Authentic leadership and employee resilience during the COVID-19: The role of flow, organizational identification, and trust

Yanhui Mao; Xinyue Kang; Yao Lai; Junkai Yu; Xuyuan Deng; Yuxi Zhai; Feng Kong; Jianhong Ma; Flavia Bonaiuto

doi:10.1007/s12144-022-04148-x

Authentic leadership and employee resilience during the COVID-19: The role of flow, organizational identification, and trust

Curr Psychol. 2023 Jan 23:1-16. doi: 10.1007/s12144-022-04148-x. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Yanhui Mao^{1

2}, Xinyue Kang³, Yao Lai³, Junkai Yu³, Xuyuan Deng³, Yuxi Zhai⁴, Feng Kong⁵, Jianhong Ma², Flavia Bonaiuto⁶

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Applied Psychology, Psychological Research and Counseling Center, Southwest Jiaotong University, 610031 Chengdu, China.
² Department of Psychology and Behavior Sciences, Zhejiang University, 310028 Hangzhou, China.
³ School of Economics and Management, Southwest Jiaotong University, 610031 Chengdu, China.
⁴ Southwest Branch, China Railway Construction Group Co., Ltd, 610031 Chengdu, China.
⁵ Department of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, 710062 Xian, China.
⁶ Facoltà di Economia, Universitas Mercatorum, 00186 Roma, Italy.

Abstract

The present work investigated fundamental mediating mechanisms (i.e., flow experience, organizational identification, and trust), underlining the impact of authentic leadership on employee resilience during the turbulent COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 901 frontline employees working in a construction engineering company in China participated in this study. They were asked to respond to a battery of questionnaires comprising Trust Scale (affective-based, cognitive-based, and competence-based), Flow Proneness Questionnaire (FPQ), Organizational Identification Scale, Authentic Leadership Questionnaire, and Employee Resilience Scale. Results of structural equation modeling indicated that: (1) Authentic leadership positively predicted employee resilience in the COVID-19 pandemic, directly and indirectly. (2) As for the indirect relationship, two parallel mediation effects and one chain mediation were detected: employees' flow at work and organizational identification respectively and dependently mediated the relationship between authentic leadership and employee resilience; trust and organizational identification played as a chain mediation role within authentic leadership-employee resilience association. The study provides empirical evidence for organizations' resilience-building and leadership training programs. Findings also contribute to the literature by facilitating flow intervention, promoting organizational identification and trust to enhance the effect of authentic leadership in promoting positive psychological functioning of employee resilience. Limitations with respect to future research directions were also outlined.

Keywords: Authentic leadership; Employee resilience; Flow experience; Organizational identification; Trust.

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