Authentic Leadership: An Empirical Test of Its Antecedents, Consequences, and Mediating Mechanisms

The recent economic crisis as well as other disasters such as the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico or the nuclear disaster in Japan has fanned calls for leaders who do not deny responsibility, hide information, and deceive others, but rather lead with authenticity and integrity. In this article, we e...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of business ethics 2012-05, Vol.107 (3), p.331-348
Main Authors: Peus, Claudia, Wesche, Jenny Sarah, Streicher, Bernhard, Braun, Susanne, Frey, Dieter
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attitudes
Authentic leadership
Authenticity
Business
Business and Management
Business Ethics
Disasters
Economic conditions
Economic crisis
Economics
Education
Empirical evidence
Employee supervision
Ethics
Followers
Group dynamics
Gulf of Mexico
Japan
Job satisfaction
Knowledge
Leader predictability
Leadership
Management
Management styles
Modeling
Natural disasters
Oil spills
Perception
Personality psychology
Petroleum industry
Philosophy
Predictability
Professional ethics
Quality of Life Research
Responsibility
Self awareness
Self knowledge
Social psychology
Strategic management
Studies
Supervisors
Team effectiveness
Teamwork
Trust
Values
Work-related attitudes
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Summary:The recent economic crisis as well as other disasters such as the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico or the nuclear disaster in Japan has fanned calls for leaders who do not deny responsibility, hide information, and deceive others, but rather lead with authenticity and integrity. In this article, we empirically investigate the concept of authentic leadership. Specifically, we examine the antecedents and individual as well as group-level outcomes of authentic leadership in business (Study 1 ; n = 306) as well as research organizations (Study 2; n = 105). Findings reveal leader self-knowledge and self-consistency as antecedents of authentic leadership and followers' satisfaction with supervisor, organizational commitment, and extraeffort as well as perceived team effectiveness as outcomes. The relations between authentic leadership and followers' work-related attitudes as well as perceived team effectiveness are mediated by perceived predictability of the leader, a particular facet of trust. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory and practice and provide suggestions for advancing theory and research on authentic leadership in the future.
ISSN:0167-4544
1573-0697
DOI:10.1007/s10551-011-1042-3