Authentic Leaders May Increase Employee Innovation: The Mediation Effect of Psychological Capital

Abstract

Innovation plays the main role in organizational survival in the globalized era of technology and information exchange. Innovation can only be achieved when employees are able to engage in innovative work behavior. In addition, the workplace leader is known to occupy an important role in the formation of innovative employee behavior. Hence, this study tends to see the role of authentic leadership as a predictor for innovative work behavior by using PsyCap as a mediator in analysis of it. There were 115 participants who filled in self-report questionnaires which were distributed online for this study. Mediation analysis using PROCESS macros showed that when psychological capital is fully mediated (B = 0.071, SE = 0.036, 95% CI [0.009, 0.150]) there exists a relationship between authentic leadership and innovative work behavior.

Take Action and Innovate! Mediated and Moderated Impact of Psychological Capital on the Innovative Work Behavior

“…The last two antecedents, transformational leadership (Gashema & Kadhafi, 2020;Schuckert et al, 2018) and ethical leadership (Erdem, 2021;Özsungur, 2019) yielded similar results, PsyCap acted as a partial mediator in the relationship with IWB. However, organizational innovation climate (He, 2013;) and authentic leadership (El Fath & Radikun, 2019;Schuckert et al, 2018) yielded different results in the two studies. Indeed, PsyCap was considered a partial mediator in one study and a full mediator in the other, and vice versa.…”