Benevolent and authoritarian: How paternalistic leadership promotes employee green behavior

Abstract Promoting employee green behavior (EGB) through leadership is considered a crucial way to achieve corporate environmental sustainability goals. However, there is still a gap in understanding how paternalistic leadership with Eastern characteristics affects EGB. Drawing on the social exchange theory, this paper explores how the two different dimensions of paternalistic leadership, benevolent leadership and authoritarian leadership, affect employee green behavior, and examines the mediating role of psychological ownership. The study uses Mplus 8.3 to analyze 474 leader‐subordinate paired data. The results revealed three key findings: (1)There is a notable distinction between the benevolent and authoritarian dimensions of paternalistic leadership concerning their pathways and strengths on driving EGB. (2) Benevolent leadership directly promotes employee task‐related green behavior while influencing employee eco‐civic engagement behavior and eco‐helping behavior through psychological ownership. (3) Authoritarian leadership directly promotes employee task‐related green behavior, eco‐civic engagement behavior and eco‐helping behavior. Based on the above findings, this study offers practical guidance to corporate managers on effectively utilizing the benevolent‐authoritarian style of dual‐dexterous leadership to incentivize EGB conducive to corporate green transformation.