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Since the arrival of mass production, commodification has been plaguing markets – none more so than that for music. By separating production and consumption in space and time, commodification challenges the very conditions underlying economic exchange. This chapter explores authenticity as the institutional response to the commodification of music, rekindling the relationship between isolated market participants in the increasingly digitized world of music. Building upon the “Production of Culture” perspective, we unpack the commodification of music across five different institutional realms – (1) production, (2) consumption, (3) selection, (4) appropriation, and (5) classification – and provide a thoroughly relational account of authenticity as an institutional practice.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of the scandals and distrust over the past years in brand love regarding a classic and well-known financial brand. The authors consider the antecedents of brand love contemplating the role of negative emotions, engagement and authenticity. The authors study the brand of a Portuguese bank, Caixa Geral de Depósitos, which was associated with harmful management and had to be intervened with monetary aid from the government.

An online questionnaire was used to collect data. The authors applied a confirmatory factor analysis and the hypotheses were tested by the structural equation modelling.

The results show that negative emotions toward the brand have a direct and indirect impact on brand engagement and the consumer-based brand authenticity, brand engagement and consumer-based brand authenticity positively impact brand love and negative emotions toward the brand positively and indirectly impact brand love.

The results should be analyzed with appropriate caution, given the limitations of the sample. The authors used a sample of Portuguese consumers connected with a commercial bank brand. These limitations could be overcome in future research.

The findings are important for the definition of branding strategies in a competitive and vulnerable context.

The model presented in this paper aims at filing a gap in the literature. The negative emotions toward brands have been little studied as an antecedent. It is also the first time that the constructs of engagement and authenticity and their relational outcome in brand love are applied to a financial brand.

Authenticity, or the extent to which individuals act in accordance with their values, beliefs and characteristics, is recognized as a key component of a fulfilled life. However, little is known about its antecedents in an organizational context. Drawing on goal-setting theory and the broaden-and-build theory, the current study examined the role of team leaders' perceived shared vision in promoting their work authenticity, mediated through strengths use support (SUS) for members as well as leaders' strengths use.

A two-wave questionnaire survey was conducted to test the hypotheses using a sample of 325 middle managers of a manufacturing firm.

The results of structural equation modeling show that perceived shared vision promoted work authenticity, mediated through SUS and strengths use.

This study is the first to identify that shared goals can trigger authenticity at work by directing the leader to use their strengths, alongside their team members.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the individual and contextual antecedents of authentic leadership (AL) proposed in the authentic leadership development (ALD) theory.

Survey data were collected from 74 leaders from two Midwestern organizations. Surveys were used to collect AL, psychological capital (PsyCap), and psychological climate data. Hierarchical regression was used to analyze the data.

Results support PsyCap, and to a lesser extent psychological climate, as antecedents of AL. Organizations that desire to increase leader authenticity and realize its many favorable outcomes should emphasize the development of leaders’ PsyCap hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism.

This was the first study to examine the antecedents of AL, which can be personal (PsyCap) or contextual (psychological climate).

The continued evolution of influencer marketing has created a need to better understand influencer marketing effectiveness. With brands increasingly partnering with influencers, research is yet to provide an integrated perspective examining the critical role of both parties. This study aims to draw on the source credibility model and signaling theory to explain the mechanisms that matter in influencer marketing effectiveness.

The proposed model of influencer marketing effectiveness is analyzed using partial least squares with data from 281 followers of social media influencers.

The authors establish influencer characteristics of popularity and attractiveness as heuristic cues that inform judgments of influencer efficacy. Further, category involvement and altruistic motives for collaboration are shown to moderate followers’ reliance on these heuristic cues. Then, a sequential mediating effect demonstrates the critical roles of the influencer and partner brand in three desired outcomes: enhanced perception of brand authenticity, enhanced brand engagement and positive attitudes toward influencer posts.

Future research should consider other heuristic cues that could inform influencer efficacy judgments and switch the focus toward the partner brand’s impact on such judgments.

A step-by-step visual framework is presented to help marketers and influencers translate these findings into key responsibilities for developing more effective and collaborative partnerships.

Besides presenting an integrated perspective, signaling theory provides an original lens for explaining influencer marketing effectiveness, addressing the need to expand the theoretical boundaries of influencer marketing research. 

The authors focus on a non-Western setting that has hardly featured in debates around political authenticity, Taiwan. The authors also adopt a novel inter-generational perspective to look at varying attitudes towards two ‘unconventional’, high-profile politicians, Ko Wen-je and Han Kuo-yu. Drawing on focus group data, the authors note the similarities and differences in the way that the different generations engage with, and assess, the two politicians with a particular focus on the extent to which their personalities, appearance, and everyday activities are perceived as authentic.

Drawing on stakeholder theory, this study examines the relationship between responsible leadership and its macro-, meso- and micro-level outcomes. Further, this study investigates the moderating role of authenticity on the relationship between responsible leadership and its multi-level effects, i.e. relational social capital, corporate social performance and community citizenship behaviour among employees.

The authors conducted four field studies using the quantitative methodology to test the hypotheses. In study 1 (N = 236), by adopting a multi-wave and multi-source research design, the authors examine the relationship between responsible leadership, authenticity and relational social capital. In study 2 (N = 203), by adopting a multi-wave research design, the authors examine the relationship between responsible leadership, authenticity and corporate social performance. In study 3 (N = 203), by adopting a multi-wave and multi-source research design, the authors examine the relationship between responsible leadership, authenticity and employees' community citizenship behaviour. In study 4 (N = 257), by adopting a multi-wave and multi-source research design, the authors capture the impact of responsible leadership on outcomes (social capital, corporate social performance and community citizenship behaviour) with a boundary condition of authenticity.

The authors find that responsible leadership enhances relational social capital, improves a firm's social performance and develops community citizenship behaviour among employees. Further, the study finds that authenticity positively moderates the relationship between responsible leadership and its multi-level outcomes.

First, it is a maiden study to investigate the multi-level outcomes of RL in a series of three empirical studies. Second, it contributes to RL literature by testing a unique moderating role of authenticity between RL and its multi-level outcomes of relational social capital, corporate social performance and employees' community citizenship behaviour. This study also provides empirical evidence for the multi-level implications of stakeholder theory.

Frontline employee authenticity has been investigated in relation to both potentially positive and negative outcomes, but largely from the employee perspective. The current paper aims to investigate frontline authenticity in a sales/service context from the customer perspective, specifically examining the influence of adaptive selling in relation to a customer’s perception of salesperson authenticity. Effects on customer’s perceptions of final benefits and value are examined.

Survey data collected from customers of an insurance firm in South Korea were used to investigate the proposed model. Customer perceptions of salesperson adaptive selling, authenticity, key benefits delivered and organizational value provision were all captured.

The results suggest that authenticity does indeed positively influence perceptions of beneficial outcomes related to a transaction with a salesperson. These benefits then fully mediate the linkage from adaptive selling to a customer’s perceived value, gained from the salesperson’s organization.

The collection of data from only the customer’s perspective is both a strength and a weakness. Although all of the key variables investigated are important to evaluate via the lens of the customer, such a data collection always introduces the potential problem of common method bias.

Managers should be aware of the importance of a salesperson behaving in an authentic manner. Although many frontline contexts have desired and scripted narratives for interacting with customers, deriving key benefits through the customers’ eyes may come more strongly by allowing the frontline employee to act naturally.

Authenticity has been investigated in managerial and brand contexts, but an understanding of its importance in a frontline context is in its early stages. Similarly, the importance of understanding conditions that moderate the effectiveness of adaptive selling is consistent with calls in the literature.

This chapter offers a comprehensive review the literature on authentic leadership (AL). The authors employ a bibliometric approach to identify, classify, visualise and synthesise relevant scholarly publications and the work of a core group of interdisciplinary scholars who are key contributors to the research on AL. They review 264 journal articles, adopting a clustering technique to assess the central themes of AL scholarship. They identify five distinct thematic clusters: authenticity in the context of leadership; structure of AL; social perspectives on AL; dynamism of AL; and value perceptions of AL. Velt and Sinkovics assert that these clusters will help scholars of AL to understand the dominant streams in the literature and provide a foundation for future research.

It is recognised that reputation is a relational construct; however the impact of stakeholders’ various relational dimensions on their perceptions to influence reputation is not widely understood. The purpose of this paper is to add to the current understanding of stakeholders’ relationships, interactions, their subsequent relational dimensions and its impact on stakeholders’ perceptions to further influence relational reputation.

This paper takes a case study approach.

The findings of this study recognise the impact of relationship marketing (RM) on the influence of stakeholders’ perceptions. It discusses how RM substantiate the pertinent authenticity (symbolises reputation), relevance and differentiation (represent brand positioning) of an organisation’s profile and/or their market offerings, in relation to the interest of the target market through the cause and consequence of stakeholder relationships and interactions to influence their perceptions. The findings acknowledge 11 RM dimensions that have relational implications to nurture stakeholders’ perceptions and subsequent relational reputation, which appear viable across industries and markets.

Underlying the cause and consequence of stakeholder relationships and interactions; these 11 RM dimensions emerge as antecedents to form/reform relational reputation. Further academic and professional implications of the findings are briefly discussed.