Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/266719 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Citation: 
[Journal:] Production and Operations Management [ISSN:] 1937-5956 [Volume:] 31 [Issue:] 11 [Publisher:] Wiley [Place:] Hoboken, NJ [Year:] 2022 [Pages:] 3982-4001
Publisher: 
Wiley, Hoboken, NJ
Abstract: 
Many field office leaders contend that authoritarian leadership improves the performance of humanitarian operations. The common narrative is that authoritarian leadership helps aid workers more quickly adapt to changes and thus deliver better job performance (e.g., by improving operations in their field office). However, given that field reports often highlight extant leadership as the source of serious operational failures, could leaders with an authoritarian style be part of the problem? We draw on psychological theorizing on the nature of human motivation to address this question. Specifically, we note that many aid workers primarily join humanitarian operations with the prosocial motive to help beneficiaries. While proactive adaptability is inherent to prosocial motivation, we hypothesize that authoritarian leadership may curtail the relationship by impeding aid workers' autonomy. We find support for our theorizing in a sample of 299 humanitarian aid workers from the field. Additionally, we conducted 31 expert interviews to contextualize and validate our empirical findings. The paper concludes by discussing the findings' theoretical and managerial implications for humanitarian operations.
Subjects: 
adaptability
authoritarian leadership
humanitarian operations
prosocial motivation
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.