Paternalistic leadership, which is a prevalent leadership style in business contexts in non-Western cultures, is characterized by three dimensions: authoritarianism, benevolence, and morality. The current
study of 252 Taiwanese intercollegiate athletes (Mage=20.91 years) explored this leadership style in a sports setting and examined the extent to which the interaction of paternalistic leadership and achievement goals predicted athletes’ sportspersonship. Participants completed the Paternalistic Leadership in Sport Questionnaire, Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire, and Multidimensional Sportspersonship Orientation Scale. Athletes’ ego-orientation and perceived authoritarian leadership were related to lower levels of sportspersonship. In contrast, task-orientation, benevolent leadership, and moral leadership predicted higher levels of sportspersonship and confirmed findings reported in the research literature. Hierarchical
regression analyses revealed that authoritarianism moderated the relationship between ego, orientation and sportspersonship. Future sports research should consider paternalistic leadership as an alternative approach when investigating coach-athlete relationships and the influence of coaches’ leadership on athletes’ growth and moral responses
