EAWOP Congress 2013

1. A
ANTECEDENTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP
Garazi Azanza1 , Marjan Gorgievski1, Juan A. Moriano3 & Fernando Molero3
1 University of Deusto
2 Erasmus University Rotterdam
3 Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)

2. Purpose
1) to examine what predicts followers perceptions of
leaders’ authentic leadership, specifically leaders'
self-perceptions, leaders’ PsyCap, gender and leader-
follower distance, and 2) its effect on employees’
PsyCap and work engagement.

3. Authentic leadership
Positive
Psychological
Capacities
Positive
Organizational
Context
Positive
self-development
Authentic
leadership
Trigger events/
Challenges
Confidence
Hope
Optimism
Resiliency
Highly
developed
organization
Authentic leadership development model. Adapted from Avolio and Luthans (2003).
Positive outcomes
on followers

4. Authentic leadership
Authentic
leadership
Self-awareness
Relational
transparency
Balanced
processing
Internal moral
perspective
Components of authentic leadership (Walumbwa et al., 2008)

5. Adapted fromWalumbwa,Avolio, Gardner,Wernsing & Peterson (2008)
Authentic leadership
Authentic leadership vs other leadership theories
Theoretical Components Authentic
Leadership
Transformational
Leadership
Ethical
Leadership
Authentic leadership
Leader self-awareness  
Relational transparency  *
Internalized moral
perspective
  
Balanced processing  *
Ethical leadership
Moral person   
Moral manager * * 
Transformational leadership
Idealized influence *  
Inspirational motivation 
Intellectual stimulation 
Individual consideration  *

6. Positive
Psychological
Capacities
Positive
Organizational
Context
Positive
self-development
Authentic
leadership
Trigger events/
Challenges
Confidence
Hope
Optimism
Resiliency
Highly
developed
organization
Authentic leadership development model. Adapted from Avolio and Luthans (2003).
Antecedents of authentic leadership
Positive outcomes
on followers
PsyCap

7. Antecedents of authentic leadership
Leader’s self-perceptions
 Leaders’ self-awareness is considered a key element for self-others agreement:
A self-aware leader may be more conscious of how others perceive him or her,
resulting in a more accurate self-assessment (Atwater &Yammarino, 2006).
 Since self-awareness is a component of authentic leadership, we expect to find a
relationship between self-ratings of authentic leadership and followers’ perception.

8. Antecedents of authentic leadership
Leader-follower distance
 Followers’ perception about their leaders can be influenced by the leader-follower
distance (Antonakis & Atwater, 2002).
 The different impact of distant or close leaders on followers may stem from the
difference in the information followers have about their leaders (Dvir & Shamir,
2003).
 Authentic leaders may be able to give information about their relational
transparency and build authentic relationships in close leader-follower situations, and
having a frequent communication may give the followers the opportunity to know
the leaders deeper and evaluate their moral perspective.

9. Antecedents of authentic leadership
Leader’s gender
 Women exceed men on transformational factors (Eagly, Johannesen-Schmidt, van
Engen &Vinkenburg, 2003) and are perceived to display more transformational
behaviors (Vinkenburg, van Engen, Eagly & Johannesen-Schmidt, 2011)
 Women exhibit higher ethical beliefs and intentions to act more ethically than men
(Valentine & Rittenburg, 2007).
 Given that authentic leadership is highly correlated with transformational leadership
(Walumbwa et al., 2008) and considering the moral component of authentic leadership,
we expect that women will be evaluated to be more authentic than men.

10. Positive
organizational
outcomes on
followers
Positive
Psychological
Capacities
Positive
Organizational
Context
Positive
self-development
Authentic
leadership
Trigger events/
Challenges
Confidence
Hope
Optimism
Resiliency
Highly
developed
organization
Authentic leadership development model. Adapted from Avolio and Luthans (2003).
PsyCap
Work
engagement
Consequences of authentic leadership

11. Consequences of authentic leadership
PsyCap
 PsyCap may explain the positive effects of authentic leaders on their followers
(Walumbwa et al., 2008).
 Through contagion effects (Ilies et al., 2005), the psychological strengths of authentic
leaders may promote the employees' PsyCap (Luthans, et al., 2007).
Work Engagement
 The relationship between work engagement and authentic leadership has been
previously analysed (Walumbwa,Wang,Wang, Schaubroeck & Avolio, 2010).
 Authentic leadership may positively impact on employees’ engagement through a
modelling process which may transmit leader’s engagement and commitment to his
or her work and the organization to the followers.

12. Research hypotheses
H1
+
+
+
+
+
Leader’s
PsyCap
Self-rated
authentic
leadership
Work
engagement
Followers’
PsyCap
Follower-
rated
authentic
leadership
Leader’s
gender
Communication
frequency
+
H2
H4
H6
H5
H3

13. Method
40 team leaders and 190 team members from big private Spanish retail companies.
On average, each team had 5.9 members (SD = 1.48)
 Employees: 33.88 years old (SD = 7.49) and predominantly female (65.3%). 48.7%
had graduated from vocational school and 31.6% had a university degree. On
average, participants had been members of their current organization for 5.04
years (SD = 3.77).
 Leaders: 35.94 years old (SD = 6.06) and primarly female (61.1%) and had a
university degree (68.9%) or vocational training (20.2%). They had been members
of their current organization for 6.25 years (SD = 4.56).
Sample

14.  Authentic leadership: Spanish adaptation (Moriano, Molero & Lévy Mangin, 2011) of
the 16-item Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (Walumbwa et al., 2008).
 PsyCap: Spanish adaptation (Azanza, Domínguez, Moriano & Molero, in press) of the
24-item Psychological Capital Qustionnaire (PCQ) developed by Luthans, Avolio, Youssef
and Norman (2007).
 Work engagement: Spanish version (Salanova, Schaufeli, Llorens, Peiro, & Grau, 2000)
of the 17 item Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2003).
 Leader-follower distance: 3-item scale (e.g., “How often do you meet your
supervisor?”) which assesses how often employees and leaders meet and communicate
together.
 Demographic Variables: age, gender, education level, and tenure with the
organization.
Measures
Method

15. Means (M), Standard Deviations (SD), Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICC) and correlations
**p < .01, *p <.05
Note: aggregated results are in the upper diagonal and disaggregated in the lower diagonal
Construct M (SD) ICC 1 2 3 4 5 6
1. AL rated by leaders 4.43 (.51) - .04 .62** .24** .14* .11
2. Perceived AL 4.05 (1.05) .63 .02 -.00 .10 .17* .47**
3. Leader’s PsyCap 4.35 (.68) - .62** -.00 .23** .12 .22**
4. Follower’s PsyCap 3.94 (.68) .77 .16* .20** .15* .62** .38**
5. Engagement 4.18 (.85) .74 .09 .29** .08 .57** .36**
6. Leader-follower
distance 3.80 (1.32) .74 .07 .52** .14* .28** .34**
Results

16. Multilevel regression analysis
**p < .01, *p <.05
Leader’s
PsyCap
Self-rated
authentic
leadership
Work
engagement
Followers’
PsyCap
Follower-
rated
authentic
leadership
Leader’s
gender
Communication
frequency
.38*
.15**
.15*
.44**
Results

17. Multilevel regression analysis
Work
engagement
Followers’
PsyCap
Follower-
rated
authentic
leadership
.15**
.63**
Mediation effects
Results
**p < .01, *p <.05

18. Discussion
 Self-others discrepancy for authentic leadership ratings.
 Leader’s gender (being woman) and leader-follower distance
(frequent communication) are antecedents of authentic leadership.
 Follower’s rated authentic leadership predicts follower PsyCap through
its influence on work engagement.

19.  Limitations and future research:
• Outcome variables based on follower assessment Include objective
indicators and leader assessment.
• Longitudinal study to track the process of the way antecedents lead to
a perception of authentic leadership.
 Analysis of the role of both leader’s and follower’s ratings of leader’s
authentic leadership and its effect on follower’s outcomes.
 Introduction of the concepts of leader-follower distance and leader’s
gender.
Discussion

20. THANKYOU FORYOUR ATTENTION
garazi.azanza@deusto.es