The effect of authentic leadership on employee engagement and the moderating role of leader-follower value congruence

Abstract

Despite the general knowledge of positive outcomes resulting from highly engaged employees, surprisingly little is known about how leaders can effectively contribute to a more engaged work force. With raising attention to positive forms of leadership styles in organizational behavior, this research study focuses first of all, how authentic leadership influences employee engagement and secondly, how this relationship changes with the introduction of leader follower value congruence as a moderator. A quantitative research design was conducted and a sample of 193 participants from Brazil and Germany was used to investigate this research question. Linear regression analysis was employed to assess the relationships between the variables. The results revealed that authentic leadership had significant positive effect on employee engagement. Importantly, balanced processing – which is one of the components of the authentic leadership construct – was strongly related to employee engagement. Moreover, the moderation analysis showed that when value congruence between the leader and follower is high, the positive relationship between authentic leadership and employee engagement becomes stronger. Theoretical and managerial implications as well as limitations of the study results and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Date of Award	7 Jul 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Ishani Aggarwal (Supervisor)