The Effects of Authentic Leadership on Employees' Well-Being
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.