Search results

The present study had two objectives, first objective was to examine the impact of authentic leadership on followers' well-being and work engagement. The second objective was to examine the moderating role of authentic leadership and followers' outcomes. Despite an immense amount of research on authentic leadership, how and when authentic leadership is more or less effective in promoting the well-being and work engagement of followers is little known. Drawing from the conservation of resource theory, the authors draw upon the interactionist perspective and suggest psychological capital is a dispositional boundary condition that influences the effectiveness of authentic leadership in promoting well-being and work engagement of followers.

Using cross-sectional research design data were collected from 547 team members nested under 118 team leaders from the financial sector in India. The study used structural equation modelling and hierarchical regression analysis to examine the hypothesised relationships.

The findings from the study revealed that authentic leadership predicts followers' psychological well-being and work engagement. Also as proposed, the study found psychological capital moderates the relationship between authentic leadership and the well-being of followers. However, the study found psychological capital does not moderate the relationship between authentic leadership and followers' work engagement.

The study has helped expand the nomological network of authentic leadership by examining the authentic leadership model with followers' psychological well-being and work engagement. Further, the findings suggest that psychological capital being a dispositional boundary condition, it plays a contingent role in explaining the role of authentic leadership in promoting the well-being of followers.

The results offer strong practical implications that can be considered as the basis for actionable strategies by the human resource management system of the organisation to enhance authentic leadership and psychological capital.

The study is unique in its scope and contribution, as it tries to develop an understanding of how and when authentic leadership promotes psychological well-being and work engagement by considering an interactionist approach in the Indian context.

Extant literature reveals that the personality variable, core self-evaluation (CSE) which represents an employee’s self-assessment of himself has rarely been researched with respect to sales employees. The purpose of this paper is to identify the role of personality variable, core self-evaluation (CSE), in the relationship between demands and work – family enrichment. In this study, CSE has been treated as a moderating variable in the relationship between demands and work-family enrichment. This paper also aims to validate the CSE scale developed by Jugde et al. (2003) in Indian context.

Data were collected through structured questionnaires from 330 sales employees belonging to firms from some of the major sectors of Indian industry namely, Manufacturing, IT, FMCG, Pharmaceuticals and Financial Services. The study first validated the CSE scale in the Indian context using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Further, moderated regression analysis (MRA) was used to test the model.

The present research supported the 12-item CSE scale in the Indian context. Also, results of MRA suggested that, irrespective of higher work demands, sales employees having higher CSE experience higher levels of work to family enrichment (WFE). In addition, higher CSE employees tend to experience higher levels of FWE at the family front.

In an emerging economy such as India wherein sales professionals are facing a lot of work demands, organizations should invest in their frontline employees to be able to deliver value for money to the customers and thereby gain competitive advantage. With this realization, managers should acquire and retain frontline employees with positive core self-evaluation. Therefore, organizations should select and try to retain candidates with positive core self-evaluations.

Corporates should focus on nurturing sales employees’ positive CSE to make sure that their employees can contentedly adjust to various challenging work situations. In addition practices like job transitions, empowerment, enrichment and rewarding employees for their desired performance might be some of the interventions which positively impact core self-evaluations.

This study contributes to work – family literature by addressing the role of CSE in achieving WFE and FWE among sales employees in Indian context.

For more than a decade, efforts to integrate the two major perspectives of work–family studies, namely, work–family conflict and work–family enrichment have started advancing not only in western context but also in non-western contexts as well. However, both conflict and enrichment emerging from the family front have often been neglected in previous studies. The purpose of this paper is to test the integration of two major work–family perspectives, that is, work–family conflict and work–family enrichment in an Indian context.

The current study involves a multi-sectoral survey of sales employees belonging to manufacturing, information technology, fast-moving consumer goods, pharmaceuticals and financial services using standard scales. The sample consisted of 330 sales employees working in some of the major firms coming under these sectors. Structural equation modelling (SEM) using analysis of a moment structures was used to test the integrated model. In addition, multi-group SEM was used to test the impact of select demographic variables on the integrated model.

Results of SEM suggested that for sales employees in Indian organizations, work–family conflict follows a matching domain principle, whereas, work–family enrichment follows both matching and cross-domain principles. Further, it was found that marital status and annual salary emerge as moderators in the integrated model.

The present study confirmed that similar-domain relationships are stronger than cross-domain relationships, supporting findings from previous research with regard to work–family conflict. In addition, the results contradicted the studies conducted in western countries wherein the same domain effect is observed with respect to both types of enrichment, that is, work to family enrichment (WFE) and family to work enrichment (FWE). The present study confirms a similar and cross-domain relationship in the case of both types of enrichment. It means that both WFE and FWE have a positive impact on both jobs and family satisfaction.

Organizations so far have been trying ways to reduce stress to reduce work to family conflict. However, there is a need to incorporate policies that facilitate work–family enrichment. Such policies may focus more on support for both married and unmarried employees’ sales employees.

This study contributes to work–family literature by attempting to integrate both conflict and enrichment perspectives, which has rarely been done in the Indian context.