Dear OB colleagues,
I'm delighted to share that my latest research with co-authors Kevin Lowe, Patricio Duran, and Darren K has been published in the Australian Journal of Management (ABDC 'A').
We modelled how cultural values shape the relationships between authentic leadership and follower outcomes.
We conducted meta-analyses on data from 292 studies drawn from over 40 countries, with 100,641 individuals, and including 35 attitudinal, behavioural, and performance outcomes.
The beneficial effects of authentic leadership were confirmed in the meta-analysis: it related positively to desirable attitudes and behaviours, such as trust, work engagement, psychological capital, as well as many others, and negatively to undesirable outcomes such as turnover, bullying and burnout.
At the same time, the findings reveal that these effects are not universal. Cultural values significantly moderated 42.9% of the correlates that we tested, suggesting that authentic leadership is culturally embedded.
Individualism and masculinity often strengthened the relationships with desirable follower outcomes, whereas high power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation attenuated some effects.
The effects of authentic leadership varied to the extent that it aligned with followers' sociocultural identities and actively interacted with the processes by which these identities were constructed and maintained.
Our work provides empirical evidence that the effects of leadership behaviour are deeply contingent on cultural context, emphasising the value of cultural sensitivity and adaptation in leadership practices.
Lux, A. A., Lowe, K. B., Duran, P., & Bharanitharan, D. K. (2026). Just be yourself . . . but only if you are like us? A social identity theory cross-cultural meta-analysis of authentic leadership. Australian Journal of Management, 1-29. https://doi.org/10.1177/03128962261431855
The article is published 'Open Access' so that everyone can benefit, and I've attached a full PDF copy.
Please share this widely with your colleagues who are working on authentic leadership research.
Thank you.
Andrei Lux, PhD
Senior Lecturer of Leadership
Research Cluster Lead
Leadership & People Research Cluster (LPRC)
School of Business and Law
Edith Cowan University (ECU)
Office: +61 8 6304 2417
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