The Complexity of Leader Authenticity: Examining the Effects of Social Change and Leader Consistency on Perceptions of Authentic Leadership

Authentic Leadership Theory was developed in response to a number of key leadership theories that fail to explain why leaders often behave in ways that are disconcordant with the roles and responsibilities of their position. At the core of authentic leadership is the premise that authentic leaders ‘know themselves’, and ‘stay true to themselves’, acting in self-consistent ways. ‘Self-consistency’ is regarded as a key antecedent of authentic leadership; whereby leaders demonstrate consistency between their values, beliefs, and actions in order to be perceived as authentic. The purpose of the current study was to expand on the research that identifies selfconsistency as a key determinant of authentic leadership. Specifically, the present study aimed to incorporate social identity and attributional approaches to leadership in order to assess whether changes in social context and perceived identity advancement would impact on perceived leader authenticity. The study utilised an experimental design whereby 329 participants evaluated the authenticity of a self-consistent leader when the social context had either changed or remained stable. The results indicated that social context (changed vs. stable) impacted on perceived leader authenticity. Specifically, leaders were perceived to be more authentic when the social context had changed, rather than remained stable. Further, these results were qualified by an interaction, such that when the leader was perceived to be advancing the identity of the followers, perceived leader authenticity was not influenced by social context. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for not only authentic leadership theory, but also in terms of how they add to the literature on attributional and social identity approaches to leadership