This study sought to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how authentic leadership can affect employees’ individual creativity through affective commitment’s mediating role. The sample included 177 leader–follower dyads from 26 private, small- and medium-sized enterprises. Followers reported their levels of affective commitment and perceptions of authentic leadership, and leaders assessed each follower’s level of creativity. The results show that authentic leadership has a positive impact on affective commitment and creativity. Moreover, affective commitment fully mediates the relationship between perceived authentic leadership and individual creativity. Organizations can thus increase employees’ affective commitment and creativity by encouraging their managers to adopt more authentic leadership styles. Additional studies with larger samples are needed to determine more clearly not only authentic leadership’s influence on individual creativity but also other psychosocial and personal variables’ effects on that relationship.
Authentic leadership has become increasingly important in the literature, attracting the attention of many scholars in the last decade. This study adopted an employee-centered perspective to guide its examination of the relationship between authentic leadership and individual performance and investigation of the sequential mediation of employees’ affective commitment and individual creativity. An analysis was conducted of data collected from 214 employees working in different business sectors. The results reveal a statistically significant positive relationship between authentic leadership and employees’ workplace performance, which are both directly connected and indirectly linked through the two proposed psychosocial mechanisms. The findings thus indicate that authentic leadership reinforces workers’ emotional connection with their organizations, thereby increasing their individual creativity and, subsequently, promoting better on-the-job performance. This study presents new and significant results since, on the one hand, it relied on a sequential mediation analysis of variables and, on the other hand, integrated the four main constructs into a single model. The proposed model displays the chain of effects between authentic leadership, affective commitment, individual creativity, and employee workplace performance. Implications for organizational management are discussed.
Purpose: In recent years, efforts to reinforce the links between corporate social responsibility and human resource management have highlighted employees’ role as crucial organizational stakeholders. This study aims to investigate whether workers’ perception of socially responsible human resource management (SR-HRM) based on employee-focused practices is related to work engagement (WE). This research also explored whether perceived organizational support (POS) and affective commitment (AC) can contribute to explaining this relationship. Social exchange theory and job demands-resources model were used to theoretically frame the research. Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected from a sample of 222 employees working in diverse organizations, using individual online surveys. Several analyses were conducted to assure data robustness to common method bias. Findings: The results confirm that SR-HRM fosters WE and that this effect is subject to sequential mediation by POS and AC. Accordingly, SR-HRM practices contribute to higher level of POS, which then foster stronger affective bonds with employers and, in turn, higher levels of vigor, absorption and dedication among workers. Originality/value: The findings contribute to the expansion of the SR-HRM literature by providing a deeper understanding of how this management strategy affects employees’ job-related attitudes, particularly WE a much-overlooked variable in this realm.
19 November 2018 in International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how authentic leadership (AL) can affect individual performance through creativity and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)’s mediating roles.Design/methodology/approach: The sample included 177 leader-follower dyads from 26 private and small and medium-sized organizations. Followers reported their perceptions of AL, and leaders assessed each follower’s level of creativity, individual performance and OCB.Findings: The findings show that AL has a positive impact on OCB (i.e. altruism, sportsmanship, civic virtue, conscientiousness and courtesy), employee creativity, and individual performance. Creativity partially mediates the relationship between AL and individual performance. Some dimensions of OCB, namely, altruism, civic virtue and courtesy, also play a mediating role in this relationship.Research limitations/implications: Additional studies with larger samples are needed to determine more clearly not only AL’s influence on individual performance but also other psychosocial variables affecting that relationship.Practical implications: Organizations can increase employees’ creativity, OCB and individual performance by encouraging managers to adopt more AL styles.Originality/value: This study is the first to integrate AL, creativity, OCB and individual performance into a single research model, thereby extending previous research. The study also used a double-source method to collect data (i.e. leader-follower dyads) to minimize the risk of introducing common-method variance.
9 April 2020 in International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management
Purpose: Hospitality employees’ attitudes and behaviors play a crucial role in enhancing customer satisfaction and service quality and ultimately firms’ success; therefore, organizations must have skilled, customer-oriented staff. More research is required to help hospitality managers gain insights into the best strategies to promote and retain customer-oriented employees. This study specifically sought to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the ways that authentic leadership (AL) can affect employees’ customer orientation and turnover intention, including exploring affective commitment’s (AC) potential mediating role. Design/methodology/approach: The sample included 350 employees from different hospitality organizations in Portugal. Data were collected using anonymously completed structured questionnaires available online or in a paper-and-pencil format. Findings: The results demonstrate that AL has a positive effect on customer orientation and a negative effect on turnover intention. Moreover, they indicate that AC mediates the relationships between AL and both customer orientation and turnover intention. All hypotheses received empirical support. Practical implications: Hotel managers can increase employees’ AC and customer orientation by engaging in AL behaviors. Similarly, management can avoid having employees voluntarily leave their jobs using more AL styles and strengthening employees’ affective bonds to their organization. Originality/value: Prior hospitality studies have rarely focused on AL. This study is the first to analyze AL’s effect on customer orientation and AC’s role as a mediator variable in the relationships between AL and customer orientation and turnover intention, thus integrating all these variables into a single research model.
Purpose: With the crescent globalisation together with economic and food crisis, consumers are increasingly confronted with food products from different origins and appeals to consume “national”. If many food products can be related to a specific region or country, many are sold as commodities with Portuguese origin indication. One factor influencing the purchase behaviour of domestic food products is the consumer ethnocentrism (CE) characteristic. The aim of this paper is to study consumers' purchase behaviour intention towards “produce in Portugal” fruits and vegetables applying a CE extended model of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB).Design/methodology/approach: A questionnaire was presented to random sample of 700 individuals older than 18 and responsible for the household food purchase by computer-assisted telephone interview (CAT) system. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was conducted to examine direct and indirect effects of attitude (ATT), subjective norms (SuBNs), perceived behavioural controls (PBCNTRLs), intention and self-congruity on domestic fresh fruits and vegetables purchases.Findings: Findings suggest that TPB model is applicable in determining the consumers' intention to buy domestic fruits and vegetables in Portugal. CE has been shown to successfully influence purchase intention.Research limitations/implications: This study provides the food industry and retail with informative basis about which mechanisms underlie the consumers' intention to buy domestic food. Also, this study provides useful insight into how different food categories and label affect the consumers' intentions, which can serve for communication strategies in order to increase purchase of domestic products as fruits and vegetables. New food categories should be studied.Originality/value: This study gives a new approach on Portuguese consumer ethnocentric tendencies and opens a discussion on consumer purchase intention on Portuguese low value food products. This gives a first insight on Portuguese consumer ethnocentric behaviour.