The Impact of Paternalism and Organizational Collectivism in Multinational and Family-owned Firms in Turkey

This correlational study examined the influences of paternalistic leadership behavior (PL) and organizational collectivism (measured at the employee level) on employee reported LMX, job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) in two types of organizations (family-owned firms and multinational organizations) in Turkey. Survey data were collected from (N = 154) employees in family-owned and (N = 159) employees in multinational firms (MNCs). Employees in family-owned firms reported significantly higher levels of PL, organizational collectivism, LMX, and OCBs. Further examination revealed additional differences by organization type, with the family-owned sample showing no significant relationships between study variables and OCBs, in contrast to positive relationships in the MNC sample. Education level was negatively related to PL, LMX, and job satisfaction in the family-owned sample, while the MNC sample showed positive relationships with education and all 5 study variables (PL, organizational collectivism, LMX, job satisfaction and OCBs). Organizational collectivism was found to have a moderating effect on the relationships between LMX and job satisfaction and job satisfaction and OCBs in the multinational sample, while no effect was found in the family-owned sample. For the LMX -- job satisfaction relationship, at low levels of LMX, organizational collectivism has no effect on job satisfaction, while when LMX was high, greater organizational collectivism was associated with greater job satisfaction. For the job satisfaction -- OCB relationship, at low levels of job satisfaction, the organizational level of collectivism greatly influenced OCB frequency (higher collectivism was associated with higher OCBs), while little difference was evident when job satisfaction was high. The implications of these findings for both theory and future research are discussed