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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the emerging concept of authentic leadership and provide some insights into its domain and development in organizations.

The paper sees that authentic leadership has become a recent buzzword finding its way into scientific journals, popular press, and newspaper columns.

The paper finds that the study of authentic leadership is relatively new; a working definition, a method of measurement, and criterion‐based studies do not yet exist. As such, attempting to develop authentic leaders may only result in leaders who are trained to superficially exhibit authentic leadership behaviors.

The paper shows that when authentic leadership has been defined and is measurable, development of this type of leadership can begin. Until then, attempting to develop authentic leadership may result in negative outcomes.

This study aims to identify the intermediate psychological mechanism – organizational identification – that links authentic leadership with follower’s organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Moreover, it examines the moderating role of perceived organizational support (POS) in the relationship between authentic leadership and organizational identification.

This study uses a cross-sectional research design involving 356 employees from diverse corporations in South Korea. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire to measure perception of authentic leadership, organizational identification, POS and OCB.

The results indicate that organizational identification significantly mediates the relationship between the perception of authentic leadership and follower’s OCB. Furthermore, POS acts as a moderating variable, strengthening the relationship between authentic leadership and organizational identification. Specifically, followers who perceive strong support from their organization are more likely to develop a robust sense of organizational identification under authentic leadership, which in turn, enhances their OCB.

This study offers a novel integration of social identity theory and organizational support theory to examine how authentic leadership influences follower’s OCB. It is among the first to introduce organizational identification as an intermediary in this context and to investigate the moderating effect of POS. The findings provide valuable insights for managers aiming to cultivate a workplace culture that fosters organizational identification and citizenship behaviors, thereby enhancing organizational effectiveness. Future research directions are also highlighted.

Based on self-regulation theory, this study aims to investigate the relationship between authentic leadership and help-seeking behavior, as well as the mediating effect of proactive goal regulation and the moderating effect of leader identification.

We conducted a questionnaire survey on 489 employees from 94 teams and tested our research model through multi-level pathway analysis.

The analysis results suggest that (1) authentic leadership positively relates to employees’ proactive goal regulation; (2) employees’ proactive goal regulation positively relates to their autonomous (dependent) help-seeking behavior; (3) employees’ proactive goal regulation plays an intermediary role between authentic leadership and help-seeking behavior; (4) leader identification positively moderates the influence of authentic leadership on employees’ proactive goal regulation and (5) leader identification positively moderates the indirect relationship between authentic leadership and employees’ help-seeking behavior through employees’ proactive goal regulation.

Based on the findings of this study, organizations should foster authentic leadership in workplace to promote employees’ help-seeking behavior. In addition, managers should also attach importance to proactive goal regulation in promoting help-seeking behavior and leader identification in enhancing the positive influence of authentic leadership on employees’ proactive goal regulation.

This study finds that proactive goal regulation plays a key mediating role between authentic leadership and help-seeking behavior, and reveals the role of leader identification in reinforcing the positive impact of authentic leadership on help-seeking behavior.

This study examined the relationship between authentic leadership and employee performance among public servants in Kigoma/Ujiji municipality in Tanzania. Further, we investigated the mediating role of motivation on the relationship between authentic leadership and employee performance.

A cross-sectional research design was applied along with a quantitative research approach. The study sampled 260 public servants selected by random sampling from a total of 800 employees. Data were analyzed using Mplus software using the maximum likelihood estimator to test for hypotheses.

The findings show a positive significant relationship between authentic leadership and employee performance, a positive significant relationship between authentic leadership and motivation and a positive significant relationship between motivation and employee performance. Furthermore, motivation was found to be a significant mediator in the relationship between authentic leadership and employee performance among public servants in Tanzania.

This study contributes to the corpus of research on authentic leadership, motivation and employee performance, especially in the context of public service. Additionally, it provides advice on how to use authentic leadership and motivation to enhance public servants performance. Managers should strive to create a motivational work climate characterized by trust, empowerment and recognition. By fostering a sense of ownership and investment in their work, managers can enhance employee motivation and engagement, leading to improved performance outcomes.

Our study is one of a kind to emphasize the crucial roles that authentic leadership and motivation play in promoting commitment, dedication and positive social interactions at work. Our study also advances the understanding of public service motivation (PSM) theory.

This chapter critically examines whether it may be possible to create an AI-based authentic leader, questioning the inherent contradiction between artificial and authentic. The authors pose central research questions: Does the application of AI – even just as a powerful resource – challenge the tenets of authentic leadership? What are the possibilities and limitations of the concept of authenticity in AI-based management systems? Moreover, with the help of three vignettes illustrating practical applications of AI-based systems in leadership and management tasks, the authors illustrate how technology may be used to either control or empower workers and leaders. The authors call for research to assess whether the search for authenticity in AI-based leadership could lead anywhere, warning that it could entrap us in unresolvable existential and conceptual ambiguity, ultimately diverting our focus from the essence of leadership altogether.

The research on authentic leadership has recently become a priority in leadership literature. As policy-makers and practitioners seek evidence in addressing leadership malfeasance across organisations and the broader society. Hence, a growing body of evidence suggests that the authentic leadership construct is plagued with a lack of conceptual clarity, embodying philosophical ambiguity and demographic limitations. Consequently, the study provides crucial descriptions of authentic leadership within a developing economy context.

The study’s findings show that three perspectives were evident from the authentic leaders and followers in defining authentic leadership. Authentic leaders perceive the construct from dual perspectives while followers have a singular outlook. The first perspective provided by the authentic leaders focussed on their leadership and how the burden of the role influenced their approach. The second perspective linked authentic leadership to areas that improve organisational outcomes. An unconscious awareness of the necessities that support organisational performance underpins the descriptions by the leaders. Remarkably, followers provide the last perspective that emphasises the relational aspects of the authentic leader and how it influences them in their daily lives. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the study’s contributions and limitations before charting the path for future research.

This chapter analyses common, contradictory, paradoxical patterns in the evolution and development of authentic leadership that emerged throughout this handbook. The authentic leadership literature has been valuable in focusing on and reawakening a wider discourse on leadership and in particular the need for a reappraisal of leadership values. The adamant, one might say absolutist, claims for the theory have begun to restrict understanding. The chapters in this book reveal dimensions and insights that broaden and diversify potential approaches to contextual understanding and exercising leadership. Reilly and Turcan conclude that authentic leadership is still in its embryonic stage and whether it will fully emerge and become a mature discipline remains to be seen.

Academic and practitioner attention to the constructs of authentic leadership and work engagement and their implications for organizations has grown dramatically over the past decade. Consideration of the implications of these constructs for high-performance human resource practices (HPHRP) is limited, however. In this monograph, we present a conceptual model that integrates authentic leadership/followership theory with theory and research on HPHRP. Then, we apply this model to systematically consider the implications of skill-enhancing, motivation-enhancing, and opportunity-enhancing HR practices in combination with authentic leadership for authentic followership, follower work engagement, and follower performance. We contend that authentic leadership, through various influences processes, promotes HPHRP, and vice versa, to help foster enhanced work engagement. By cultivating greater work engagement, individuals are motivated to bring their best, most authentic selves to the workplace and are more likely to achieve higher levels of both well-being and performance.

The contemporary human resource management (HRM) sector is faced with continual leadership development challenges. Unethical behavior in leaders is not the norm, but it is also not the exception. Human resource training and development focus significantly on better leadership but have largely failed to create more effective leaders. The result? Employee and follower wellbeing have not seen their best days. In this chapter, authentic relationships comprising authentic leaders and authentic followers are posited as a solution. The call is for more rigor in the theory underpinning leadership development programs, assurance of such programs, and embedding ethics into the core of what leadership developers do.