Search results

This paper aims to explore the antecedents and consequences of thriving at work, identifies existing gaps in the literature and proposes a framework, which encapsulates potential pathways for future research on thriving.

This paper follows a rigorous review of the extant literature on thriving mainly based on journal articles published between 2005 and 2020.

The paper proposes a feasible conceptual framework highlighting the antecedents and outcomes of thriving. Specifically, the review illustrates how contextual factors, represented by transformational leadership and organisational virtuousness (OV), act as antecedents of thriving and then proposes potential research direction where thriving is associated with psychological empowerment, psychological capital and innovative work behaviour.

Understanding how and when contextual factors such as transformational leadership and OV promote thriving is important for organisations and leaders who wish to know how and when they can shape resources and organisational features to enable thriving.

This unique review is one of a few studies adding to the growing research on positive psychology at the workplace. The proposed framework and future research directions have the potential to help unpack the unique relationship between work-related contextual factors and thriving.

The significant challenges faced by South Africa at present are well known. How to deal with the problems from a political and economic perspective abound, but taking a psychological approach has been neglected. This paper proposes a positive approach to South African organizational leadership based on the psychological capacity of hope. After giving a brief background on the context surrounding South African organizations, the theory, research, and application of hope relevant to organizational leadership in the “Rainbow Nation” are presented and analyzed. Such an overlooked positive approach represented by hopeful organizational leaders seems needed at this juncture of South Africa's present and future.

Exercising human resource (HR) leadership has always been difficult in challenging times, but the unique stressors facing organizations throughout the world today call for a new approach to HR leadership and its development. We propose a multifaceted model that redefines the role of strategic HR leadership and for understanding connections between authentic HR leadership and sustainable organizational performance. We argue that to build enduring organizations and motivate employees to provide superior customer service and create sustainable value for their organizations, we need HR leaders who know themselves, who lead with integrity and demand conformance to higher ethical values.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the separate and combined effects of transformational leadership behaviour and social processes of leadership on key organisational outcomes within Australian local councils.

A survey research methodology was used to gather quantitative data from employees from nine local councils. Data were analysed using Item clustering analysis for scale construction. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis was employed to test the proposed conceptual framework.

It was found that transformational leadership predicted performance outcomes, collective efficacy/outcomes expectancies and organisational commitment. Social processes of leadership predicted performance outcomes, collective efficacy/outcomes expectancies and organisational citizenship behaviours.

Results indicate that by practising aspects of transformational leadership such as articulating clear standards and expectations for performance and showing recognition to work unit members for specific task or goal achievements, work unit leaders may establish a foundation that later leads to higher performance outcomes. Furthermore, promoting aspects of social processes of leadership such as communication, enhancing adaptability and resolving uncertainties may lead to greater clarification and subsequent higher performance outcomes.

The paper is one of the first to examine the separate and combined effects of transformational leadership behaviour and social processes of leadership on key organisational outcomes in Australian local councils.

This paper seeks to examine gender‐ and management‐ level differences in perceptions of effective leadership within a framework of new leadership models that focus on the processes of influencing self and others rather than leadership based on hierarchy.

A self‐report questionnaire was distributed to a sample of council employees. The responses were analysed using thematic matrix displays.

Males and non‐management employees (when compared with female and management) perceived effective leadership as that which emphasises fairness, equality and honesty, develops staff, fosters workplace harmony, and is trustworthy. Female employees emphasised communication, decision‐making ability, and supporting the leader as being important to how a work unit could contribute to organizational leadership effectiveness. Employees at the management level underscored vision, supporting the leader, and integrity as being important to how a work unit could contribute to organizational leadership effectiveness. Female and non‐management employees highlighted employee development, contingent reward, communication and vision as being central to how organizational leadership could contribute to the effectiveness of the work unit.

Unlike the literature that differentiates between charismatic and transformational forms of leadership, this paper views these two constructs as both being components of transformational leadership.

This study aims to examine the relationship between authentic leadership (AL), affective commitment and individual performance. More specifically, this study aims to understand how AL influences employees’ affective commitment, how AL influences individual performance, how affective commitment influences individual performance and how affective commitment mediates the relationship between AL and individual performance.

In total, 212 Portuguese employees participated in this study. A quantitative methodology was used. Baron and Kenny’s linear regression method and Sobel test were used to test the mediation relationship.

The results reveal that affective commitment mediates the relationship between AL and employees’ performance. In others words, leaders’ authenticity promotes employees’ affective commitment, which, in turn, increases their individual performance.

This research has practical implications for human resource management in organizations, particularly in selection processes and training of leaders and managers. Practitioners looking to increase employee commitment and performance can do so by augmenting the AL.

This study enriches the knowledge about the relevance of emerging areas such as AL theory and responds to the need to understand underlying mechanisms linking AL with workers’ commitment and performance (i.e. testing the construct’s nomological network).

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a study examining the relationship between authentic leadership (AL), attitudes and employees’ behaviours. More specifically, how AL influences affective commitment, job resourcefulness and creativity, which, in turn, influence individual performance.

Empirical research has analysed the data from a questionnaire administered to a sample of 543 employees belonging to various public and private organisations in Cape Verde. The model was tested using structural equation modelling.

The results reveal that AL influences employees’ attitudes (affective commitment and job resourcefulness) and their creativity, affective commitment and job resourcefulness predict the employees’ creativity, and job resourcefulness and creativity predict individual performance.

The results from this study can help managers to understand how to increase employees’ creativity and performance through AL, affective commitment and job resourcefulness. Indirectly, the study also suggests that organisations should focus on selecting leaders with authentic features and implement appropriate training activities, coaching and development that aim to increase AL since this may well result in a positive impact on employees’ attitudes and behaviours.

The originality of this study is that it focusses on the integration of the five concepts, AL, affective commitment, job resourcefulness, creativity and individual performance, in a single study, providing a model that depicts the chain of effects between AL, employees’ attitudes, employees’ creativity and individual performance.

Authentic leadership (AL) as a style can influence, directly or indirectly, employees’ attitudes and behaviors. In this perspective, the purpose of this study is to investigate how AL predicts affective well-being (AWB) and employees’ creativity. The mediating role of AWB and the moderating role of satisfaction with management will be analyzed.

The researchers have analyzed the data from a questionnaire administered to a sample of 543 employees belonging to various public and private organizations in Cape Verde. Structural equation modelling was used to test the proposed hypotheses and a multi-group analysis was performed to identify how the level of satisfaction with the management may impact the proposed relationships.

The results of this study reveal that perceptions of AL predict employees’ creativity both directly and through the mediating role of AWB. Satisfaction with the management seems to moderate the relationship between AL, AWB and creativity.

The research outcomes suggest that organizations should focus on training leaders who value self-awareness and transparency in their relationships with others, who display an internal moral perspective and demonstrate balanced processing of information, to guarantee good results at the individual level and, consequently, at the organizational level. This study provides practitioners with possible routes to act in favor of a much happier and more creative workforce.

The originality of this study is because of the integration of these four concepts in a single study, providing evidence of the relationship between AL and creativity through the mediating role of AWB and moderating role of satisfaction with the management.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of a positive form of leadership, particularly authentic leadership, on ambidexterity, as ambidexterity has shown to improve financial performance. What is less clear, however, is how to create the organisational context towards ambidexterity or balanced exploitative and explorative innovation. This study set out to fill that gap in researching the direct influence of authentic leadership as well as indirect effect through innovation climate on ambidexterity.

A quantitative research approach was followed, with an online survey to employees in South African organisations. There were 733 useable questionnaires. Structural equation modelling was used to test proposed hypotheses of direct, indirect and moderation effects.

The results revealed that authentic leadership has a significant and positive direct effect on ambidexterity and a significant indirect effect through an innovation climate. Environmental dynamism lessened the regression weight of the relationship between authentic leadership and ambidexterity.

The data collected were cross-sectional and respondents were South African employees; therefore, caution should be exercised when generalising the results to other organisations in a broader African context.

Understanding that both authentic leadership and innovation climate are required to significantly influence ambidexterity allows organisations to direct their leadership selection and development.

The main contribution of this research lies in clarifying the influence of authentic leadership on ambidexterity in the South African context.