28 ]. Therefore, paying attention to nurses’ presenteeism and its causes would be conducive to promoting individuals’ health and the quality of healthcare services.

In the work-related value system embedded in the Confucian tradition of China, although some effort-related work values (e.g., endurance, persistence, and hard work) may enhance work outcomes among employees, they could also contribute to a “long-hour working culture” and the high prevalence of presenteeism [ 29 ]. Moreover, the Chinese culture also attaches importance to hierarchy; therefore, the relationship between leaders and subordinates follows a superior/inferior rationale, wherein leaders control the resources and fate of subordinates [ 30 ], which nourishes authoritarian leadership. Based on the theory of paternalistic leadership, the typical characteristics of authoritarian leaders could be considered as comprising four aspects: the autocratic style that manifests as grabbing power, controlling information, and strictly monitoring subordinates; derogate the ability of subordinates that manifests as willful disregard for subordinates’ contributions and suggestions; image decoration that manifests as manipulating information to create a good image; and instructional behaviors that manifest as emphasis on the importance of performance and providing guidance to ensure subordinates high performance [ 18 ]. Existing research indicates that the effect of authoritarian leadership on organizations and subordinates is controversial. On one side, an authoritarian leader is dedicated to ensuring the efficient operation of an organization, demonstrates high performance standards for subordinates, and promotes subordinates to agree with and complete assignments [ 18 , 31 ], which may result in rapid completion of tasks, performing work accurately, and meeting the organizational performance standards in a timely manner. On the flip side, an authoritarian leader is canonical and unchallenged while strictly controlling their subordinates and berating dissent [ 18 ]. From the perspective of subordinates, the strict requirements and tight monitoring from authoritarian leaders tend to trigger feelings of uncertainty and decrease the subordinates’ psychological safety [ 32 , 33 ]. As a result, when employees feel sick, to relieve the sense of insecurity, they are inclined to resort to presenteeism [ 26 ]. Combined with the conservation of resources theory [ 34 ], the underlying threats of psychological resource loss that evocated from the strict requirements and tight monitoring of authoritarian leaders would increase pressure and tension for subordinates. When individuals are in poor health, presenteeism would be considered an effective way to maintain the existing resources and confront the psychological threat from strict controls and intensive surveillance. Moreover, authoritarian leaders signal a strong disregard for the interests and perspectives of their subordinates [ 35 , 36 ], consequently neglecting the health complaints of subordinates and encourage those with poor health to guard collective benefits, thereby generating more presenteeism behaviors of subordinates. Consequently, we proposed the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1: Authoritarian leadership would be positively associated with nurses’ presenteeism.

Mediation effect of workload

According to the conservation of resources theory [ 37 ], people strive to retain, protect, and build resources, and psychological stress occurs with the potential or actual loss of these valued resources. Resources refer to those objects, conditions, personal characteristics, and energies that are valued by the individual or that serve as a means for the attainment of these objects, conditions, personal characteristics, or energies. Workload, a stressor in a work environment, consumes psychological, physical, or other valued personal resources. It represents a demand pressed on employees that is only met through the continual consumption of resources [ 38 ], which reflects the work demands that individuals perceive as being placed upon them [ 39 ]. From this perspective, when an individual is in poor health, presenteeism can allow them to maintain the existing resource level to cope with the loss of job-related resources. Continuing to work when sick would be an effective way to capitalize on other available resources. In other words, since heavy workloads have to be met in order to perform adequately, employees will be inclined to do everything they can to meet these demands so that their performance remains at the desired level [ 8 ]. Existing empirical research has also demonstrated that workloads exhibited strong positive correlations with presenteeism, whether in the general perceived workload or the quantitative demands placed on individual [ 8 , 22 , 40 ]. Therefore, the potential resource threatens that heavy workload brought is likely to be a vital trigger of presenteeism.

Excessive demands imposed by the organization or leader are likely to result in work overload for subordinates [ 41 ]. As one of three elements in paternalistic leadership, a typical leadership style in Chinese societies, authoritarian leadership emphasizes leaders’ awe-inspiring behaviors, including powerfully subduing their subordinates, authority and control, intention hiding, rigorousness, and doctrine [ 18 ]. On one hand, the characteristics of strong pressure and high control among authoritarian leaders may increase employees’ job pressure and decrease their resources [ 42 ]. Following the conservation of resources theory, such stressed leadership tends to trigger resource threats as well as individual stress responses such as burnout, which may increase individuals’ sense of overload. In contrast, the theory of paternalistic leadership indicates that authoritarian leaders emphasize their authoritative position and power to perform tasks regardless of subordinates’ conditions [ 32 ]; thus, authoritarian leaders are oriented toward work results and tend to express elevated job demands to their subordinates. Consequently, authoritarian leadership may increase nurses’ workloads, which may further facilitate the prevalence of presenteeism. The following second hypothesis was proposed:

Hypothesis 2: Authoritarian leadership would increase nurses’ presenteeism via aggravating their workload.

Moderation effect of leader identification

Leader identification concerns a person’s perception of “oneness” with the leader [ 43 ], which reflects the extent to which a follower’s beliefs about the leader are self-defining or self-referential [ 44 , 45 ]. To a certain degree, the identification of leaders plays a role in the effectiveness of leadership [ 46 ]. Since the leader is the spokesperson of their organization, the identification of leaders leads to employees being more willing to abide by the norms and values of the organization [ 47 ]. Subordinates with high leader identification are likely to accept leaders’ goals as their own and conform to their will [ 48 ]. Meanwhile, when subordinates identify with their leader, they tend to align their interests with those of the leader and produce a strong desire to contribute to the leader’s goals and success [ 49 ]. When nurses have high identification with their leader, they may shoulder more organizational tasks and job demands on their own initiative to meet the expectations and interests of highly authoritarian leaders. The more work stress and tasks they seek to undertake under such conditions, the heavier workload they would perceive invisibly. On the contrary, the workload of nurses who have weak identification with their leader may be less susceptible to the will of authoritarian leaders, due to the bottom level of initiative for contributing to the leader’s success. Accordingly, leader identification would play a moderating role between authoritarian leadership and workload, and the third hypothesis was proposed as follows:

Hypothesis 3: Leader identification would moderate the relationship between authoritarian leadership and workload, and for the nurses with high level of leader identification, the relationship would be strengthened.

As outlined above, to reveal the relationship between the localization leadership, in the Chinese cultural context, and nurses’ presenteeism, the present study was designed to explore the direct cross-level influence of authoritarian leadership on subordinates’ presenteeism. Simultaneously, the indirect impact of authoritarian leadership on nurses’ presenteeism was also examined, specifically regarding the mediated effect of workload and the moderated effect of leader identification. The integrated conceptual model is illustrated in Fig. 1 .

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Hypothesized conceptual model

Procedure and participants

In the present study, paper questionnaires were distributed to 660 nurses of 110 nursing teams from four large grade III level A hospitals located in Henan Province, China, using convenience sampling methods. The grade III level A hospital refers to a medical and prevention technology center with comprehensive medical, teaching, and scientific research capabilities, representing advanced medical level and aiming to provide the highest level of medical and health services in the region. The investigation was conducted from September to December of 2020. Prior to the investigation, the research group selected target hospitals and contacted related nursing management departments to introduce the research purpose and plan. After obtaining permission from the hospital’s nursing management, two investigation teams were formed comprising two researchers in each team who are graduate students of psychology and have been uniformly trained. Then researchers arrived at each department, explained instructions for completing the questionnaires, and distributed the paper questionnaires, which had been bound and coded in advance, to the participants, with the guidance and coordination of nurses in the sampling hospital. Finally, the completed questionnaires were returned to the researchers by the participants, following which a simple check to ensure the quality of data was performed. All participants provided informed consent before completing the questionnaire.

After data arrangement and data cleaning, 528 valid responses from 98 nursing teams remained, and the effective response rate was 80.00%. Among these nurses, 516 (97.73%) were female, 316 (59.85%) were married, and 404 (76.51%) had a bachelor’s degree or higher. The average age of the nurses was 30.16 years ( SD = 4.83), and their average tenure in nursing was 8.31 years ( SD = 5.23). Regarding technical titles, 97 (16.29%) had the title of nurse, 196 (37.12%) had the title of nurse practitioner, and 230 (43.56%) had the title of nurse-in-charge or above. The department where they worked covered internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, emergency, and others.

General demographic data, such as gender, age, tenure, marital status, educational level, technological title, and general health, were collected. Age and tenure were directly filled in the questionnaire and analyzed as continuous variables. Other information was collected in the form of multiple choices. Gender was divided into male and female; marital status fell into unmarried and married. The educational level was divided into three categories—college and below, bachelor, and master and above. The technical title was divided into three categories, namely nurse and below, nurse practitioner, and nurse-in-charge and above. General health was measured with one item (In general, how would you say your health has been in the past six months?) on a three-point response scale ranging from 1 (“good”) to 3 (“bad”).

Authoritarian leadership was measured using the Authoritarian Leadership Scale, which is the central subscale of the Paternalistic Leadership Scale developed by Cheng et al. [ 42 ]. The scale contains eight items rated on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 7 (“strongly agree”). A sample item is “Our team leader (chief nurse) decided all matters individually.” In this study, the Cronbach’s α for this scale was 0.89 and the McDonald’s ω was 0.89.

Leader identification was assessed using the Leader Identification Questionnaire developed by Shamir et al. [ 50 ], which contained seven items rated on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 5 (“strongly agree”). A sample item is “I trust my leader’s (chief nurse) judgment and decisions completely.” This questionnaire has been widely adopted in the Chinese context and has exhibited good reliability and validity. In this study, the Cronbach’s α for this scale was 0.96 and the McDonald’s ω coefficient was 0.97.

Nurses’ workload was evaluated using the Role Overload Scale developed by Peterson et al. [ 51 ], which contains five items rated on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 5 (“strongly agree”). A sample item is “It will be necessary to reduce some of my work duties.” The scale has been widely adopted in the Chinese context to measure workload and has exhibited good reliability and validity [ 52 ]. In this study, the Cronbach’s α for this scale was 0.92 and the McDonald’s ω coefficient was 0.92.

Presenteeism was surveyed using the Nurse Presenteeism Questionnaire (NPQ) [ 53 ], which contains 11 items and aims to measure the occurrence of presenteeism among nurses. An example item is, “Although you had a fever, you still persevered in going to work.” Participants were required to evaluate the frequency with which they had experienced presenteeism during the past half a year, and each item was rated on a four-point scale (0 = “never,” 1 = “once,” 2 = “2–5 times,” 3 = “more than 5 times”), with high scores describing more frequent instances of presenteeism. In this study, the Cronbach’s α for this scale was 0.94 and the McDonald’s ω coefficient was 0.94.

Reliability and validity analysis

The measurement items in this study are from maturity scales and have considerable content validity. In our study, both the Cronbach’s α and McDonald’s ω coefficients for all scales exceed 0.9, demonstrating excellent internal consistency reliability. Furthermore, confirmatory factor analysis was performed separately for each scale after passing the KMO and Bartlett’s test of sphericity. The results showed favorable construct validity and convergent validity indicating that all items fall on the corresponding factor, and the standardized factor loading, average variance extracted (AVE), and composite reliability (CR) were acceptable. Table Table1 1 shows the results of the reliability test and confirmatory factor analysis for each scale used in this study. Additionally, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted for all items to test the discriminant validity of concepts. Results showed that the four-factors model has a good fit (χ2/ df = 2.67, CFI = 0.95, TLI = 0.94, GFI = 0.87, NFI = 0.92, IFI = 0.95, RMSEA = 0.06, SRMR = 0.041), which indicates good discriminant validity of the scales.

The results of the reliability and validity analysis

Statistical analysis

The software G*power version 3.1 was used to calculate the minimum sample size required for the hypothesized model. The effect size f 2 was set at 0.15, the significance level ( α ) was set at 0.05, the power was set at 0.95, and the number of total predictors was set at 3. Results showed that 119 samples were required to validate the hypotheses of this study, which indicates that the 528 samples included in our study were completely adequate for statistical analysis. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS version 22.0), Mplus, and HAD software were used for data sorting and analysis [ 54 ]. Specifically, descriptive statistics were applied to analyze the demographic and research variables. Chi-square or t- tests were used to evaluate presenteeism against the demographic variables. Subsequently, combined with the content of this study, the applicability of the data was assessed, such as the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and the within-group agreement (r WG ) of between-group variables. Finally, the correlation among the variables was evaluated, and a multilevel linear regression was conducted to verify the hypothesized model of this study.

Applicability of research data

Considering that all questionnaires in this study were completed by nurses, common method bias was analyzed by controlling for the effects of an unmeasured latent method factor [ 55 ]. A latent method factor was constructed based on the original four-factors structure, and all items were allowed to be loaded on it. The latent factor did not correlate with the other factors. The variance explained by the latent method factor was 6.76%, which was lower than the 25% median score reported in previous studies [ 56 ]. Therefore, serious common method biases were not observed in this study.

Although the questionnaires were filled in by nurses, authoritarian leadership was a variable at the team level, and data aggregation was required before the regression analysis. We evaluated within-team consistency before aggregating authoritarian leadership at the between-team level. The results showed that the mean within-group agreement r WG for authoritarian leadership was 0.89, ICC (1) was 0.22, and ICC (2) was 0.60. If r WG > 0.70, ICC (1) > 0.12, and ICC (2) > 0.50, significant differences exist in the between-group variances, and these variables can be aggregated [ 57 ]. In addition, the ICC (1) of nurse workload and presenteeism were 0.28 and 0.27, respectively. Thus, the hierarchical linear model is suitable for examining the impact of authoritarian leadership on workload and presenteeism across groups.

Nurses’ presenteeism and differences in demographic characteristics

The overall mean score of the NPQ was 1.42 ± 0.85. Table Table2 2 presents the descriptive results and differences in NPQ scores according to nurses’ demographic characteristics. As shown in Table Table1, 1 , nurses with different marital status exhibited significant variance in NPQ scores; more married nurses preferred to work while sick, compared with unmarried nurses ( t = -2.26, p < 0.05). Moreover, nurses of different educational level ( F = 3.46, p < 0.05), technological title ( F = 6.73, p < 0.01), and general health ( F = 33.10, p < 0.001) had significant differences in NPQ scores. Further post-hoc analysis indicated that the presenteeism of nurses with a bachelor’s degree was significantly higher than that of nurses with lower educational levels. The higher their title and the worse their health status, the higher the prevalence of presenteeism among the nurses.

Differences of NPQ scores in demographic characteristics

Correlation analysis of research variables

Table Table3 3 presents a correlation matrix for each research variable. As shown in Table Table2, 2 , leader identification was negatively correlated with workload ( r = -0.23, p < 0.01) and presenteeism ( r = -0.13, p < 0.01), while workload was positively correlated with presenteeism ( r = 0.47, p < 0.01).

Correlations among research variables

N = 528, nurses nested in 98 teams; Age and tenure were continuous variables; Gender: 1 = male, 2 = female; Marital status: 1 = unmarried, 2 = married; Educational level: 1 = college and below, 2 = bachelor, 3 = master and above; Technical title: 1 = nurse and below, 2 = nurse practitioner, 3 = nurse-in-charge and above; General health: 1 = good, 2 = middle 3 = bad; * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

Hypothesis testing

Table Table4 4 shows the results of the hierarchical linear model. Considering the significant correlation between demographic characteristics and presenteeism, we controlled for these demographic variables in the models. Furthermore, correlation analysis showed that tenure was highly correlated with age, marital status, and technical title ( r > 0.6). Hence, to avoid high collinearity in these demographic variables, we used tenure, educational level, and general health as control variables in the subsequent models.

Results of the hierarchical linear model

The numeric in parentheses are standard errors ( SE ) of regression coefficients ( γ ); AL Authoritarian leadership, LI Leader identification; * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

As shown in Table Table4, 4 , authoritarian leadership could influence presenteeism across levels (Model 5: γ = 0.24, p < 0.001). Therefore, Hypothesis 1 was supported. The results of the hierarchical linear model indicated that authoritarian leadership had a positive impact on nurses’ workload (Model 2: γ = 0.25, p < 0.001), whereas workload had a positive impact on presenteeism (Model 6: γ = 0.28, p < 0.001), which rudimentarily supported the mediation effect of workload. Furthermore, the cross-level mediation-lower-level mediator model was established, which adopted multilevel structural equation model in the software of Mplus, and the product-of-coefficients method was used to evaluate the mediation effect of workload on the relationship between authoritarian leadership and presenteeism. Results showed that the indirect effect in the between level was 0.21 that the 95% confidence interval was [0.089, 0.327], exclusive zero; the indirect effect in the within level was 0.11 and that in the 95% confidence interval was [0.047, 0.164], exclusive zero, which indicated the mediation effect of workload was significant in both the between and within levels. Therefore, Hypothesis 2 was supported. In addition, the results demonstrated that leader identification moderated the relationship between authoritarian leadership and nurses’ workload (Model 3: γ = 0.25, p < 0.01). Therefore, leader identification moderated the effects of authoritarian leadership and workload, and Hypothesis 3 was supported.

The diagram of the moderating effect was plotted to intuitively present the role of leader identification in the relationship between authoritarian leadership and nurses’ workload (see Fig. 2 ). In the present study, leader identification was divided into high ( M + 1 SD ) and low groups ( M —1 SD ), and a simple slope test was conducted. The results indicated a positive impact of authoritarian leadership on workload, regardless of whether the subject belonged to the low ( γ = 0.18, p < 0.05) or high ( γ = 0.41, p < 0.01) groups of leader identification. With an increase in leader identification, the effect of authoritarian leadership on workload gradually increased.

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Moderation effect of leader identification between authoritarian leadership and nurses’ workload

General discussion

The high incidence of presenteeism has been widely proven among nurses. Although the positive effects of presenteeism on performance evaluation have been examined in recent research [ 58 ], providing healthcare services under poor health may interfere with the work efficiency of healthcare professionals, with the consequent risk to patients and impairment of the quality of healthcare delivery [ 10 , 59 ]. On the contrary, sickness absence may sometimes be an effective way to recuperate from poor health and regain high work efficiency, although it would challenge the daily management of human resources and its implementation would be subject to various factors [ 60 ]. The present study emphasized nurses’ presenteeism based on the Chinese workplace culture and examined the relationship mechanism between authoritarian leadership and nurse presenteeism. The results suggest that authoritarian leadership has a significant positive correlation with nurse presenteeism, that authoritarian leadership could indirectly increase presenteeism via aggravating subordinates’ workload, and that leader identification played a moderating effect between authoritarian leadership and workload. The present study is expected to contribute to scientifically preventing and managing nurse presenteeism to improve the quality of nursing service.

First, the present study indicated that presenteeism varied significantly according to participants’ demographic characteristics, such as marital status, educational level, technological title, and general health. The results illustrate that presenteeism frequently occurs in married nurses rather than in unmarried nurses, which is consistent with previous studies. This may be attributed to the fact that married nurses are more likely to face work-family conflicts, as they take on multiple roles and functions, such as taking responsibility for the partner or parents, which may create motivation and pressure to work hard [ 40 , 61 ]. In addition, nurses with higher educational levels and technological titles exhibit more presenteeism behaviors, which could be explained by their irreplaceability for certain tasks. These nurses tended to be attached to responsibilities that are difficult for others to fulfil; they were also highly controlled by their work tasks and felt greater time pressure, thus persisting to work even in ill health [ 62 ]. The negative relationship between health status and presenteeism was proven to be consistent with the results of this investigation [ 63 ]. Even from the perspective of the connotation of presenteeism, presenteeism has to occur when individuals have health problems. Therefore, health status is the most important prerequisite of presenteeism. In addition, the present study also found that presenteeism was positively correlated with age and tenure. When viewed through the lens of the Chinese workplace culture, older and longer-tenured nurses have a higher acceptance of the effort-related work values and collectivism that are advocated in the organization. Along with activating the work motivation of individuals and enhancing work outcomes for their organizations, these values also contribute to the long-hour working culture that promotes individuals to work under unhealthy conditions. Meanwhile, the older and longer-tenure nurses seemed to form a relatively negative moral perspective of work absences, thus participating in presenteeism to avoid absenteeism [ 64 ]. Another cause could be their sense of fear that frequent absenteeism might cause them to lose their jobs; thus, they tended to force themselves to work even in ill health [ 61 , 65 ].

Second, the results confirmed the positive relationship between authoritarian leadership and nurses’ presenteeism and the mediating effect of workload in the relationship between authoritarian leadership and presenteeism, thus supporting Hypotheses 1 and 2. According to the conservation of resources theory [ 37 ], tension and stress responses could be caused by a lack of recourse and threatened by the resources; thus, nurses may have been motivated to avoid further loss of resources. Authoritarian leaders have very few internal constraints but an underlying need to control; further, they allocate resources to subordinates, often through personal decision [ 42 ]. Therefore, such a leadership style may aggravate the threat of resource loss for subordinates, which could lead them to insist on working even when ill to cover the shortage of resources. Similarly, the theory of paternalistic leadership demonstrated that strong authoritarian leadership invariably manifests in behaviors such as ignoring subordinate’s suggestions, belittling their dedication, and insisting on absolute obedience, which is an antecedent factor of abusive supervision [ 21 ]. In accordance with the theory of resource conservation, authoritarian leadership is easily considered a stressor for subordinates owing to the strong control and high pressure they experience. The strict requirements regarding work performance of authoritarian leaders bring tension and a stressed perception of work requirements to subordinates. As a consequence, heavy workload would be perceived by subordinates with authoritarian leaders, and the presenteeism of subordinates would be indirectly increased due to an increase in workload. These observations may provide valuable insights for healthcare-related specialists and policymakers involved in training and selecting leaders in nursing, as excessive authoritarianism and centralization play an adverse role in healthy working behavior and the development of a healthy working environment.

Third, the present study found that leader identification played a moderating role between authoritarian leadership and nurses’ presenteeism, thus supporting Hypothesis 3. It is noteworthy that leadership effectiveness has been reinforced by leader identification in previous studies [ 46 , 66 ]. However, the role of leader identification is not always positive and protective, and the relationship between dark leadership and its outcomes could also be heightened from the observations in this research. This is because high leader identification avail to play the model role of leaders [ 67 ], regardless of whether the outcomes of the leadership are dark or bright. When subordinates under authoritarian leadership are faced with high leader identification, they prefer to experience the heavier workload that authoritarian leaders expect. Therefore, the impact of leaders on subordinate nurses’ working behavior needs to be further explored, and an effective management system is required to ensure nursing quality and nurse health.

Theoretical implications

The findings of this study have both theoretical and practical implications. Although research on presenteeism has been conducted recently, scholars from multiple fields have attempted to form a comprehensive and thorough understanding of presenteeism. In this study, we emphasized the impact of authoritarian leadership on presenteeism, thereby enriching the literature on presenteeism and authoritarian leadership in the following ways. First, previous studies were mainly conducted at the individual level [ 68 , 69 ]. Despite studies noticing the influence of team-related factors (such as leader behaviors and team climates) on presenteeism, only a handful of studies have been conducted using a cross-level design [ 12 , 70 ]. This study clarified the cross-level impact of authoritarian leadership on presenteeism, thereby elucidating the antecedents of presenteeism and enriching the outcomes of authoritarian leadership. Second, the origin of authoritarian leadership and prevalence of presenteeism are inseparable from the Chinese workplace culture. In this study, an integrated model that combines a typical leadership and presenteeism was formulated to explain the occurrence of presenteeism from a novel perspective. In this research framework, the mediation effect of workload and moderation effect of leader identification were also considered to explain the relationship between authoritarian leadership and presenteeism. Meanwhile, the present study’s findings will not only enrich empirical research on presenteeism but also that on authoritarian leadership in occupational health psychology and other related areas.

Practical implications

This study has three main practical implications. First, the research variables were selected from participants’ cultural context, which contributes to preventing and managing nurses’ presenteeism from a cultural perspective. Thus, we suggest that managers in the health and medicine fields should be made aware of the occurrence mechanism of presenteeism in their specific workplace cultures, particularly in a society that attaches great importance to hard work and working overtime [ 61 ]. Second, the participants in this study were nurses, who are some of the most critical actors in universal healthcare; however, presenteeism is frequent in this profession [ 4 , 71 ]. Keeping a watchful eye on presenteeism in the nursing field could enhance the quality of nursing care and contribute to the implementation of the “Healthy China Initiative.” Finally, this research analyzed the factors influencing presenteeism and further inspected the impact mechanism of authoritarian leadership on presenteeism. These observations indicate that excessive control of subordinates could promote the incidence of presenteeism and impede the progress of healthcare services. Hence, providing more valuable resources for nurses and enforcing a flexible management system are needed to decrease the prevalence of presenteeism.

Limitations and future research

Although this study enriches relevant research on authoritarian leadership and presenteeism, its potential limitations should be considered. The first is the universality of the sample. Although the participants were recruited from central China, which is often regarded as the epitome of China in multiple aspects [ 72 ], they were all recruited from the same province; thus, the sample size and the region of participants should be expanded in future research. Next, the present study examined the influencing mechanism of authoritarian leadership on nurses’ presenteeism; however, it is only one type of leadership, thereby making the findings inadequate to establish a comprehensive framework of the impact of leadership on nurses’ presenteeism. In addition, the importance of social interactions for presenteeism has been verified by recent studies, which began paying attention to the impact of colleagues’ factors on presenteeism [ 73 ]. In future research, more leadership styles and behaviors should be examined, along with what role social interactions play in nurses’ presenteeism, by building an integrated model comprising the factors of leaders, colleagues, and employees. Meanwhile, the cultural foundation underlying the occurrence of presenteeism should be explored further. Besides, although the cross-level role of leaders in presenteeism was preliminarily verified among nurses, this study collected information from one source. It is noteworthy to explore the relationship between presenteeism and behavioral congruence exhibited by the leader vis-à-vis what subordinates perceived.

Existing studies have confirmed the serious adverse effects of nurses’ presenteeism on individual health, patient safety, and organizations. This study examined the antecedents and mechanisms of nurses’ presenteeism from the perspective of workplace culture. The results demonstrated that authoritarian leadership directly increased the incidence of presenteeism among nurses. Simultaneously, authoritarian leadership contributed to the workload of nurses and indirectly increased the occurrence of presenteeism. Leader identification moderated the relationship between authoritarian leadership and nurses’ workload. Our findings suggest that leaders excessively control resources, which has the disadvantage of shaping their subordinates’ healthy working behaviors.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the support from our families and school partners.

Authors’ contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work. YL is the principal investigator for the study and generated the idea and designed the study. GS and WW were the primary writers of the manuscript and approved all changes. GS and SW supported the data input and data analysis. YZ and SG supported the data collection and critically reviewed the manuscript. All authors were involved in developing, editing, reviewing, and providing feedback for this manuscript and have approved the final version to be published.

This research supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 72101083).

Availability of data and materials

Declarations.

This study was approved by the ethics committee of Henan Provincial Key Laboratory of Psychology and Behavior (the approval number: 20200526001). We confirm that all methods were carried out in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations. Written informed consent to participate in the present study was provided by all participants.

Not applicable.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Guest Essay

Trump’s Backers Are Determined Not to Blow It This Time Around

Two woman — one dressed in light blue, the other in black — sit on either side of a chair that has a pillow with “U.S.A.” on it and a flag design with two patches that read “Trump Tribe” and “Trump Tribe Texas.”

By Thomas B. Edsall

Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality.

In a rare display of unity, more than 100 conservative tax-exempt organizations have joined forces in support of Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda, forming a $2 billion-plus political machine.

Together, these organizations are constructing a detailed postelection agenda, lining up prospective appointees and backing Trump in his legal battles.

Most of the work performed by these nonprofit groups is conducted behind closed doors. Unlike traditional political organizations, these groups do not disclose their donors and must reveal only minimal information on expenditures. In many cases, even this minimal information will not be available until after the 2024 election.

Nonprofits like these are able to maintain a cloak of secrecy by positioning themselves as charitable organizations under section 501(c)(3 ) of the tax code or as social welfare organizations under section 501(c)(4 ).

Not only are these tax-exempt organizations attractive to large contributors who want to keep their roles secret; 501(c)(3) groups have an added benefit: Donors can deduct their gifts from their taxable incomes.

The benefits don’t end there. The minimal reporting requirements imposed on political nonprofits lend themselves to self-dealing, particularly the payment of high salaries and consulting fees, and the award of contracts to for-profit companies owned by executives of the charitable groups.

“The growth of these groups is largely flying under the radar,” Sean Westwood , a political scientist at Dartmouth, wrote by email in response to my inquiry. “This level of coordination is unprecedented.”

Theda Skocpol , a professor of government and sociology at Harvard, replying by email to my inquiry, wrote, “These are detailed plans to take full control of various federal departments and agencies from the very start and to use every power available to implement radical ethnonationalist regulations and action plans.”

This activity, Skocpol continued, amounts to a “full prep for an authoritarian takeover, buttressed by the control Trump and Trumpists now have over the G.O.P. and its apparatuses.”

In this drive by the right to shape policy, should Trump win, there are basically three power centers.

The first is made up of groups pieced together by Leonard Leo , a co-chairman of the Federalist Society, renowned for his role in the conservative takeover of the Supreme Court and of many key posts in the federal and state judiciaries.

If cash is the measure, Leo is the heavyweight champion. Two years ago, my Times colleagues Kenneth P. Vogel and Shane Goldmacher disclosed that a little-known Chicago billionaire, Barre Seid , who made his fortune manufacturing electronic equipment, turned $1.6 billion over to the Marble Freedom Trust , a tax-exempt organization created by Leo in 2021, helping to turn it into a powerhouse.

The second nexus of right-wing tax-exempt groups is the alliance clustered on Capitol Hill around the intersection of Third Street Southeast and Independence Avenue — offices and townhouses that fashion themselves as Patriots’ Row .

Former Trump campaign aides, lawyers and executive appointees, including Mark Meadows , Stephen Miller , Edward Corrigan and Cleta Mitchell , run these organizations. After Trump was defeated in 2020, the cash flow to these groups surged.

The third center is coordinated by the Heritage Foundation , which, under the leadership of Kevin D. Roberts , who assumed its presidency in 2021, has become a committed ally of the MAGA movement.

Heritage, in turn, has created Project 2025 in preparation for a potential Trump victory in November. In a statement of purpose, the project declared:

It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on Day 1 of the next conservative administration.

There are more than 100 members of Project 2025, and they include not only most of the Patriots’ Row groups but also much of the Christian right and the anti-abortion movement.

In the view of Lawrence Rosenthal , the chairman and founder of the Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies, the convergence of so many conservative organizations leading up to the 2024 election marks a reconciliation, albeit partial, between the two major wings of the Republican Party: the more traditional market fundamentalists and the populist nationalists.

“In 2024,” Rosenthal wrote by email,

the free-market fundamentalists are making their peace on a more basic level than simply tax cuts. Their historic long-term goal — rolling back the federal government to pre-New Deal levels — corresponds to the nationalists’ goal of “deconstruction of the administrative state.” This is what the likes of the now thoroughly MAGA-fied Heritage Foundation is putting together. Recasting the administrative state as the “deep state,” a veritable launchpad for conspiracy-mongering innuendo, easily brings the populists along for the ride despite a “What’s the Matter With Kansas”-like abandonment of their own economic interests on the part of a sector of the population particularly dependent on the range of targets like Social Security and Medicare that the administrative-state deconstructors have in their sights. In return the populists are seeing avatars of Christian nationalism in unprecedented roles of political power — to wit, the current speaker of the House.

The populist-nationalist wing has an agenda that “goes beyond what the free-market fundamentalists have had in mind,” Rosenthal continued:

The model here is by now explicitly Orbanism in Hungary — what Viktor Orban personally dubbed “illiberal democracy.” By now, MAGA at all levels — CPAC, media, Congress, Trump himself — has explicitly embraced Orban. Illiberal regimes claim legitimacy through elections but systematically curtail civil liberties and checks and balances, structurally recasting political institutions so as to make their being voted out of office almost unrealizable.

The centerpiece of Leo’s empire of right-wing groups is the Marble Freedom Trust. The trust described its mission in a 2022 report to the I.R.S.: “To maintain and expand human freedom consistent with the values and ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.”

In 2016, according to an April 2023 I.R.S. complaint against Leo filed by the Campaign for Accountability , a liberal reform advocacy group, Leo created a consulting company, BH Group, and in 2020 acquired a major ownership interest in CRC Advisors . Both are for-profit entities based in Virginia.

The Campaign for Accountability’s complaint alleges that “Leo-affiliated nonprofits” paid BH Group and CRC Advisors a total of $50.3 million from 2016 to 2020. During this period, according to the complaint, Leo’s lifestyle changed:

In August 2018, he paid off the 30-year mortgage on the McLean, Va., home, most of which was still outstanding on the payoff date. Later that same year, Leonard Leo bought a $3.3 million summer home with 11 bedrooms in Mount Desert, an affluent seaside village on the coast of Maine, using, in part, a 20-year mortgage of $2,310,000. Leonard Leo paid off the entire balance of that mortgage just one year later in July 2019. In September 2021, Leonard Leo bought a second home in Mount Desert for $1.65 million.

The complaint was based partly on a March 2023 Politico story by Heidi Przybyla. She wrote that her “investigation, based on dozens of financial, property and public records dating from 2000 to 2021, found that Leo’s lifestyle took a lavish turn beginning in 2016,” citing Leo’s purchases of the Maine properties, along with “four new cars, private school tuition for his children, hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to Catholic causes and a wine locker at Morton’s Steakhouse.”

In October 2023, Przybyla disclosed (also in Politico ) that Leo was refusing to cooperate with an investigation by Brian Schwalb , the attorney general for the District of Columbia, “for potentially misusing nonprofit tax laws for personal enrichment.”

In a study covering more recent data , Accountable US , another liberal reform group, reported that from 2020, when Leo acquired a share of CRC Advisors, to 2022, seven “groups with immediate ties to Leo’s network have made payments totaling at least $69.77 million to CRC Advisors.”

Those figures were confirmed by Bloomberg’s Emily Birnbaum , who reported that “the sums paid to CRC Advisors by seven nonprofit groups have doubled since Leo came aboard as co-owner and chairman in 2020.”

Leo defended the payments, telling Bloomberg that criticism of the money flowing to CRC Advisors is “baseless” and that CRC performs high-quality work. “CRC Advisors employs nearly 100 best-in-class professionals that put its clients’ money to work,” he told Bloomberg.

In the drive to set the stage for a future Trump administration, the second conservative power center is dominated by the Conservative Partnership Institute , which coordinates its own pro-Trump network.

From 2018 to 2020, the Conservative Partnership was a minor player in Washington’s right-wing community. In that period, according to its 990 report to the I.R.S., its revenues totaled $16.9 million. In the next two years, donations shot up to $80.7 million.

Seven executives at the partnership in 2022 made in excess of $300,000 a year, topped by Meadows, Trump’s last White House chief of staff, whose annual compensation at the Conservative Partnership totaled $889,687 in 2022.

The Conservative Partnership and allied groups do not disclose donors, and none of the data on how much they raised and spent in 2023 and 2024 — or the identities of grant recipients — will be available before Nov. 5, 2024, Election Day.

The Conservative Partnership, like many of its sister groups, filed its 990 reports to the I.R.S. for 2020, 2021 and 2022 on Nov. 15 of each following year. If that pattern continues, its reports covering 2023 and 2024 will not be filed until Nov. 15 of the next year.

The partnership lists its address as 300 Independence Avenue Southeast in Washington, a three-story office building on Patriots’ Row that was originally the German-American Building Association.

Groups using the same mailing address include the Center for Renewing America (“God, country and community are at the heart of this agenda”), the Election Integrity Network (“Conservative leaders, organizations, public officials and citizens dedicated to securing the legality of every American vote”), Compass Legal Group , American Creative Network (“We will redefine the future of media-related conservative collaboration”), the American Accountability Foundation (“Exposing the truth behind the people and policies of the Biden administration that threaten the freedoms of the American people”), America First Legal (“Fighting back against lawless executive actions and the radical left”), Citizens for Renewing America and Citizens for Sanity (“To defeat ‘wokeism’ and anti-critical-thinking ideologies that have permeated every sector of our country”).

Since it was formed in 2020, Stephen Miller’s America First Legal foundation has been a case study in rapid growth. In its first year, it raised $6.4 million. In 2021 this rose to $44.4 million and to $50.8 million in 2022.

America First lawyers wrote two of the amicus briefs arguing to the Supreme Court that Trump should be restored to Colorado’s ballot . In one of the briefs , America First defended Trump’s actions and language on Jan. 6, 2021:

President Trump did not “engage in” insurrection. To engage in something is to take an active, personal role in it. Comparisons in modern language abound. When news emerges that nations have “engaged in military exercises,” one expects to read that “ships and planes” have been deployed, not tweets or press releases. Similarly, if someone has been described as “engaging in violence,” one expects that the person being spoken about has himself used force on another — not that he has issued some taunt about force undertaken by a third party. Engaging in a matter and remarking publicly about it are not the same, even with matters as weighty as wars or insurrections.

While the Heritage Foundation had relatively modest revenues of $95.1 million in 2022, according to its I.R.S. filing , its Project 2025 has become an anchor of the MAGA movement.

Trump has said he does not feel bound to accept all of the Project 2025 proposals, but the weight of institutional support from the right and Trump’s lack of interest in detailed planning suggest that those proposals may well shape much of the agenda in the event of a Trump victory.

The authors of Project 2025 want to avoid a repetition of 2017, when Trump took office with scant planning and little notion of who should be appointed to key positions.

Spencer Chretien , an associate director of Project 2025, put this concern delicately in a January 2023 essay published by The American Conservative , pointedly avoiding any criticism of Trump:

In November 2016, American conservatives stood on the verge of greatness. The election of Donald Trump to the presidency was a triumph that offered the best chance to reverse the left’s incessant march of progress for its own sake. Many of the best accomplishments, though, happened only in the last year of the Trump administration, after our political appointees had finally figured out the policies and process of different agencies, and after the right personnel were finally in place.

One function of the project is to put as much ideological muscle as possible behind Trump to ensure that if he wins the White House again, he does not wander afield.

From the vantage point of the right, that muscle is impressive, ranging from Oren Cass’s populist American Compass to Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America , from the tradition-minded American Conservative to the Independent Women’s Forum .

In the foreword to the project’s nearly 1,000-page description of its 2025 agenda, “ Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise ,” Roberts, the president of Heritage, wrote:

This book is the work of the entire conservative movement. As such, the authors express consensus recommendations already forged, especially along four broad fronts that will decide America’s future: 1. Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children. 2. Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people. 3. Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders and bounty against global threats. 4. Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely — what our Constitution calls “the blessings of liberty.”

Perhaps the most impressive part of Project 2025 is the detailed and ideologically infused discussion of virtually every federal department and agency, all guided by the goal of instituting conservative policies.

Take the 53-page chapter, including 87 footnotes, focused on the Department of Health and Human Services, written by Roger Severino , the vice president for domestic policy at Heritage. The top priority of the department in January 2025, he wrote, must be “protecting life, conscience and bodily integrity.” The secretary “must ensure that all H.H.S. programs and activities are rooted in a deep respect for innocent human life from Day 1 until natural death: Abortion and euthanasia are not health care.”

Going deeper, Severino contended that the department must flatly reject “harmful identity politics that replaces biological sex with subjective notions of ‘gender identity’ and bases a person’s worth on his or her race, sex or other identities. This destructive dogma, under the guise of ‘equity,’ threatens American’s fundamental liberties as well as the health and well-being of children and adults alike.”

Severino did not stop there. In his view, the department must be in the business of “promoting stable and flourishing married families” because “in the overwhelming number of cases, fathers insulate children from physical and sexual abuse, financial difficulty or poverty, incarceration, teen pregnancy, poor educational outcomes, high school failure and a host of behavioral and psychological problems.”

Regarding the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Severino’s analysis:

By statute or regulation, C.D.C. guidance must be prohibited from taking on a prescriptive character. For example, never again should C.D.C. officials be allowed to say in their official capacity that schoolchildren “should be” masked or vaccinated or prohibited from learning in a school building. Such decisions should be left to parents and medical providers.

At the start of the book, Paul Dans , the executive director of Project 2025, pointedly wrote that “it’s not 1980,” when Heritage produced the first “Mandate for Leadership” to guide the incoming administration of Ronald Reagan. Instead, Dans argued, the United States in 2024 is at an apocalyptic moment:

The game has changed. The long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before. The task at hand to reverse this tide and restore our republic to its original moorings is too great for any one conservative policy shop to spearhead. It requires the collective action of our movement. With the quickening approach of January 2025, we have one chance to get it right.

This time, the conservative movement plans to exercise maximum surveillance over an incoming Trump administration. In other words, there will be no kidding around.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here's our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of an associate director of Project 2025. He is Spencer Chretien, not Chretian.

How we handle corrections

Thomas B. Edsall has been a contributor to the Times Opinion section since 2011. His column on strategic and demographic trends in American politics appears every Wednesday. He previously covered politics for The Washington Post. @ edsall

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The virtue of a controlling leadership style: Authoritarian leadership, work stressors, and leader power distance orientation

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Authoritarian leadership and task performance: the effects of leader-member exchange and dependence on leader

Introduction

Theoretical background and hypotheses development

Authoritarian leadership and task performance

Authoritarian leadership and LMX

Authoritarian leadership, LMX, and task performance

The moderation of subordinate dependence on leader

Research setting, participants, and procedures

Confirmatory factor analyses

Descriptive statistics

Hypotheses testing

Discussion and conclusion

Theoretical implications

Practical implications

Limitations and future directions

Availability of data and materials

Acknowledgements