The boon and bane of authoritarian leadership: an impression management perspective investigating the differential effects of authoritarian leadership on employee outcomes

Globalization has highlighted that authoritarian leadership is prevalent in both Eastern and Western organizations. Although there is a growing body of literature that focuses on the effect of authoritarian leadership, an important, but missing, perspective concerns the strategies employees use to deal with authoritarian leaders and the subsequent outcomes. Drawing on impression management theory, this study develops a moderated mediation model to examine the differential effects of authoritarian leadership on employee outcomes. To examine the proposed hypotheses, we conducted a scenario-based experiment (364 full-time employees) and a time-lagged multi-source field survey (464 employees matched with 76 supervisors). The results indicate that Hewlin’s (Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(3), 727–741, 2009) façade of conformity construct is a specific impression management strategy adopted by employees when working with authoritarian leaders. Through triggering employees’ façades of conformity, authoritarian leadership has a positive indirect effect on employee task performance, but a negative indirect effect on employee workplace well-being. These indirect relationships are more salient when authoritarian leaders have high social status. This study not only contributes to authoritarian leadership literature by illustrating its double-edged effects and unveiling its underlying mechanisms but also offers constructive guidance to practitioners.