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Investigating the antecedents of employee authenticity from the organizational context: the mediating role of basic psychological need satisfaction

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Abstract

To investigate the antecedents of employee authenticity systematically from the organizational context and to examine the mediating role of basic psychological need satisfaction in this relationship, we conducted a three-wave study among 1349 Chinese employees. The results show that the four categories of the organizational context investigated, i.e., organization, leaders, colleagues and task, significantly and uniquely predicted employee authenticity. Specifically, in the organization category, both organizational support and organizational justice positively predicted employee authenticity. In the leader category, inclusive leadership positively predicted employee authenticity. In the colleague category, high-quality relationships with colleagues was a significant and positive predictor. In the task category, job demands negatively predicted employee authenticity, while job autonomy and possibilities for development positively predicted employee authenticity. In addition, drawing on self-determination theory (SDT), basic psychological need satisfaction was found to mediate the relationships between all these organizational contextual factors (including authentic leadership) and employee authenticity. Our study investigated the antecedents of employee authenticity systematically and comprehensively from the perspective of organizational context and revealed the mechanism underlying these relationships, thereby extending our understanding of how employee authenticity forms in organizations and shed light on managerial practices to promote employee authenticity.

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The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

The research was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, Project ID:71,672,186) granted to Yong Wang.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Beijing, China

    Lili Song, Yong Wang, Xianran Feng & Liang Xiang

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Lili Song, Xianran Feng & Liang Xiang

  3. Department of Psychology, Henan University, Kaifeng, China

    Yueyue Zhou

  4. The Research Center for Psychological Education, University of International Relations, Beijing, 100091, China

    Yong Wang

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Correspondence to Yong Wang.

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This study was approved by the ethics committee of Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. H19031). All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and / or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Song, L., Zhou, Y., Wang, Y. et al. Investigating the antecedents of employee authenticity from the organizational context: the mediating role of basic psychological need satisfaction. Curr Psychol 43, 15352–15365 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-05479-z

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