The Effect Of Differential Leadership On Job Satisfaction And Its Mechanism

Differential leadership, which highlights the unique way of interpersonal interaction betweensupervisors and subordinates in Chinese organization, is an extremely special style of leadership under theculture and environment of China beyond the existing ones in western world. Differential leadershipemphasizes that Chinese supervisors treat their subordinates in various ways which is depending onpersonal relationship between them. Chinese supervisors will shows partiality to the subordinates who arecloser to them. In order to judge whether this concept is effective in China mainland, this study is carryingon as follows. Firstly, this thesis mainly utilizes relevant results of Ding-yu Chiang and Wan-chenChang’s research, which is trying to definite and measure the differential leadership in organizations underthe context of Taiwan. Secondly, some research methods are used such as literature review andquestionnaires. For the questionnaire survey,651effective participants, which are coming from differentkinds of organizations in5main cities in Eastern China, Western China, Northern China, Southern Chinaand Central China, are collected and analyzed. And in analysis, descriptive statistical analysis, theexploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis, regression analysis, Sobeltest, structural equation model and other statistical analysis technique are conducted. As a result, it isverified that the contents of differential leadership in Chinese organizations, and probed the the influenceof differential leadership on employees’ job-satisfaction, also it explored the mediation effect of perceivedinsider status and moderating effect of individual modernity. In addition, this research analyzed thevariance of differential leadership in different demographical and organizational characteristics as well.Research findings:1. Differential leadership is formed by3dimensions, which includes solicitude and communication, promotion and rewards, and tolerance of mistakes, in organizations of China mainland.2. In China mainland organizations, differential leadership is significantly affected by differentdiversification in demographics and organization. The sensitivity of subordinates with differentdemographical and organizational characteristics varies in different degree. And the main elements indemographics and organizations are age, education, working position, job tenure, the duration of thecooperation time between leaders and subordinates, the nature of organization, and the organization’slocation.3. In China mainland organizations, differential leadership has a positive effect on subordinates’ jobsatisfaction.4. In China mainland organizations, the perceived insider status of subordinate acts as a intermediaryrole in the relationship between differential leadership and subordinates’ job satisfaction; and the individualmodernity of subordinate plays a moderating role between differential leadership and subordinates’ jobsatisfaction. This thesis also built a moderated mediation model between this four variablesaforementioned.Nevertheless, limitations are discussed, and suggestions are provided for future studies in Chinamainland organizations.