The connection between authentic leadership, Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) and staff’ Psychological Capital
Authentic leadership has obtained a significant attention and support of research during the past decades. It has been found from the study that authentic leaders are associated with the LMX and high levels of Psychological capital. Therefore, the time has arrived to refine and get an improved understanding about its impact on the employee performance. However, this specific study explores the progressing role of the employee’s positive psychological capital and processing role of the lead member exchange that may impact the connection between authentic leadership and staff performance. Specifically, these, study tests the mediated moderation model with different employees within the organisation in relations to their immediate leaders. Based on these factors the essay discussion focuses on the benefits of roles of different organisational process and employee’s psychological factors that are engaged with the effectiveness of the authentic leadership.
From various literary sources, it has been found that a positive, genuine and ethical type of leadership is usually implied as authentic leadership that comes with the positive approach towards organisational management that will help in meeting the organisational challenges. According to the view of Banks et al., (2016) authentic leadership is featured by the leader’s level of self-knowledge, transparency in communicating, and clarity in behaviour. Moreover, authentic leaders tend to share messages that are necessary for making decisions, thereby accepting other inputs along with the exposure if personal values and emotions. Such attributes of authentic leadership allow the employees to properly evaluate the competency and ethical values of their authentic leadership activities (Wang et al., 2014).
Till date, it has been found that development of thereby is embedded within the process of formation underlying the technique of authentic leadership. For instance, increased attention has shown on the developmental dynamics of authentic leadership and working employee’s attitude and usual behaviour. Therefore, a positive organisational behaviour has been drawn from the factors of increasing trust, emotions for illustrating the mechanisms of authentic leaders and their impact on the employee behaviour and performance (Anderson et al., 2017). Presently empirical research has also found that some of the dynamics in performance are related to authentic leadership process. Basically, this research shows that authentic leaders have the capability to motivate and inspire the effectiveness of the followers. However, better understandings of the followers are necessary as they have the capability to impacts the AL and employee performance (Hoch et al., 2018).
Considering from the complementary congruity theory it can be said that authentic leaders can efficiently deliver towards the growth of performance and can have a profound effect on the employee performance. Specifically, the authentic leader’s attributives successfully deliver and complement towards the required abilities’ of the employees for performing effectively. However, psychological capital has been now broadly identified as the core stereotype of the positive psychological factors of hope, efficiency and positivity’s (Harms et al., 2017).
On the basis estimation, it has been found that an employer differences can explore LMX is the way of distributing the effect of authentic leadership on the followers based on two major reasons. Firstly, leadership is an arguable relations method. Specifically, it is signified as a bonding in between leader and employee that evolves at various phases during the course of the process. In addition to this, the nature and standards of these relationships have been seen to be fundamental towards the leadership attitude that influences the response of the employee (Steffens et al., 2016). Secondly, for understanding the contingent influence of psychological capital on the authentic leadership- staff performance connection, the process is most relevant to the complementary congruity. In this context, prior research has found that from the progressing communication and exchange of connection leaders may instigate positive psychological actions into the employees. This changing level of the employee’s psychological capital within the LMX may account for the varying impact on the authentic leadership and employee performance (Coggins & Bocarnea, 2015).
The psychological capital of different types of employees
On the basis of theoretical perspectives, four major categories could be drawn on the basis of authentic leadership attitude that are balanced operations, internal moral perceptions, relational transparency and self-efficacy. In this context, balanced operations signify the evaluation of all the relevant information before reaching a final conclusion. On the contrary, internal ethical perspective refers to the leadership behaviours consisting of internal ethical standards and values other than external pressures from the employees as well as organisational workload (Javed et al., 2018). Relational transparency implies, to the personal exposure, like open sharing of information and expressing real thoughts with the employees. Self-awareness indicated that the leaders have the capability to identify employee’s perception of leadership as well as has the ability to understand their own motives, strengths as well as weakness. Therefore, leaders with high levels of self-awareness can help in improving the authenticity and efficiency using self-awareness and self-portrayal.
Drawing from the sources of literature, focusing on the role of relations process, it can be said the LMX has the capability to mediate the connection between AL and employee performance (Yagil & Medler-Liraz, 2014). Specifically, authentic leadership reflects a communicative and positive relationship that helps to develop relations between leader and the employees within the organisation. This connection has the ability to feed upon positive social exchanges by the moral of developing credibility of high respect as well as respect from the employees. This exchange in a relationship can be helpful an employee performance.
Within workplaces, the authentic relationship may have the ability to impact the growth and management of exchange relationship with the employees, the factors of self-knowledge, balanced operations, internal ethical perspectives and relational transparency together may help to determine the value of dignity, respect and trust of authentic leaders. These features imply the crucial elements of the high standard of exchange relationships (Javed et al., 2017). First, by abolishing the diversification and varying viewpoints of the employee’s authentic leaders tends to show respect and trust for the followers. It can be seen from the organisation construct that successful working environment, such employee satisfaction are highly related to the suitable form of authentic leadership. Research in this context; have argued that successful organisation always has an authentic leader behind the increasing productivity of the organisation (Anderson & Sun, 2015). It has also been argued that authentic leadership within the organisation has increased contribution towards labour capital and thereby can help to develop a sustainable competitive advantage for the organisation.
There is the high link between emotional intelligence and employee psychological capital that may lead to high expectations about the ability to predict employee performance. In this context, it can be said that the role of the managers or leaders within the workplace is the most significant in terms of growing impact on the organisational performance (Park & Nawakitphaitoon, 2018). Therefore, managers within the organisation have the direct influence on the employee’s psychological capital thereby effective emotional intelligence. It is the managers that are repos bole for carrying the responsibility of aligning the performance of the department and the stands that try to overreach the objectives. Therefore, psychological capital and leadership play a major role in managing LMX and organisational culture. It can be said within the organisation developing support and well-executed performance is one of the major areas of the manager that can influence business production.
Statistics show that almost 70% of the managers have variance in influencing employee involvement rates (Norman, Gardner & Pierce, 2015). This research has reported a strong link in between continuous managerial interaction with the high involvement levels and communication tools used within the organisation. On the contrary, leaders may lack the integrity or courage to deal with employees that may impact on the morale and profit of the organisation (Jordan & Lindebaum, 2015). In fact, poor management may influence employee productivity as well as employee’s emotional feeling. For instance, resentment and blaming culture within the organisation are a toxic form that may break down the morale and result in the reduced amount of energetic workforce influencing emotional and performance of the employee.
It has been found from research the psychological component of emotion are inclusive if excitatory and inhibitory response’s that may occur through a human system, it is the sympathetic nervous system that drives the heart to address emotion. In this context, the individual becomes increasingly ready to fight and affiliate with the situation. Under the prolonged stress of being ignored and disrespected, employees may feel pain, owing to somatic disorders influenced by emotional issues (Hobfoll et al., 2018). However, these emotions can be managed through conscious practices of interpersonal communications with the employees. For mitigating these conflicts occurring within the diverse workplace, consisting of different cultures and white collars employee who works as a professional employee within the workplace authentic leadership management is necessary.
There may be instances where one employee may not be able to communicate with the other employee owing to cultural differences between. Again, there may be conflicts arising from increased and consistent ignorance of the employee within the workplace due to the cultural or ethnic difference (Chuang et al., 2017). This type of situation may take place within the workplace that various kinds of workers altogether. Therefore, it can be seen from the instances, there are significant positive connections between LMX and performing outcome specifically in the case of individual difference of the employees. Focusing on these critical factors it has been recommended that a high standard of exchange of is needed with the leaders for mentally supporting the employees as they are more dependent on the alternate forms assistance, guides and resources. Therefore, employees with increased levels of psychological capital may access the advantages of LMX connection with the authentic leaders. On the contrary, employees with a low amount of psychological capital, and the connection between LMX may vary.
According to prior research, it has been found that there is a positive connection between LMX and increasing performance that has increased advantages that the employees can obtain from the high standards of LMX. These advantages are inclusive of leader’s attitude of delivering the employees proper feedback on their performance. Other advantages of high LMX with the employees have been found to be disposing of valuable social relation like protecting employees from unfair treatment, motivating them to take part in the challenging tasks, offering them friendliness along effective intimacy within the organisation (Nguyen et al., 2017. In other words, it can be said that through increased quality of exchange of leadership relationship leaders within the organisation manage to create a positive situation for the employees that in turn result in high level of employee performance.
Psychological capital signifies the high positive psychological factors that help to contribute towards individual motivational aspect to obtain task and objectives, studies in this context have found that there is a casual effect of psychological capital on the staff performance. Therefore, these findings show that high psychological capital staffs and LMX connection may have a less crucial part in demonstrating the performance. On the contrary, without the assistance of the support received from LMX, low psychological capital employees may find it challenging to sustain in terms of difficulty and severe situation to manage the positive outcome (Bakar, Jian & Fairhurst, 2014). Therefore, employees with loss of psychological capital need to be more receptive and further find out benefits by conveying the exchange of connection with the leaders for accomplishing their goals within the organisation.
There are several factors of psychological capital that are present within the psychological thoughts and perception of the employee characteristics. Authentic leaders within workplace increase the chances of LMX by increasing the level of psychological capital of the employees by stimulating the following employees. Research has found that there is a positive correlation between growing levels of emotional psychological capital and organisational performance. Positive leadership has been further seen to have a positive outcome on the employees increasing hope through the growing willpower to accomplish the objective, growing sense of self-efficacy and resilience within the workplace.
Hope: it is the construct that employed in the foundation if psychological capital that defines positive motivating state of the employees and the generation of pathway. The agency factors of hope help to move towards motivation and willpower in achieving goals, while the components of pathway help the individual to achieve the increased levels of hope thereby generating various levels of approaches in accomplishing the objectives (Mitchell, 2018). Therefore, employees with high levels of hope can be highly befitted by the authentic leadership in framing tasks I such a way to achieve multiple levels of success.
Self-efficacy- the component of self-efficacy is the theoretical foundation of psychological capital that can be applied in the workplace. Self-efficacy represents an individual inclination and faith in their own ability to take action towards the given objective. Authentic leadership has the capability to encourage this employee’s ability of self-efficacy. Employees can be. Therefore, when these factors are usually conceptualised with the facts of psychological capital, it can tend to afford the confidence and achieve a challenging task within the workplace,
Resilience- Along with the aspects of self-efficacy and motivation to pursue objectives resilience helps the employees to offer the ability to get back from the adversity thereby accomplishing the objectives.
Apart from the connection between authentic leaders and the employees, LMX, positive connection between LMX and the employee performance is based on the belief that employees are constricted to response with an effective performance as an exchange for the behaviour they demonstrate in return of the relationship (Sepdiningtyas & Santoso, 2017). This specifies the fact, low standard of LMX outcome and moral performance of the employee are due to the exchanges underneath the relations that are contractual in nature. On the contrary, the high-level of LMX has the possibility to enhance performance thereby driving the relationship from financial platform to the social return of mutual admiration, faith as well as obligations.
Conclusion
Therefore, the study successfully contributes towards the importation of two essential and correlated emerging factors identified within the organisation’s practical application. These major aspects are generally associated with the difficulties faced by the organisational authentic leaders and their subordinate employees due to the increasing competitive pressures and fluctuating ethics that needs an enhanced understanding of authentic leadership. Therefore, it is evident from the study, that positive psychological capital is more relevant for the current turbulent workplace that is offered to the individual employee’s demand and the organisation with the increased amount of competitive advantage.
As the result from the study suggests that authentic leadership has an increasingly positive influence on the employee performance, organisation, therefore, may wish to appoint more numbers of authentic leaders. The findings, therefore, effectively verify the observation by signifying increasing leverage on the improving performance that may be achieved by the employees.
Reference list
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