Authentic Leadership and Staff Performance Mediated by Work Engagement; Case of Marketing Firms in Oman

Abstract

Authentic leadership and its employee and productivity outcome is a topic gaining growing attention from academia and practitioners. However, the question remains relatively less explored as how authentic leadership impact employee productivity. Based on this literature gap, the present study is about testing the effect of authentic leadership on the staff performance. Therefore, significance of this study is that it tests authentic leadership & its employee outcome within a new context and utilizes a process approach by testing work engagement as a mediator. The methodology of the study is cross-sectional, quantitative, and survey-based methods of data collection. Data collection is based on staff of selected marketing firms operating in the Sultanate of Oman (n=105). The reliability and validity are established by performing the confirmatory factor analysis through AMOS. The path analysis is used for hypothesis testing and result indicate that authentic leadership dimensions exert a positive and significant influence on staff job performance and work engagement. Additionally, the result shows support for the mediating effect of work engagement between authentic leadership dimensions and employee job performance. The findings suggest that the concept of authentic leadership is of greater importance and should be practiced in the organizational context

        Keywords: authentic leadership, marketing firms, behavior, job performance, Oman, work engagement