When Is Authoritarian Leadership Less Detrimental? The Role of Leader Capability

We developed and tested a moderated mediation model of the relationship between authoritarian leadership and employees’ task performance as well as their affective organizational commitment. Analyses of multilevel, multisource, and three-wave data from 99 supervisors and 341 subordinates showed that leader effectiveness evaluations mediated the time-lagged relationship of authoritarian leadership with employees’ task performance and affective organizational commitment. Moreover, when leader capability is high, it mitigates the negative relationship between AL and employees’ outcomes. Furthermore, the leader capability moderates the indirect relationship of authoritarian leadership with employees’ task performance and affective organizational commitment via leader effectiveness evaluation. This study contributes to leadership research and extends our understanding of how and under what circumstances AL is less detrimental to employees’ workplace outcomes.