The Effects of Dominance-based and Prestige-based Leadership on Employee Well-being: A Moderated Mediation Model

. In recent years, the research of employee well-being in the field of organizational behavior and human resource management has received extensive attention. Building on the theory of dominance-based and prestige-based leadership, this paper examined how these two types of leadership influenced employee well-being through psychological empowerment. It investigated the moderating effect of organizational rank in the relationship between leadership and employee well-being. Through an experiment and a correlational study, we showed that prestige-based leadership had a more positive impact on employee well-being than dominance-based leadership, a relationship significantly mediated by psychological empowerment. Moreover, we found that organizational rank only negatively moderated the relationship between dominance-based leadership and well-being but had no effect on the relationship between prestige-based leadership and well-being. The findings shed light on the internal mechanism and boundary conditions of how leadership influences employee well-being and can provide better guidance for management practice to effectively improve employee well-being.


Introduction
Employee well-being has become one of the final concerns in human resource management, which is an important source of high efficiency and high performance for enterprises [7]. Management style is one of the social and psychological factors that affect employee well-being in the workplace in the 21st century [34]. Dominancebased leadership is related to emotions of arrogance, superiority, conceit, and hubristic pride [11]. Dominancebased leaders at work lead by putting power above team goals and treating other talented members of the organization as potential threats [31]. On the other hand, Case et al. [8] illustrates that the personality displayed by a prestige-based leader includes high agreeableness, selfesteem, need for affiliation, social monitoring, fear of negative evaluation, and conscientiousness. Prestige is related to facilitating and encouraging employee accomplishment but without a feeling of superiority or arrogance [11]. Imagine an employee working under two different management styles, namely, dominance-based and prestige-based leadership. How will the different leadership impact his/her well-being differently? We investigate this question in this paper. Throughout the research on employee well-being, although many scholars study employee well-being from the perspective of leadership, such as transformational leadership [4] or authentic leadership [33], few people have studied how dominance and prestige-based leadership influences employee well-being. From the perspective of management practice, employee wellbeing can reduce job burnout and improve work efficiency. Employee well-being has an important impact on the survival and development of the organization [35]. Therefore, there is important theoretical value and practical significance to analyze how employee wellbeing is impacted by dominance and prestige, two fundamental ways in which people tend to lead in the hierarchy [11]. This paper also explores important moderator and mediator in the relationship between leadership and employee well-being. Existing literature has shown that employee psychological empowerment is closely related to employee well-being. Also, according to research on power and status in organizations (cite), employees at different levels may be differently influenced by the type of leadership they are subject to in the organization due to the resources they have at hand. Therefore, this study introduces the two variables of psychological empowerment and organizational rank into the model framework of the relationship between two types of leadership and employee well-being, thereby providing an in-depth investigation of the psychological mechanism through which leadership influences employee well-being and providing empirical evidence for managers to improve employee well-being. We conduct two studies to test the question. The first is an experiment where we manipulated the type of leadership participants were exposed. The second is a correlational survey with employees at a company located in China. The results showed that dominance-based leadership had a more negative impact on employee well-being than prestigebased leadership, a relationship that was mediated by psychological empowerment. Moreover, we showed that dominance based leadership significantly interacted with organizational rank to impact employee well-being.

A Dominance and Prestigious Leadership within Group
Some research indicated that the social stratification of human beings is mainly based on two aspects, namely, dominance-based on the force, threat, and intimidation, and prestige based on skill, ability and knowledge. Cheng [10] proposed that humans have evolved a tolerance for hierarchy based on prestige and resistance to coercive domination. Many scholars show that domination and prestige are two fundamental strategies for achieving higher social rank, mirroring two different styles of leading [21].
The perspective of dominant leadership. In the dominance hierarchy, obedience stems from intimidation and fear. Case and Maner [32] show that dominants are unwilling to show pro-social behavior, and instead exhibit hostility, aggression and arrogance, and put their own interests above collective interests when leading. According to Cheng [13], dominance is a conflict-based hierarchy differentiation. Submissive emotions and behaviors stabilize the hierarchy of dominance as subordinates avoid coercive expansion and its possible harm [20]. However, a hierarchy based purely on the threat of force is less tenable in human society [6], especially in the long run [10]. However, research shows that dominant leadership gains appeal during times of uncertainty [25]. The perspective of prestigious leadership. Throughout society, people seek and respect those who have skills and knowledge. Followers follow prestigious leaders because they trust these leaders' moral status [10]. People tend to admire prestigious leaders and seek to be close to them [2]. According to Cheng [12], prestige is a competence based hierarchy differentiation, whose core principle is that it cannot be gained through coercive strategies. Anderson and Kilduff [3] found that perceptions of competence were the most critical contributor to prestige and its underlying social influence. Individuals within the organization who are considered to have outstanding expertise and abilities in valuable areas will be granted influence and considered prestigious [12]. Dominance vs. Prestige. Cheng [12] shows that dominance and prestige can co-exist in social groups, although different motivations and behavior patterns underpinning them lead to different patterns of imitation and respect among subordinates. Dominance and prestige are independent, suggesting that individuals can employ both strategies at different times to different degrees, consistent with developmental psychology research [23]. Dominance and prestige are underlying perceptions made up of the sum of many more specific social attributes, behavioral and interpersonal characteristics, and manipulating any single attribute may not be effective in promoting true and credible dominance or prestige [12].

Leadership and Employee Well-being
Koontz [18] defined leadership as a process of influencing so that people can work willingly and enthusiastically toward the goals of the organization. Leadership has been shown as an essential factor that influences employee well-being; high-quality leadership has a positive impact on followers' psychological well-being [1,39]. It plays an essential role in shaping job design, motivations, emotions, and identification in the workplace [24]. In the hierarchical structure of giving and receiving orders, the relationship quality between leaders and subordinates greatly reflects the amount of support and resources subordinates receive, the intensity and complexity of workload, and the valence of effect at work [4]. When trust is formed in the relationship, for example, a subordinate will feel the ease to communicate openly with their leader about workrelated issues without fear of negative repercussions, thereby increasing their wellbeing [19]. Previous research has focused on the influence of various types of leadership on employee well-being, such as transformational/transactional. However, little research has examined how the two fundamental ways of achieving influence in human society, dominance and prestige, may shape well-being in the workplace. We aim to fill this theoretical gap in this paper. As discussed in the previous section, dominant individuals use unforeseen and unstable acquisitions or threats, implicitly or explicitly, to withhold resources and create fear among subordinates. As a result, subordinates feel the pressure obey the requirements of the dominator in order to protect their resources and cater to the higher status [12]. On the contrast, prestigious individuals influence through their knowledge, expertise, and facilitation of cooperation. Therefore, subordinates may willingly get closer to prestigious leaders and follow them out of voluntary respect. When a prestigious leader communicates with employees to actively help and guide, clearly explains their reasoning for making a certain decision, and prioritizes collective interests by encouraging positive relationships between colleagues, employees will not only think that the leader is sincere, open, transparent and trustworthy [15], but also experience greater collegiality, motivation, and identification at work. Thus, positive psychological and emotional experiences will increase [29] and greater employee well-being will follow [40]. On the other hand, when a dominant leader threatens and intimidates to get their way, fails to communicate and explain, and prioritize their self-interests over others', employees are more likely to feel excluded and scared, leading to less positive affect and greater stress at work, i.e., less well-being. Therefore, we hypothesize the following: Hypothesis 1 (H1). Compared with dominant leadership, prestigious leadership is more positively related to employee well-being.

Employee Psychological Empowerment as a Mediator
We also identify an important mediator in the relationship between dominance and prestige-based leadership and well-being, i.e., psychological empowerment. Psychological empowerment [36] is a measure of a comprehensive psychological perception experienced by individuals in the workplace, composed of meaning, competence, selfdetermination, and impact. Meaning refers to individuals' judgment or cognition of the importance or value of their work goal [38]; Competence refers to whether the individual is capable of completing a certain task [22]; Self-determination refers to the cognition of whether an individual has control over his own behavior or work style [17]; Impact refers to the individual's own awareness of the impact of their work [5]. With dominant leadership, high status is obtained and maintained through the use of power, fear, intimidation and coercion [27], which may have a negative effect on employees' psychological empowerment as compared to prestigious leadership. As dominant leaders' self-interest gets prioritized, employees' work meaning will likely suffer as the collective work goal gets complicated with leaders' own desire. Competence can also decrease as dominant leaders are less likely than prestigious leaders to provide assistance and guidance or use their expertise and knowledge to help employees out. Self-determination will be reduced under dominant leadership as dominance means taking away resources and lowering one's control of their immediate environment with unpredictable intimidation. Lastly, dominant leadership can lead to less perceived impact than prestigious leadership because dominance can sometimes mean taking credits away from employees in order to maintain status. Meaning, competence, self-determination and impact, in turn, are shown to be significantly associated with employee wellbeing. This is consistent with selfdetermination theory [16] which describes that the satisfaction of internal needs is more likely to stimulate individual's well-being than that of external needs. Specifically, when the level of psychological empowerment of employees is high, employees will think their work is meaningful and believe that they can complete a task well. Meanwhile, employees are granted certain autonomy in the process of completing tasks, and they will think that they have an important influence on the organization. These psychological perceptions reflect that the internal needs of employees have been met. Therefore, we believe that psychological empowerment will be an important mechanism underlying the differential effects of the two types of leadership. Hypothesis 2 (H2). Employee psychological empowerment mediates the differential impact of dominance and prestige on employee well-being.

Organizational Rank as Moderator
We also identify a novel moderator in the relationship between dominance, prestige, and well-being, i.e., organizational rank. Research shows that rank is an important factor that predicts workplace outcomes [9,26]. High-ranking employees in a company own a higher degree of autonomy and decision-making power as compared to their lowranking counterparts. Employees at a higher rank tended to have greater control over resources and have greater freedom to exercise their power over others. Power is shown by past literature to bestow employees with abundant protective psychological resources, and people with low status pay more attention to the high status [30]. As a result, people who occupy higher organizational ranking positions and thus have greater power and status should be more immune to pressure from their superiors. The number of resources and freedom they own should serve as a protective factor against the potential harm their leaders' leadership style may bring. On the other hand, employees from the lower rank of organizations should strive more to impress their superiors in order to gain access to more resources and recognition, leading them to be more sensitive to the leadership style of their superiors and be more negatively impacted by dominance and more positively impacted by prestige. Therefore, we argue that dominance and prestige-based leadership will have less impact on the well-being of higher-ranking employees in organizations. Hypothesis 3 (H3). The organizational rank moderates the association between leadership style and employee wellbeing, such that the association is weaker when the rank of employee is higher.

Study 1
In Study 1, we tested Hypotheses 1-3 by manipulating the type of leadership one is exposed to in an imaginary work environment and then asked people to report their wellbeing at work. This allowed us to directly test the differential impact of the two types of leadership on employee well-being (H1), and test how one's organizational rank can affect the difference (H3).

Method
Participants and design. Participants, recruited over a data collection platform in China, were 530 people1 who are currently employed (317 women, Mage = 29.16). 92.07% of the respondents had work experience ranging from 1 to 10 years. Participants were randomly assigned within a two-factor (leadership: prestige vs. dominance) betweensubjects design. Procedure. Participants are presented with a scenario where they are asked to imagine that their immediate supervisor at their company is a person who uses either dominance-based or prestige-based leadership. In the dominance condition, participants read that their immediate supervisor likes having a firm grasp of the dominance of discourse, is unwilling to adopt work suggestions put forward by subordinates and has a strong insistence on their own judgments [12]. In the prestige condition, participants read that their immediate supervisor likes listening to employees' opinions and discussing, is willing to share their own professional knowledge and experience and provides active help to subordinates while encouraging subordinates to communicate with each other and collaborate [12].
Measures. The scales used in this study were translated directly from well-established scales in past papers published in English. Dominance-based Leadership. As a manipulation check, to measure how much participants perceived the supervisor as dominant, we used the 10-item scale translated from Cheng et al. [11]. A sample item of this scale is "I (he/she) enjoy(s) having control over others (other members of the group)." (1 = extremely, 7 = not at all; α = 0.89). Items were averaged, with higher numbers indicating a greater perception of dominance.
Prestige-based Leadership. As a manipulation check, to measure how much participants perceived the supervisor as prestigious, we used the 12-item scale translated from Cheng et al. [11]. A sample item of this scale is "Members of my (your) group respect and admire me (him/her)." (1 = extremely, 7 = not at all; α = 0.94). Items were averaged, with higher numbers indicating a greater perception of prestige. Psychological Empowerment. Psychological empowerment was measured with a 12item scale developed in Spreitzer [36]. The scale contains four dimensions, namely, meaning (e.g., "The work I do is very important to me"), competence (e.g., "I am 1 We distributed 600 surveys on the platform, and 70 were excluded due to incomplete response (completion rate = 88.3%). The sample size of 530 participants was sufficient to test our hypotheses. confident about my ability to do my job"), selfdetermination (e.g., "I have significant autonomy in determining how I do my job.") and impact (e.g., "My impact on what happens in my department is large"). The items were rated on a 7-point Likert-type scale (1 = extremely, 7 = not at all; α = 0.94). Items were averaged, with higher numbers indicating a greater perception of psychological empowerment. Employee Well-being. Employee well-being was measured using the 6-item scale of work well-being translated by Zheng [41]. A sample item is "I am in a good life situation" (1 = extremely, 7 = not at all; α = 0.91). Items were averaged, with higher numbers indicating a greater perception of employee well-being. Organizational Rank. To test Hypothesis 3, we measured participants' organizational rank by a single question, "what level is your position in the actual company you work at?" with four choices, respectively ground-level employees, ground-level managers, middle managers and senior managers. Control Variables. To prevent erroneous findings and other explanations of the statistical results, we included controls for employees' gender, education, work tenure, and age for their potential effects on our study variables2. Table 1 presents means, standard deviations, and correlations for the variables used in the analyses. old, 45 years old and above. Education was classified into four categories: below a bachelor's degree, bachelor's degree, master's degree, and doctoral degree and above. Work tenure was classified into five categories: less than 1 year, 1-5 years, 5-10 years, 10-20 years, and more than 20 years. It can be seen from Table 1 that perception of dominancebased leadership is significantly negatively correlated with both employee psychological empowerment and well-being (r = -0.57, p ＜ 0.01; r = -0.61, p ＜ 0.01). On the other hand, perception of prestige-based leadership is significantly positively related with both employee psychological empowerment and well-being (r = 0.64, p < 0.01; r = 0.70, p < 0.01). The correlational results laid the foundation for further regression analysis.

Results
Manipulation check. We first conducted regression analyses regressing condition on perceived supervisor dominance and prestige as a manipulation check. As expected, participants perceived significantly more dominance in supervisor in the dominance condition than in the prestige condition (β = 1.72, SE = 0.08, p < 0.001), and perceived more prestige in the prestige condition than in the dominance condition (β= -1.91, SE = 0.08, p < 0.001). Main regression. A regression analysis was conducted to compare the effect of the condition on the key outcome variable. Supporting Hypothesis 1, there was a significant difference in reported well-being across conditions (β = -1.41803, p < 0.001), such that participants experienced less work well-being in the dominance condition (M = 2.57, SD = 0.87) than in the prestige condition (M =3.99, SD = 1.40). Next, we tested H2 by examining the indirect effects of condition on employee wellbeing via the proposed mediator of psychological empowerment. We calculated 95% confidence intervals using PROCESS with 1000 bootstrap samples. The analyses with 1000 bootstraps of the mediation found that psychological empowerment significantly mediated the effects of condition on work well-being (95% CI [-1.03, -0.68]), as the confidence interval did not contain zero. In other words, dominancebased leadership led to significantly less employee wellbeing as compared to prestige-based leadership through employee psychological empowerment. Hypothesis 3 proposed that the organizational rank moderated the differential effect of dominance and prestige on well-being, that is, the higher the rank, the smaller the difference should be. To test H3, we tested organizational rank as a moderator in the relationship between condition and reported well-being, namely. Of all respondents, there were 232 ground-level employees, 237 ground level managers, 59 middle managers and 2 senior managers. Results showed that the interaction was not significant (β = -0.13, p = 0.39). Therefore, we did not find supporting evidence for H3.

Discussion
In this study, we find that prestige-based leadership has a more positive impact on employee well-being than dominance-based leadership, and employee psychological empowerment plays a mediating role in this relationship. We did not find supporting evidence for H3, and we propose one reason may be that hypothetical scenarios reduced the effect of participants' actual organizational ranks in their real jobs. In addition, we measured organizational rank with only four levels, which may have been too general and did not capture the granularity of rank. We address these issues with Study 2.

Study 2
In Study 2, we complement Study 1 by conducting a correlational survey with employees in a real company to ensure external validity. At the same time, to address the issue that organizational rank may have been measured with insufficient granularity, we changed the measurement to better test H3.

Method
Participants. In Study 2, employees of a state-owned enterprise in Yunnan Province of China were surveyed by questionnaire. A total of 150 questionnaires were distributed and 99 were completed and returned to researchers, among which 77 were valid based on an attention check (57 men, 11 people aged 30 and below, 20 between 31 and 40, 39 between 41 and 50 and 7 over 50). Procedure. Participants were asked to answer questions according to their actual work situation. We contacted the management of the target enterprise, and with their support and permission, distributed anonymous questionnaires online.

Measures.
Dominant Leadership. The same measure from Study 1 was used (α = 0.87). Prestigious Leadership. The same measure from Study 1 was used. (α = 0.93). Psychological Empowerment. The same measure from Study 1 was used (α = 0.94). Employee Well-being. It scales by Zheng [41], which includes 18 items and three parts, namely, life well-being (e.g., "I feel satisfied with my life"), work well-being (e.g., "I am satisfied with my work responsibilities") and psychological well-being (e.g., "I feel I have grown as a person"). The items were rated on a 7-point Likert-type scale (1 = extremely, 7 = not at all; α = 0.98). Control Variables. The same control variables from Study 1 were included.

Results
In a correlational analysis, we found that employee wellbeing had a significantly negative correlation with dominant leadership (r = -0.12, p = 0.44), while it had a significantly positive correlation with prestigious leadership (r = 0.70, p < 0.01). Therefore, Hypothesis 1 stating that dominant leadership has a more negative impact on well-being than prestigious leadership was supported. The results remain the same with the addition of all controls discussed above. To test H2, we examined the indirect effects of different leadership on employee well-being via the proposed mediator of psychological empowerment by calculating 95% confidence intervals using PROCESS with 1000 bootstrap samples. In order to measure the difference between dominant and prestigious leadership, we first took the difference score between prestige and dominance ratings. Then, we ran a mediation model to test its indirect effect on well-being through psychological empowerment. We found that psychological empowerment significantly mediated the effects of difference score (95% CI [0.13, 0.39]), as the confidence interval did not contain zero. In other words, prestige-based leadership led to significantly more well-being than dominancebased leadership through greater psychological empowerment.
To test H3, we conducted two regressions where wellbeing was predicted by an interaction between two types of leadership and organizational rank. Results showed that the interaction was significantly negative for dominancebased leadership (β = 0.10, SE = 0.05, p < 0.05), yet was not significant for prestige-based leadership (β = 0.02, SE = 0.03, p = 0.44). In other words, the higher rank an employee is, the less his or her well-being was negatively affected by dominance-based leadership. However, prestige played a positive role in employee well-being regardless of one's rank.

Discussion
In Study 2, we found that consistent with Study 1, prestige-based leadership had a more positive impact on employee well-being through psychological empowerment. Interestingly, organizational rank was a significant moderator only in the relationship between dominance-based leadership and well-being, suggesting that high-status employees are more immune to the harmful effects of dominance, but more prestige may be beneficial for everyone.

General Discussion
This paper found that prestige-based leadership had a more positive influence on employee well-being than dominance-based leadership. Psychological empowerment played a significant mediating role in the differential effect of the two types of leadership on employee well-being. Moreover, organizational rank significantly interacted with dominance-based leadership to impact employee well-being, where the lower the employee status, the more negative relationship between dominance-based leadership and employee well-being.

Theoretical Contributions
The theoretical significance of this paper is as follows: (1) This paper focuses on dominance-based and prestigebased leadership. By comparing the two novel types of leadership behaviors, we found that the different attitudes and behaviors associated with the two types of leaders will eventually have a different impact on employee wellbeing. Although there have been some works of literature on the relationship between leadership behavior and employee well-being, research on the relationship between dominance-based and prestigebased leadership and employee well-being is still lacking. This study, therefore, fills the theoretical gap by broadening understanding of the relationship between leadership style and well-being; (2) The application of psychological empowerment theory in the field of organizational behavior or human resource management is generally associated with transformational leadership [28], job performance [14], or employee engagement [37]. However, there is almost no literature applying this theory to the study of dominance-based and prestige-based leadership. This study examines the mediating role of employee psychological empowerment in the relationship between dominance vs. prestige and employee well-being, providing a new perspective for psychological empowerment theory; (3) We integrated research of leadership with literature on power and status, and showed that higher rank in an organization protects employee well-being from harmful effects of dominancebased leadership, corroborating previous findings that the psychological world experienced by those with power is very different from that experienced by those without power [30]. People with high power are more focused on goals and more confident and proactive than those with low power. However, the well-being of employees at different ranks always benefitted from prestige-based leadership. In other words, when leaders demonstrate more prestige-related qualities and behaviors, employee well-being can always increase. Thus, this study confirms the importance of helping employees realize their potential and self-worth through prestige-based leadership.

Practical Implication
The findings have important practical guiding significance for enterprise management practice. First, we confirmed that prestige-based leadership has a direct positive effect on employee well-being, suggesting that it is critical for organizations to select and cultivate prestige among various leadership qualities. It also sheds light on the importance of being aware of the problems associated with dominance-based leadership in a team, especially among lower ranks of the organization. Second, this study shows that all dimensions of psychological empowerment play a mediating role in the process of leadership influencing employee well-being. Therefore, enterprise managers should not only realize the importance of psychological empowerment on leadership effectiveness, but also realize the positive impact of prestige-based leadership on employee psychological empowerment, so as to pay attention to the proper use of prestige-based leadership in practical work.

Limitations and Future Directions
The limitations of this study and its future directions include (1) the scales used in this paper were translated from English literatures to adapt to the Chinese sample, and culture may have played an important role in shaping employee response. For example, Chinese employees pay more attention to the collective consciousness, so it would be interesting to conduct future studies to test whether the results replicate in Western culture; (2) while we discussed the mechanism of how dominance and prestige impact employee well-being, we do not examine the downstream consequences of employee well-being in the organization. Future research can continue to explore not only the importance of well-being itself but also how well-being affects other organizational outcomes, such as productivity. This study complements the well-being literature by integrating research on dominance and prestige, psychological empowerment, and power and status. It emphasizes the importance of employee well-being in an