Authentic leadership and personal and job demands/resources: A person-centered approach and links with work-related subjective well-being

Abstract

The job demands-resources theory considers an open group of personal and job demands and resources. Thus, it allows us to include personal resources not yet covered (i.e., vigor at work) or less explored (i.e., emotional abilities), as well as personal demands not yet explored (i.e., overcommitment). Additionally, from this theory, it is proposed that leaders may influence employee wellbeing. Therefore, of particular interest is to analyze positive leadership styles, such as authentic leadership (AL). This study addresses three research objectives: 1) to identify profiles of employees from a person-centered approach, combining personal resources (self-perception of emotional abilities, vigor at work and self-efficacy) and personal demands (overcommitment) with job resources and demands; 2) to analyze the relation of the identified profiles with indicators of work-related subjective well-being; and 3) to acknowledge whether the AL style determines the pertaining to a profile probability. A large heterogeneous sample of Spanish employees (N = 968) responded to a questionnaire. Data were analyzed by adopting a person-centered approach using latent profile analysis. The results revealed five patterns of job and individual characteristics: Profile 5 (very low personal resources, and low job resources and demands); Profile 4 (low resources and high demands); Profile 3 (mid-level personal resources, high job resources and low demands); Profile 2 (high personal resources, mid-level job resources and high demands); and Profile 1 (high resources and low demands). Analyses showed that workers differed significantly in well-being depending on their profile membership, with Profile 1 having the highest well-being. Profiles that yielded the worst outcomes were Profile 4 and Profile 5, especially the latter. Finally, the results indicated that AL increased the probability that a profile would show a high well-being level.

The impact of transformational leadership on workers’ personal resources: latent profile analysis and links with physical and psychological health

“…From a person-centred perspective, various job demands and resources and personal resources have been used to obtain profiles of workers. Specifically, studies have identified profiles on the basis of participants' work engagement, burnout levels 27 and vigour at work among different job demands and resources, 28 whereas physical activity has mainly been used for identifying latent trajectories in workers, considering the frequency, intensity and duration of exercise, 29 or trajectories in the variation of physical activity during working and evening hours. 30 However, no study has yet used a combination of work engagement, vigour at work and different categories of physical activity to identify profiles using a person-centred approach and examine their impact on physical and psychological health.…”

Multi-level effects of authentic leadership on self-actualization at work – the mediating roles of authentic followership and basic psychological need satisfaction

“…The chosen design in terms of self-evaluated authenticity of a leader constitutes another added value to the body of authentic leadership literature. Previous studies largely relied on third-party evaluations when investigating the degree of authenticity of the leader (Hwang et al, 2022;Pulido-Martos et al, 2023). However, such external assessments of leaders' authenticity can never be as accurate as conducting self-evaluations of each leader.…”

“…In a related vein, organizational performance outcomes such as followers' organizational commitment and work engagement were associated with authentic leadership (Hwang et al, 2022;Nair et al, 2022). Previous research has furthermore mainly focused on authentic leadership and its impact on general health outcomes such as subjective well-being (Pulido-Martos et al, 2023) but not with regard to eudaimonic well-being in the sense of self-actualization.…”

The Influence of Motivation, Authentic Leadership, and Organizational Culture on Employee Performance in the South Bengkulu Health Office

“…Employees led with an authentic leadership style tend to experience high intrinsic satisfaction, encouraging maximum contribution to their work (Chang et al, 2020;Pulido-Martos et al, 2023). Motivation arises from recognition, trust, and support (Dang & Chou, 2020), enhancing overall employee performance (Maryani et al, 2021).…”