* Apologies for cross posting *
Authentic Leadership and Followership: International Perspectives
Editor: Dorianne Cotter-Lockard, PhD
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Theoretical Development
The concept of "authenticity" has been in vogue since the Greek philosophers. The Greek word authento means "to have full power" (Trilling, 1972). Bhindi and Duignan (1997) introduced one of the earliest definitions of authentic leadership as comprising of authenticity, intentionality, spirituality, and sensibility (p. 119). In Bill George's bestseller on Authentic Leadership, he said, "Authentic leaders use their natural abilities, but they also recognize their shortcomings, and work hard to overcome them. They lead with purpose, meaning, and values. They build enduring relationships with people. ... They are consistent and self-disciplined" (2003, p. 12).
Authentic leadership scholars began to explore the theoretical constructs of follower attitudes and behaviours in the mid-2000's, including a special issue on this topic in the The Leadership Quarterly (2005, Vol. 16, No. 3). Avolio and his colleagues (Avolio, Gardner, Walumbwa, Luthans, & May, 2004) drew upon multiple theories of emotion, trust, positive organizational behaviour, and identity to devise a theoretical construct for follower's attitudes and behaviours. Fields (2007) later examined theories related to followers' judgements of authentic leaders in order to explore questions such as, "To what extent are followers' perceptions driven by observations of actions by the leader?" (p. 199).
Some theoretical models focused on follower responses to authentic leader behaviours, for example, a synthesis of authentic leadership and emotional labour literature to examine the impact of leaders' emotional expressions on follower trust (Gardner, Fischer, & Hunt, 2009), and a model that relates authentic leaders' moral and ethical decision-making behaviours to follower moral identity and behaviours (Zhu, Avolio, Riggio, & Sosik, 2011). Additional theoretical literature shifted the focus from authentic leaders' impact on followers to a central premise of creating organizational conditions that foster authenticity among all participants (Algera & Lips-Wiersma, 2012).
Empirical Research
Empirical studies of follower attitudes and behaviours examined impacts of employee perceptions of authentic leadership on employee job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and happiness (Jensen & Luthans, 2006), and how leader authenticity affects followers' perceptions of a person's transformational leadership behaviours (Spitzmuller & Ilies, 2010). Other studies found that leader consistency and self-knowledge are antecedents to authentic leadership as well as followers' organizational commitment, satisfaction with their supervisor, and perceptions of team effectiveness (Peus, Wesche, Streicher, Braun, & Frey, 2012), organizational potency (Rego, Vitória, Magalhães, Ribeiro, & Cunha, 2013) and followers' psychological ownership (Kumar, 2014). Some studies linked authentic leadership with followers' trust in management, which allows followers to voice concerns and offer suggestions for process improvement (Wong & Cummings, 2009), learning from errors (Yan, Bligh, & Kohles, 2014), and to create enough psychological safety to encourage internal whistle-blowing (Liu, Liao, & Wei, 2015).
With regard to follower behaviours, studies show that authentic leadership is negatively related to followers' deviance from organizational norms and rules (Erkutlu & Chafra, 2013), that authentic leadership influenced innovation among employees through the mediating effect of positive emotions (Zhou, Ma, Cheng, & Xia, 2014), and that followers of neutral or inauthentic leaders tend to capitulate to unethical temptations as they make decisions, whereas followers will refrain from making unethical decisions when tempted to do so if they follow an authentic leader (Cianci, Hannah, Roberts, & Tsakumis, 2014).
International and Intercultural Research
The Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ) was initially tested and validated in multiple cultures, including China, Kenya, and the United States (Walumbwa, Avolio, Gardner, Wernsing, & Peterson, 2008). Walumbwa et al. emphasized the importance of conducting leadership research in non-western cultures, citing House and Aditya (1997), who concluded that approximately 98% of leadership theory originated from the U.S.
Over the past 25 years, the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavioural Effectiveness (GLOBE) project investigated differences in leadership styles and the impacts on organizations in different cultures. They found that "executives tend to lead in a manner more or less consistent with the leadership prototypes endorsed within their particular culture" (Dorfman, Javidan, Hanges, Dastmalchian, & House, 2012, p. 504). It follows that the definition and characteristics of authentic leadership and followership will differ depending on cultural context. For example, a study conducted in Ghana revealed two characteristics of authentic leadership not found in the common literature: "God-fearing" and "objectivity and justice" (Owusu-Bempah, 2012, p. 39).
Several studies have been conducted in Asia on topics such as the relationship between authentic leadership and feedback-seeking by employees in China (Qian, Lin, & Chen, 2012), South Asian perceptions of authentic leadership and followership (Khilji, Keilson, Shakir, & Shrestha, 2015), and development of an Ethical Leadership Measure scale for Chinese organizations (Zheng, Zhu, Yu, Zhang, & Zhang, 2011) which linked Confucian values related to power distance in relation to the findings.
Eastern European countries have undergone significant economic and cultural shifts since the fall of the Soviet Union. A few studies exist on this topic, such as examination of Estonian leadership styles in light of growth in business complexity (Alas, Külliki, & Tuulik, 2007), the relationship between authentic leadership and learning organizations (Dimovski, Grah, Penger, & Peterlin, 2010) and cross-level interactions of authentic leaders and followers (Cerne, Dimovski, Maric, Penger, & Skerlavaj, 2013).
Middle-Eastern studies of authentic leaders' impact on followers include a test of the validity and applicability of the ALQ in the cultural context of a Turkish engineering company (Özkan & Ceylan, 2012), cultural differences in how follower impact is defined and perceived in organizations (Tabak, Polat, Cosar, & Turkoz, 2013) and authentic leadership from an Islamic perspective (Senam, Rashid, Sarkawi, & Zaini, 2014).
Cross-cultural perception studies of authentic leadership include differences in perceptions of transformational and authentic characteristics of Caucasian and Asian-American managers (Burris, Ayman, Che, & Min, 2013) and comparison of American and Chinese workers' level of trust in their leaders (Caza, Zhang, Wang, & Bai, 2015).
Call for Chapters
Proposal Submission Deadline: 1st June, 2016
Interested authors are invited to submit a chapter proposal (maximum two pages) to dorianne@cotterconsulting.net clearly stating in what way their chapter will uniquely contribute towards this theme, and whether it is empirical, theoretical, or practice oriented. You are also invited to clearly outline the key message in the proposed chapter, highlighting how the chapter embraces the theme of the book.
Feedback on proposals will be provided by 1st July, 2016.
Full Chapters Due: 31st October, 2016
Authors are responsible for submitting a well-written and edited final draft to the editor, 6,000 to 7,000 words long, written in APA style. The chapters will undergo a double-blind peer review. This book is scheduled to be published by Palgrave MacMillan in mid-2017.
We seek research, theoretical, and practitioner contributions that represent different cultural perspectives of authentic leadership from a follower ontology, especially from Latin America, Eastern Europe, South Asia, Africa, and other underrepresented parts of the world. Sub-topics related to authentic leadership from a follower perspective might include ethics, trust, organizational climate, commitment, motivation, innovation, religious influence, management education, and organizational learning.
Some reflective questions for consideration (these questions are indicative only):
· International Perspectives in relation to culture, ethnic identity, gender, and intercultural relations:
o What aspects of existing models and measures of authentic leadership apply across cultures and which do not?
o What specific cultural, religious, or ethnic values influence the definition of "authentic leadership?"
o How does the definition of "follower" differ depending on culture, ethnic, or religious identity?
o What cultural constructs uniquely apply to the relationship between authentic leaders and followers?
o Does gender or sexual orientation impact followers' perceptions of authentic leaders in different cultural contexts?
o Are follower's behaviours different based on the authentic leader's gender and the cultural context of the organization?
· International Perspectives in relation to authentic leadership and:
o Emotional, social, or spiritual intelligence: For example, what similarities and differences do existing models and assessment instruments for these intelligences reveal when used with authentic leaders and followers in different cultural contexts?
o Adult development and consciousness theories: For example, is there a relationship between authentic leadership characteristics and adult development theory and does cultural context affect followers' perceptions of the authentic leader's developmental stage?
o Complexity and chaos theory: For example, how do followers of authentic leaders in different cultures adapt to volatile or increasingly complex environments?
References
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Cerne, M., Dimovski, V., Maric, M., Penger, S., & Skerlavaj, M. (2013). Congruence of leader self-perceptions and follower perceptions of authentic leadership: Understanding what authentic leadership is and how it enhances employees' job satisfaction Australian Journal of Management, 0(0), 1-19. doi:10.1177/0312896213503665
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