True north or traveled terrain? An empirical investigation of authentic leadership.

摘要

Authentic leadership is a new concept that is gaining both popularity and notoriety in the leadership literature. It is argued as a positive form of leadership that goes beyond traditional leadership styles in order to influence followers through genuine, ethical behavior. However, as a concept in its infancy, authentic leadership has yet to receive much empirical attention, and many researchers are skeptical of its value in what is seen as a saturated domain of leadership styles. This study offers a comprehensive approach to addressing this need. A new measure for authentic leadership was developed and validated through pilot testing. Through additional analyses using this new measure, it was discovered that authentic and transformational leadership were not empirically distinct. However, by combining these two measures into an authentic-transformational leadership construct, it was still possible to examine the effect of greater amounts of authenticity in the leadership role. It was found that authentic-transformational leadership was directly related to a number of employee attitudes, and these, in turn, were related to positive employee behaviors. Results of this study are discussed both in terms of future research in the area of authentic-transformational leadership as well as its impact on organizational effectiveness.