Leadership effectiveness in China: The moderating role of change climate

Owing to the rapid and unpredictable changes in emerging markets, it has become critical for managerial agendas to understand leadership effectiveness in a climate of change. We examined change climate as a potential contingency in effectiveness of authoritarian and visionary styles of leadership. A multilevel analysis of the data collected from 235 Chinese employees and their supervisors revealed that change climate had significant cross-level moderation effects. In a context of a climate of a low level of change, authoritarian leadership style was positively related, and visionary leadership style was negatively related, to follower outcomes. We offer insights into follower and organizational contingencies that affect leadership effectiveness in Chinese business organizations.