Introduction

The concept of authentic leadership was introduced by various researchers and practitioners who perceived that there is a restriction to the market-oriented limitless competition paradigm. As conventional leadership theories came to lay too much stress on the eloquence, gestures, and skills of leaders in the 2000s, an increasing number of people thought of leadership as a means to satisfy the selfish interests and desires of business owners and managers. The bankruptcy of the massive energy firm Enron in the USA triggered severe criticism over finances, firms, and capital used without morality; it also emphasized the need for morality among chief executive officers (CEOs). Under the free market economy, firms only emphasized showy leadership skills to produce maximum financial results in a short period of time: they made the error of determining the success of a leader only in terms of financial success.

Accordingly, researchers began to study the limitations of the existing forms of leadership. They also showed interest in authentic leadership, whereby the leader is honest with himself/herself and strives to achieve goals based on genuine relationships with subordinates. Authentic leadership indicates leadership that constantly practices self-awareness and self-regulation while exerting a positive influence on the leader, subordinates, and the organization. In other words, authentic leaders perceive themselves in terms of an understanding of who they are by determining the advantages and disadvantages of their egos and making efforts to reduce the gap between their ideal egos and present egos through self-regulation. Unlike conventional leadership that affects performance by powerfully exerting authority over work and subordinates, leaders who are honest with themselves instead of others contribute more greatly to the long-term and short-term performance of organizations and teams.

Along with the changes in the leadership paradigm, another adjustment that modern organizations are facing is the expansion of the team-based system. This system began to expand in order to promote greater organizational performance and efficiency. It has now established its place in countless firms and become the most important unit for organizational performance. Korean firms are also actively using the team-based system to increase productivity, as in other countries. Further, the human resource (HR) system has changed to the extent that evaluation and reward are also based on teams. This approach places more stress on the leadership of the team leader who is the immediate supervisor of a team. The team leader's authentic leadership may have a significant effect on the attitudes and behaviors of team members. Accordingly, this study will analyze the effects of team leaders' authentic leadership on employees' well-being. Recently, an increasing amount of attention is paid to the well-being of employees within an organization, an approach that appears to produce good results. Studies on performance have mostly focused on tangible and objective performance, such as hard performance. Thus, the current study will consider employees' well-being, which can represent soft performance, as the key outcome variable, thereby determining the effects of team leaders' authentic leadership on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. While hedonic well-being is intended to gain happiness by obtaining pleasure and avoiding pain, eudaimonic well-being seeks profound happiness and self-realization beyond present pleasure and satisfaction.

Furthermore, it is argued that relational cohesion among team members in a situation whereby a team's performance leads to an organization's performance may moderate the effects of authentic leadership on employees' well-being. Since task interdependence increases among team members and teamwork is important, the effects of relationships among team members may be significant alongside the leadership style of the team leader. Relational cohesion shows an awareness that integrated social entity should be maintained among people in terms of their relationships; thus, it can be a driving force that leads to high performance.

Based on the issues raised thus far, this study first verifies whether authentic leadership helps the positive health of employees by determining the effects of authentic leadership on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being among employees of manufacturers, financial firms, and public enterprises. In particular, this study expects to verify whether there is a pure effect of authentic leadership by controlling the effects of transformational leadership, which is known to be very effective, and ethical leadership, which is known to be conceptually similar to authentic leadership. Second, this study will verify the interaction effect with authentic leadership by examining whether relational cohesion among team members moderates the relationship between authentic leadership and employees' well-being. Finally, based on the results of the verifications, this study will provide theoretical and practical implications for actual workers of organizations by determining whether authentic leadership can be an alternative for conventional leadership.