Authentic leadership, organisational citizenship behaviour and intention to quit : the role of psychological ownership

Abstract

Orientation: Organisations in the modern, complex and turbulent business environment are faced with several challenges, which include employee retention, commitment, satisfaction and turnover. Authentic leadership and psychological ownership have important implications for these challenges. Solving these challenges requires the provision of empirically derived research regarding authentic leadership and psychological ownership and the influence these constructs have on job-related behaviour. Research purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of perceived authentic leadership on followers’ citizenship behaviour and their intention to quit their jobs as well as to explore the role that psychological ownership has to play in these relationships. Motivation for the study: Although previous studies found that authentic leadership predicts psychological ownership and that authentic leadership as well as psychological ownership lead to several corresponding outcomes, the researcher believes that the possible mediating effect of psychological ownership should be investigated. The mediating effect of psychological ownership between authentic leadership and organisational citizenship behaviour and authentic leadership and intention to quit have not been explored in previous studies. Research design, approach and method: A quantitative cross-sectional design was used on a convenience sample employed within the South African service industry (N = 384) to explore relationships between authentic leadership, psychological ownership, intention to quit and ix organisational citizenship behaviour. MPlus was used to perform structural equation modelling to appraise the hypothesised model. Main findings: Authentic leadership had a significant positive relationship with organisational citizenship behaviour and a significant negative relationship with employees’ intentions to quit. Furthermore, the results indicated that authentic leadership had a significant (medium) indirect effect on organisational citizenship behaviour through psychological ownership and a significant (small) indirect effect on intention to quit via psychological ownership. Practical implications: This study provides organisations with a better understanding of how authentic leaders can create a positive, healthy, working environment and how authentic leadership behaviours can influence followers’ organisational citizenship behaviour, psychological ownership as well as employees’ intention to quit. Contribution: This study contributes to the development of the nomological network of psychological ownership. A particular contextual factor, namely perceived authentic leadership’s influence on psychological ownership, is specifically investigated.