Empowering the Employees: How Authentic Leadership Drives Performance
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2024-09-05
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en
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Several previous studies have highlighted a positive relationship between perceived authentic leadership and employee performance, which is crucial for company performance. However, there is a limited amount of research exploring mediating variables in this relationship. By drawing on social exchange and self-determination theory, this study aims to expand the nomological network of authentic leadership, by investigating whether organizational trust and psychological empowerment can explain this relationship. Despite theoretical reasons to expect these variables to mediate this relationship, their role has not yet been investigated empirically.
Utilizing a parallel mediation model, the results of an online survey conducted among Dutch employees (n = 110) reveal that organizational trust cannot explain the relationship between perceived authentic leadership and employee performance. The analysis using Process Model 4 indicates that there is a positive association between perceived authentic leadership and organizational trust, but an increase in organizational trust is not positively associated to a higher employee performance. This means that organizational trust is only an outcome of a higher perceived authentic leadership.
However, the results confirm that psychological empowerment can explain the relationship: a higher level of perceived authentic leadership is associated with a higher level of psychological empowerment, which in turn is associated with a higher employee performance. In order to improve employee performance, organizations should take the authenticity of leaders into account when selecting them. They also should incorporate psychological empowerment in the development of leadership programs, as only well-designed leadership programs lead to substantial benefits. However, these results should be interpreted with some caution, as a convenience sample is utilized. Future research could for example benefit from combining psychological empowerment with earlier findings on mediating variables in the relationship between authentic leadership and employee performance into one comprehensive model.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen