Benevolent dominance in organisations: developing and validating a personality-based measure of dependency-maintaining help

Purpose This study aims to develop benevolent dominance as an organisational construct describing support from higher-status actors that preserves authority, visibility, influence or recipient dependence, and develop a public-domain personality measure for future organisational research. Design/methodology/approach A 28-item International Personality Item Pool set was examined in secondary general-community personality data using exploratory factor analysis, three retention methods, half-sample stability tests, confirmatory model comparisons, reliability, convergent and divergent correlations, demographic analyses and gender invariance. Findings Three full-sample retention methods supported Dominant Agency, Protective Care, Directive Discipline, Visible Status and Strategic Influence, and the correlated five-factor model outperformed one- and four-factor alternatives. Half-sample parallel analysis recovered five factors in 65 % and four in 35 %, indicating incomplete factor-count stability. Research limitations/implications The general-community sample contained no workplace behaviour or organisational outcome. The five-factor structure and proposed organisational manifestations require independent criterion validation. Practical implications The construct provisionally directs attention to whether helping increases recipients’ competence, discretion, voice and independent access. Social implications The construct distinguishes resource transfer from power transfer. Originality/value This study integrates organisational power, paternalistic leadership, helping and personality into an initial measurable account of hierarchy maintained through care.