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Authentic leadership and employee job behaviors: The mediating role of relational and organizational identification and the moderating role of LMX

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Abstract

The current paper aims to explore the effect of authentic leadership on employee job behaviors (e.g. voice and innovation behaviors) through the lens of identification. Specifically, based on data collected from a sample of 201 employees at two points in time and drawing from research on authentic leadership and social identity theory, this study examined how authentic leadership affected employee voice and innovation behavior. We found that relational and organizational identification played a significant chain-mediating role in the relationship between authentic leadership and employee innovation behavior, but not in the relationship between authentic leadership and employee voice. We also found that leader-member exchange (LMX) positively moderated the relationship between authentic leadership and employee relational identification. These findings contribute to research on authentic leadership and identification. The limitations of this study and future directions are also discussed.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of National Natural Science Foundation of China and China Scholarship Council. This study was funded by National Natural Science Foundation Project, PRC (grant number 71472094), National Natural Science Youth Fund Project, PRC (grant number 71602139), and the China Scholarship Council Project, PRC (grant number [2016]3100). The authors would like to acknowledge two anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments on our paper.

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  1. Business School of Nankai University, 121 Baidi Road, Nankai District, Tianjin, 300071, China

    Wanjie Niu, Qinghong Yuan, Shanshan Qian & Zhaoyan Liu

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  1. Wanjie Niu
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  2. Qinghong Yuan
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Correspondence to Qinghong Yuan.

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Niu, W., Yuan, Q., Qian, S. et al. Authentic leadership and employee job behaviors: The mediating role of relational and organizational identification and the moderating role of LMX. Curr Psychol 37, 982–994 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-018-9937-0

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