Authentic leadership and psychological ownership: investigation of interrelations

Abstract

Purpose

Authentic leadership and psychological ownership appear to be at somewhat similar stage of construct evolution. In the present study, the author asks two research questions: first, how authentic leadership relates to psychological ownership and second, how dyadic duration influences this relationship. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

Using correlational research design, the author collected cross-sectional data from 182 Indian professionals working in various organizations in India. The author used structural equation modeling to test the study hypotheses.

Findings

The results showed that authentic leadership positively influenced organization-based promotive psychological ownership; however, it shared no relationship with preventive psychological ownership or territoriality. Relational transparency and self-awareness factorials of authentic leadership influenced belongingness and self-efficacy factorials of psychological ownership beyond what authentic leadership as the second-order factor could account for. Leader self-awareness negatively related to follower self-efficacy. Authentic leadership completely accounted for the effects of moral perspective and balanced processing factorials on psychological ownership. Dyadic duration was not found to have significant moderation effect.

Research limitations/implications

Overall, the findings imply that authentic leadership may make followers dependent and allow less relational substitutability. Moral perspective may be more central to authentic leadership construct than self-awareness. Moreover, it may not be appropriate to consider territoriality as a part of psychological ownership construct.

Originality/value

The author believes that it is the first study to investigate the factorial-level interrelations between authentic leadership and psychological ownership. It can help in advancing authentic leadership theory and refining psychological ownership construct.

Citation

Alok, K. (2014), "Authentic leadership and psychological ownership: investigation of interrelations", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 35 No. 4, pp. 266-285. https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-06-2012-0080