The innovativeness of individual employees is a vital source of competitive advantage of firms, contributing to societal development. Therefore, the aim of this multilevel study was to examine how entrepreneurial firm owners’ authentic leadership relates to their employees’ innovative behaviour. Our conceptual model postulates that the relationship between business owners’ authentic leadership (as perceived by their employees) and their employees’ innovative behaviour is mediated by employees’ personal initiative and their work engagement. Hypotheses derived from this model were tested on data collected from 711 employees working in 85 small firms from three European countries: the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain. The results of the multilevel modelling confirmed our model, showing that when business owners are perceived as more authentic leaders, their employees show higher personal initiative and are more engaged at work and, in turn, identify more innovative solutions to be implemented in the organization. A cross-national difference was observed: employees from Spain (in comparison to Dutch and Polish employees) reported engaging less frequently in innovative behaviour. These research findings suggest that the innovative behaviour of employees can be boosted through leadership training, improving the quality of relationships between leaders and subordinates, and strengthening employees’ personal initiative and work engagement.

AbstractObjectiveSocial support has been reported as beneficial for the psychological functioning of people coping with a disease. The objective of this study was to verify whether levels of perceived social support are associated with psychosocial functioning in women who have had a mastectomy and whether specific types of social support are linked to specific indices of functioning.MethodSeventy women with a history of mastectomy completed questionnaires measuring their psychosocial functioning as related to their health status: Disease-Related Appraisal Scale, Acceptance of Life with the Disease Scale and Beck Depression Inventory. All participants also completed a measure of perceived social support (Disease-Related Social Support Scale).ResultsWomen who reported higher levels of perceived social support revealed statistically significantly lower levels of depressive symptoms, higher appraisals of their disease in terms of challenge and value, and lower appraisals of their disease in terms of obstacle/loss. Women with greater social support also revealed higher levels of acceptance of life with the disease compared to those with less social support. Regression analyses showed that spiritual support was the type of support that significantly accounted for the variance in the majority of functioning indices. Some indices of functioning were also significantly accounted for by emotional and instrumental support.Significance of the resultsThe process of psychological adjustment to a life-threatening disease such as breast cancer depends on multiple variables; however, social support, including spiritual support, seems to be one significant contributor to this process.

The concept of authentic leadership refers to high ethical standards, sincerity and open communication in organizations. The aim of the presented paper was to test factorial structure and validity of the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ). Two studies were conducted on two Polish samples: longitudinal Study 1 on a sample of employees of different professions and cross--sectional Study 2 on nurses. Four alternative models were tested with the use of confirmatory factor analysis. The four-factor model based on the short 13-items version of the ALQ was revealed to fit the data best. The four ALQ dimensions: leader self-awareness, relational transparency, internalized moral perspective and balanced processing were confirmed in both samples. Analysis of relationships between authentic leadership, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intention and burnout in followers confirmed concurrent and predictive validity of the short version of the measure.