How Paternalistic Leadership affects Employee Voice Behavior in Korean Hierarchical Organizations

This study aims to examine the impact of Korean paternalistic leadership under a hierarchical structure on employee voice and also to compare the differences in leaders' behaviors-authoritarian, benevolent, and moral, and the effects on employee voice between governmental organizations and Quasi-government organizations. The sample of governmental organizations includes 195 employees under job control from at least middlerange or higher managers at local governments and local police agencies in Daegu and Busan metropolitan. The other sample also includes 189 employees reporting directly to managers with job control in public enterprises and government-funded Korean institutes in the same cities. This study employs t-test and regression analysis to test presumed hypotheses. As the results of the analysis, there is a significant difference in authoritarian leadership between governmental organizations and Quasi-government organizations, but both benevolent and moral leadership are not. Benevolent and moral leadership are positively related to employee voice, but authoritarian leadership is not. Based on the analytical results, this research suggests the theoretical implications and the limitations on the applicability of paternalistic leadership into the Korean cultural context for an expanded understanding of leadership theory and practical implications for managers in terms of improvement of employee voice.