The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of authentic leadership on organizational commitment, especially focusing on mediating effects of psychological capital. In order to examine the impact of authentic leadership and psychology capita...
The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of authentic leadership on organizational commitment, especially focusing on mediating effects of psychological capital. In order to examine the impact of authentic leadership and psychology capital enhancement on human resource development especially in terms of organizational capacity building, this study chose four research questions: (1) does authentic leadership have any meaningful impact on psychology capital? (2) does authentic leadership meaningfully affects on organizational commitment? (3) does psychological capital have significant impact on organizational commitment? (4) does authentic leadership, psychology capital, and organizational commitment have any interactive relationship?
The research results are as follows:
First, with regard to the interaction between authentic leadership and psychological capital (excluding resiliency sub-factor), balanced processing, the sub-factor of authentic leadership, has correlations with self-efficacy and hope, the sub-factors of psychological capital. The level of self-awareness affects the level of optimism of a leader.
Second, in terms of the relationship between authentic leadership and organizational commitment, balanced processing of information affects affective and continuance commitment. Meanwhile, a leader’s self-awareness has meaningful impact on normative commitment and continuance commitment.
Third, regarding the relationship between psychological capital and organizational commitment, hope has significant impact on affective, normative, and continuance commitment while optimism meaningfully affects affective commitment.
Last, as for the correlations among authentic leadership, psychological capital (excluding resiliency sub-factor), and organizational commitment, authentic leadership has even showed mediated effect in the form of psychological capital as well as having direct impact on organizational commitment and psychological capital.
The key implications of this study are like following:
First, as it has been proven that authentic leadership has significant impact on psychological capital, it is necessary to study more on authentic leadership and educational approaches to strengthen it.
Second, stronger authentic leadership can play a pivotal role in encouraging people to maintain good relationship with their leaders while strengthening employee’s organizational commitment.
Third, considering psychological capital is a situational concept with the potential to be developed, it is important for an organization to actively support the development of psychological capital of its employees through various organizational efforts including education.
In order to get more meaningful results, following issues shall be further considered.
First, more studies are needed on the relationship between organizational change and authentic leadership and the environment where authentic leadership is maximized.
Second, since psychological capital affects organizational commitment, it is highly effective to make educational investment in psychological capital development.
Third, it is necessary to develop ways to verify authentic leadership and psychological capital that best suit domestic companies so that they can be applied to various fields of industry.
Last, more in-depth studies need to be done onorganizational effectiveness and job performance including job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior.