Authentic leadership has received significant academic attention. It is now imperative to understand how authentic leadership’s effectiveness varies in different situations or conditions, which is vital to reestablishing it as an independent leadership theory. To this end, this study aims to verify the positive influence of authentic leadership on the task performance of members within an organization. Further, it seeks to confirm the situations that moderate the relationship between authentic leadership and task performance. Specifically, the mediating mechanism of psychological capital in this relationship, the moderating effect of performance pressure on the relationship between authentic leadership and psychological capital, and the moderated mediating effect are demonstrated. This study used a time-lagged survey to test the hypotheses; two online surveys were staggered by 1 month and completed by 485 participants in South Korea. The empirical analysis confirmed all the proposed hypotheses. First, authentic leadership was positively related to task performance. Second, psychological capital had a mediating effect on the relationship between authentic leadership and task performance. Third, task performance pressure was negatively related to the relationship between authentic leadership and psychological capital. Specifically, the strength of the indirect effect increased as the employee performance pressure decreased. Based on these results, various theoretical and practical implications are suggested for the extended application of the authentic leadership theory in organizations and future research directions are proposed.

Ostracism in the workplace is a common phenomenon in modern society that impairs employees’ well-being. This study suggests that workplace ostracism reduces subjective well-being by examining the effect of workplace ostracism on subjective well-being. Based on self-determination theory and resource conservation theory, this study explores the underlying processes and their contingent factors in the relationship between workplace ostracism and employee well-being. Specifically, this study hypothesizes that workplace ostracism decreases employees’ well-being by enhancing employees’ need satisfaction. Furthermore, the perception of a direct supervisor’s authentic leadership positively moderates the relationship between workplace ostracism and employees’ need satisfaction. This study used moderated mediation analysis to evaluate our predictions using a two-time online survey of 485 Korean employees. The findings revealed that workplace ostracism has a detrimental impact on employee well-being via need satisfaction. However, perceptions of a direct supervisor’s authentic leadership positively moderate the association between workplace ostracism and need satisfaction. Our results have important practical and theoretical implications in the workplace ostracism literature.

This study examines how performance pressure influences the complex relationships between job autonomy and critical employee outcomes in contemporary organizations. Specifically, we investigate the relationships between employees’ job autonomy, work engagement, and innovative behavior, while testing the moderating effects of performance pressure perceived within teams. Drawing on Self-Determination Theory and the Job Demand–Resource Model, this research explores the dynamic tension between autonomy and performance demands in organizational settings. Using a two-wave survey design to prevent common method bias, data were collected from 485 employees across diverse organizations in South Korea, representing various industries and organizational levels. The results revealed that job autonomy positively impacts both work engagement and innovative behavior, supporting the fundamental role of autonomy in employee motivation and performance. More importantly, performance pressure perceived within teams had significant moderating effects, weakening the positive relationships between job autonomy and work engagement and innovative behavior. The results of simple slope analyses further confirmed these interaction effects, demonstrating that the benefits of job autonomy were consistently diminished under conditions of high performance pressure. These findings contribute to the organizational behavior and human resource management literature by demonstrating how performance pressure within teams can systematically constrain the benefits of job autonomy in contemporary work environments. For practitioners, our results suggest that organizations should enhance employees’ job autonomy while carefully managing performance pressure within team contexts. To optimize organizational effectiveness, organizations should balance autonomous decision-making with performance expectations, fostering immediate outcomes (work engagement) and long-term capabilities (innovative behavior) in an increasingly competitive business environment.

To be sustainable in the current rapidly changing business environment, organizations must strive to adapt and respond to a new environment. Employees are the key performers of organizational change. Furthermore, change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is essential for them to positively accept and implement organizational change. Additionally, the leader’s role is crucial to promoting such change-oriented OCB. In this regard, this study investigates the effect of authentic leadership on change-oriented OCB, demonstrating that the vocational calling of employees strengthens such positive influences. Based on the self-determination theory (SDT), this study examines that the moderating effect between authentic leadership on change-oriented OCB increases when employees have a higher perception of calling for work than lower. This study uses a two-wave data set gathered from 485 currently working employees in South Korea. The empirical analysis is revealed below. First, authentic leadership has a positive effect on direct OCB. Second, employees’ perception of calling has a positive effect on direct change-oriented OCB. Third, the higher the level of employees’ perception of calling, the greater the effect of authentic leadership on change-oriented OCB. The most significant theoretical contribution of the study is that it is the first to determine that calling acts as a moderating factor between authentic leadership and change-oriented OCB. The fact that the positive effect of authentic leadership on change-oriented OCB increases when there is a high calling implies that employees are more likely to conduct change-oriented OCB when they perceive a high level of calling. Based on this result, this study explains the method and reason for maximizing change-oriented OCB through authentic leadership.

Employee health is crucial to organizational success. However, workplace ostracism (WO) has significant negative effects on employee health. Numerous researchers have extensively examined how WO influences employees’ negative health (job stress, burnout); however, the focus on mediating effects in the relationship between WO and health has been lacking. This study examined the cognitive evaluation response to WO by employees who perceive they have been ostracized because another employee envies them. The psychological defense mechanism is expected to be activated—thus triggering job stress and burnout. We investigated envy perceived by individuals as a mediator of WO, job stress, and burnout using data from a 2-wave longitudinal survey of 403 employees of a South Korean firm. We found that employees perceived WO. Specifically, based on the sensitivity to being the target of a threatening upward comparison theory, it was confirmed that envy was a mediator in the relationship between WO and negative health outcomes. Our results are the first to show that the perception of envy can mediate the maintenance of a positive self-image in the context of WO in South Korea. The results suggest that a greater awareness of and focus on envy, and WO is required.

The development of a carbon-neutral production and distribution method that minimizes the consumption of input resources and energy and facilitates resource recycling is an important global issue. Therefore, this study aimed to explore a new type of sustainable supply chain network (SSCN) that focuses on carbon neutrality and personalization. The first significance of the SSCN model is that it combines carbon neutrality and personalization problems into one research framework for the sustainable development of corporate management environments. In addition, evaluation and optimization mechanisms are crucial for decision-making in an SSCN. Thus, in this study, a creative evaluation and optimization mechanism was developed as a second significance for the sustainable development of the supply chain. The model used two evaluation indices (EIs) to measure the performance of the entire network in terms of the degree of personalization and carbon neutrality. The proposed SSCN is formulated as a mathematical model using mixed-integer nonlinear programming, and it is implemented by combining two types of approaches: hypergeometric distribution and a genetic algorithm. The results show the evaluation values and comparisons by the average values of transportation cost, handling cost, fixed costs, carbon dioxide emission cost, total cost, and average processing time. In addition to providing help for mass-customized production enterprises, this study also provided constructive suggestions for the conversion of small or venture enterprises to multi-variety and small-scale production, and it suggests the direction of job creation for such enterprises.