The impact of paternalistic leadership on innovation: an integrated model

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of paternalistic leadership on innovation. Design/methodology/approach – This paper conceptualizes an integrated model that combines the dual‐core model and ambidextrous model of innovation. Using a sample of 159 Chinese high‐tech enterprises, some hypotheses are tested. Findings – The results show: authoritarianism has a directly negative effect on exploitative innovation and positively moderates the effectiveness of exploitative innovation; benevolence has a directly positive effect both on exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation; benevolence negatively moderates the effectiveness of exploratory innovation and positively moderates the effectiveness of exploitative innovation. Research limitations/implications – This paper adopts the cross‐sectional study design, while innovation and formation of the implementation are relatively long‐term, dynamic processes. Thus, longitudinal design is a direction worth trying in follow‐up studies. Besides, using random samples affects to some extent the conclusion's generalizability. Practical implications – Proper patriarchal leadership behavior (authoritarianism/benevolence) should be employed in the face of different types of innovation activities (exploratory innovation/exploitative innovation) and at the different stages of innovative activities (innovation ideas emerging stage/innovation behavior implementation stage). If properly used, patriarchal leadership with both authoritarianism and benevolence will effectively enhance innovation performance. Conversely, it may produce negative effects. Originality/value – This paper has studied the influence of paternalistic leadership on exploratory and exploitative innovation. Different from the existing literature, this paper based on Daft's dual‐core model and Duncan's ambidextrous model and builds an integrated model.