Authentic Leadership and Employee Resilience: A Moderated Mediation Analysis

Yanhui Mao; Yao Lai; Yuxi Zhai; Mei Xie; Junkai Yu; Qiutong Wang; Shaokai Lu; Jianhong Ma; Marino Bonaiuto

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.901085

Authentic Leadership and Employee Resilience: A Moderated Mediation Analysis

Front Psychol. 2022 Jul 1:13:901085. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.901085. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Yanhui Mao^{1

2}, Yao Lai³, Yuxi Zhai⁴, Mei Xie⁵, Junkai Yu³, Qiutong Wang^{3

6}, Shaokai Lu³, Jianhong Ma¹, Marino Bonaiuto⁷

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
² Psychological Research and Counseling Center, Institute of Applied Psychology, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China.
³ School of Economics and Management, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China.
⁴ China Railway Construction Group Co., Ltd., Chengdu, China.
⁵ School of Foreign Languages, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China.
⁶ School of Economics and Business Administration, Chongqing University, Chongqing China.
⁷ Department of Psychology of Developmental and Social Processes, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.

Abstract

Authentic leadership is essential for predicting employee resilience. However, despite fruitful findings, more adapted models of authentic leadership - employee resilience based on empirical findings can serve as a guide to understand the complex mediators and moderators in different industries such as in construction engineering project organizations during the turbulent pandemic. This study, therefore, based on the organizational identification theory and flow theory through the lens of positive organizational psychology, aims to disentangle the authentic leadership-employee resilience association by investigating their underlying mechanism and their boundary condition. To test our hypothetical model, we applied a cross-sectional design with data collected from a large sample of 884 employees from a big enterprise in China. Findings from confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling analysis, and Hayes's conditional process model indicated that: authentic leadership positively predicted employee resilience through the partial mediation effect of organizational identification, and such a mediation model was moderated by the experience of flow. In other words, flow moderated the relationships between authentic leadership, organizational identification, and employee resilience. Findings provide evidence for cultivating leaders' authenticity in promoting their subordinates' resilience; findings also highlight the significance of organizational identification in bridging authentic leadership and employee resilience and the essential role of flow experience in supporting the relationships mentioned above.

Keywords: authentic leadership; employee resilience; flow; optimal experience; organizational identification.