The Effect of Authoritarian Leadership on Organizational Indifference with the Mediating Role of Bureaucratic Culture in Employees of Shahrekord University of Medical Sciences

Today, organizational environments have become more complex, dynamic, and transformed than ever before, and one of the issues that has become prevalent in organizations but has received little attention is the phenomenon of organizational indifference, which undermines employees' motivation and effort and leads to a decline in organizational social cohesion. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of authoritarian leadership on organizational indifference with the mediating role of bureaucratic culture in Shahrekord University of Medical Sciences. This research is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-survey correlational in terms of data collection method. The statistical population included all employees of Shahrekord University of Medical Sciences (360 people), and the sample size was estimated at 186 people based on Cochran's formula, who were selected through stratified random sampling. The data collection tools were standard questionnaires of authoritarian leadership (7 items), bureaucratic culture (6 items), and organizational indifference (7 items). The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed through content validity (CVR and CVI) and construct validity (confirmatory factor analysis), and reliability was confirmed through Cronbach's alpha and composite reliability. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 26 and SmartPLS version 4 software through structural equation modeling and bootstrap method (5000 subsamples). The findings showed that authoritarian leadership has a positive and significant effect on organizational indifference both directly (β=0.418) and indirectly through bureaucratic culture (β=0.449); also, leadership control and monitoring (β=0.327) had a positive and significant effect, and leadership transparency (β=-0.182) had a negative and significant effect on organizational indifference, while employee expectations and employee participation did not have a significant effect on organizational indifference. The coefficient of determination (R²) for organizational indifference was 0.510, indicating the good explanatory power of the model, and the model fit indices (SRMR=0.062, GoF=0.657) also indicated good model fit. The results of this study indicate that authoritarian leadership increases organizational indifference through reinforcing bureaucratic culture; therefore, it is recommended to the managers of Shahrekord University of Medical Sciences to reduce authoritarian behaviors, streamline the organizational structure, increase transparency, and create genuine employee participation to reduce employee indifference, and also to prioritize reforming the compensation system and addressing employee expectations (especially adequate salary and job security).