Authoritarian–Benevolent Leadership and Employee Innovation Performance: A Cross-Level Mediation and Response Surface Analysis

In today's complex and dynamic organizational environment, a single leadership style is often ineffective in addressing diverse management needs. Authoritarian-benevolent leadership (ABL)—an ambidextrous leadership model that blends benevolence and authority and is rooted in Chinese culture—is expected to be a positive factor in improving employee behavior and enhancing employee innovation performance when benevolent and authoritarian leadership are simultaneously high. However, existing research is still unclear about the inherent mechanism of this influence process. This study, based on social exchange theory and conservation of resources theory, explores the cross-level influence path of the two dimensions of ABL on employee innovation performance in the Chinese context. Multilevel structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data from 52 work teams and 403 employees. The results showed that ABL had a significant positive impact on employee innovation performance. Employee resilience plays a mediating role between the two; Power distance orientation (PDO) negatively moderates the relationship between ABL and employee resilience. That is, under the condition of low PDO, ABL has a more significant positive impact on employee resilience.