The Impact Mechanism Of Authoritarian Leadership On Employees’ Silence Behaviour By The Moderation Effects Of Power Distance Orientation And Zhongyong

During the era of knowledge competition, employees who regarded as the subjectof the organizational learning, organizational innovation and organizational reform havebeen a key factor of the achievement of an organization. Whereas, due to leadingmeasures and cultural influences, employees often remain silence towards the potentialproblems, so that prevents the organization from correcting problems in time, and mayeventually worsens the organizational operation. To explore the influence factors ofemployees’ silence behaviour, based on the Social Exchange Theory and AffectiveEvents Theory, the study adopted questionnaire survey to investigate333employeeswho were scattering over16enterprises and governmental institutions in Beijing,Rizhao, Weifang, Chongqing and Xuzhou. The study is to discuss the effect ofauthoritarian leadership exerts on employees’ silence behaviour, and the internalmechanism, boundary conditions.The survey results are provided follows:1. Authoritarian leadership exerts a significantly positive effect on employees’silence behavior.2. Psychological safety exerts a significantly negative effect on employees’ silencebehavior.3. Psychological safety partly mediates the relationship between authoritarianleadership and employees’ silence behavior.4. Power distance orientation has negative moderation on the relationship betweenauthoritarian leadership and psychological safety. That means the negatively effect ofauthoritarian leadership on psychological safety is more significant when powerdistance orientation is lower. 5. The interaction effects between authoritarian leadership and power distanceorientation may partly influenced silence behavior by psychological safety. That meanspsychological safety is partially mediating in the above mechanisms on silence.6. Zhongyong can positively moderate the negative the relationship betweenpsychological safety and silence behaviour, that means the relationship betweenpsychological safety and silence behaviour showed an inverse correlation whenZhongyong is higher.7. Zhongyong can positively moderate the mediating effect of psychological safetyon the relationship between authoritarian leadership and silence behaviour. That means,the mediating effect of psychological safety on relations between authoritarianleadership and silence behaviour is more significant when Zhongyong is higher.At last, the results are discussed and explained, and limitations and future researchwere pointed out as well.