Authoritarian Organizational Culture as a Contest of Expressing Deference to the Leader

This paper models authoritarian organizational culture as a contest among subordinates to show more deference to their leader than their peers do. Effort spent on deference is taken from production, which the leader turns into output. Under a fixed pay scale, the output lost rises with the subordinates’ emotional dependence on the leader. A leader who sets pay herself chooses the level of deference from her capability and her relative taste for deference; dependence then only sets the pay she must offer. A leader who values deference rewards it with a discretionary pool once her taste passes a threshold, so part of dependence follows her power. Another part, following Buchanan’s (2005) parental socialism, is a demand from below for an authority that takes responsibility. Deference driven by fear should vanish when the leader’s power is removed; deference driven by parental socialism should persist.