Sustainable Workplace: Impact of Authentic Leadership on Change-Oriented Organizational Citizenship Behavior and the Moderating Role of Perceived Employees’ Calling

Eunmi Jang
Additional contact information
Eunmi Jang: College of Business, Honam University, Gwangju 62399, Korea

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 15, 1-16

Abstract: To be sustainable in the current rapidly changing business environment, organizations must strive to adapt and respond to a new environment. Employees are the key performers of organizational change. Furthermore, change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is essential for them to positively accept and implement organizational change. Additionally, the leader’s role is crucial to promoting such change-oriented OCB. In this regard, this study investigates the effect of authentic leadership on change-oriented OCB, demonstrating that the vocational calling of employees strengthens such positive influences. Based on the self-determination theory (SDT), this study examines that the moderating effect between authentic leadership on change-oriented OCB increases when employees have a higher perception of calling for work than lower. This study uses a two-wave data set gathered from 485 currently working employees in South Korea. The empirical analysis is revealed below. First, authentic leadership has a positive effect on direct OCB. Second, employees’ perception of calling has a positive effect on direct change-oriented OCB. Third, the higher the level of employees’ perception of calling, the greater the effect of authentic leadership on change-oriented OCB. The most significant theoretical contribution of the study is that it is the first to determine that calling acts as a moderating factor between authentic leadership and change-oriented OCB. The fact that the positive effect of authentic leadership on change-oriented OCB increases when there is a high calling implies that employees are more likely to conduct change-oriented OCB when they perceive a high level of calling. Based on this result, this study explains the method and reason for maximizing change-oriented OCB through authentic leadership.

Keywords: authentic leadership; change-oriented OCB; calling; SDT; South Korea (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/15/8542/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/15/8542/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:15:p:8542-:d:605342

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().