'A Critical Assessment of Authentic Leadership Research: Two Decades of Empirical Evidence' Leadership, Organisations and Behaviour Research Seminar

Dr Linghe Lei is a Lecturer in Leadership at Henley Business School. The topic of this presentation is 'A Critical Assessment of Authentic Leadership Research: Two Decades of Empirical Evidence' and the presentation is based on a research paper co-authored by Dr Lei and Professor Bernd Vogel.

The paper explores how authentic leadership (AL), building upon the conceptualisation of authenticity (Kernis and Goldman, 2006), represents a positive leadership paradigm defined by the four integral components of self-awareness, balanced processing, relational transparency and internal moral perspective (Walumbwa et al., 2008). As a relatively new leadership construct, AL has generated substantial scholarship and demonstrated numerous positive impacts on individuals, teams, and organisations, including employees' commitment (Leroy et al., 2012), empowerment (Joo and Jo, 2017), well-being (Salleh et al., 2020), organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) (Cottrill et al., 2014), creativity and innovation (Černe et al., 2013), team performance (Lyubovnikova et al., 2017) and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) (Boekhorst, 2015; Cottrill et al., 2014).

However, AL research has received vast criticism and doubt, including construct validity (Alvesson and Einola, 2023), measurement (Helmuth et al., 2023), and over-positivism (Alvesson and Einola, 2019). Despite the potential issues of AL and the ongoing debate, AL research has still received vast attention, evidenced by increasing publication in recent years. As such, a systematic review of AL has been conducted using empirical studies to provide an assessment of AL research, aiming to draw on evidence-based insights to answer the criticisms and shed light on how the field should move forward.

Figure 1 shows the substantial and increasing research on AL since the 2004 Gallup Leadership Summit. After two decades of research, an updated review is essential to summarise existing research, stimulate future investigations and contribute to AL concept refinement (Gardner et al., 2021). The most recent comprehensive review of AL was conducted over a decade ago by Gardner et al. (2011), who examined the construct's theoretical foundations and evolution based on a small sample of empirical studies (25 studies). This review, based on a substantial quantitative sample of approximately 260 studies in the management domain, will offer a comprehensive understanding of AL research.

The paper examines the findings of AL to guide us in clarifying the criticisms surrounding AL. After first reviewing and summarising the criticism and debate on AL research from 16 papers, the next step was coding the sample with these criticisms in mind, while evaluating the findings and building a nomological network of AL. These findings, summarised below, are used as evidence to respond to the current criticism and concerns.

Firstly, there was indeed an issue in AL definition, theorising, and measurement. Almost all research has adopted the four-component definition, but their theorising was not clearly built on these four components. Even worse, some studies have defined AL rather loosely without specifying the four components, only selectively mentioning one or two of these components to argue for their hypotheses. This poor definition and theorising of AL were exacerbated as research has vastly investigated the relationship between follower perception of AL and follower-rated outcomes, i.e. ratings from the same source, which further reflects the problem of tautological reasoning of AL research (Alvesson and Einola, 2019), both in theorising and measurement.

Secondly, related to the poor theorising of AL, there was loose usage of the term AL, which conflated it with authentic leaders, i.e. leaders who are authentic. There is a question of the difference between a leader's authentic personality and AL. While the former indicates a leader-centred attribute, the latter refers to a leadership behaviour that involves an influencing process (Hogan and Kaiser, 2005).

Thirdly, the paper's findings also identified the issue of excessive positivity surrounding AL. When we examined the outcomes at multiple analytical levels, we found no negative aspects of AL in the hypotheses, although some research found non-significant effects, indicating that AL does not have a positive impact in all cases. This suggests that contextual factors influence the positivity of AL. However, findings indicate that research has vastly focused on mediation models of AL and outcomes, without considering moderators or boundary conditions regarding the positive effects of AL. It is a significant issue that current research has not theorised under what conditions AL might be less positive or even negative, which shows a problematic trend to regard AL as 'the saviour' (Gardner et al., 2021, p. 3) with no limitations.

Fourthly, the paper explores the redundancy of AL with other leadership styles, such as ethical leadership, servant leadership and transformational leadership. Fifthly, the paper raised the issue of whether the definition of AL truly captures what authentic leadership is in practice. Finally, research has vastly focused the study of AL on leader and follower individual levels, while lacking the study of AL at the team and organisational levels. The paper summarises these issues and provides insights for future research directions.

The paper's systematic review on AL, based on two decades of research evidence, offers a nomological network of AL, a critical assessment of AL research and future directions for AL. This review will be important for advancing the field of AL research.

The seminar will be held on 30 May 2024, 1:00pm, in room 208 of the Henley Business School building, Whiteknights campus. For those unable to attend in person there is also the option to dial in remotely via Microsoft Teams. If you are interested in joining, please contact Alex Baker on a.j.baker@henley.ac.uk

LOB research seminars are co-ordinated by Dr Matteo Borghi and Professor Marcello Mariani.