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International Journal of Management and Sustainability Practices

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Authentic Leadership and Organizational Outcomes: An Integrated Conceptual Framework of Ethical Influence, Psychological Empowerment, and Trust

Published in Apr - June 2026 (Vol. 1, Issue 2, 2026)

Authentic Leadership and Organizational Outcomes: An Integrated Conceptual Framework of Ethical Influence, Psychological Empowerment, and Trust - Issue cover

Keywords

Authentic leadershippsychological empowermenttrust in leadershiporganisational outcomesorganisational cultureethical climateemployee well-beingmoral courage

Abstract

Amid a rising tide of unethical organizational behavior and declining employee confidence in management's integrity, Authentic Leadership (AL) is now being studied as a theoretical construct that could support ethically driven leadership focused on employees' identities. Although scholars are increasingly interested in this area, there remains a significant lack of understanding of how AL leads to positive organizational outcomes. This conceptual paper proposes a new comprehensive framework that links AL which includes characteristics such as self-awareness, relationship transparency, balanced processing, and internalization of a moral perspective with four organizational outcome measures (employee job satisfaction, employee work engagement, employee Organizational Citizenship Behaviour [OCB], and employee well-being), and links both to two mediation variables: psychological empowerment (PE) and Trust In Leadership (TL). Further, the proposed framework introduces organizational culture and employee personality as theoretically motivated moderator variables. Based on theories including Self-Determination Theory, Social Learning Theory, Positive Psychology, and Person-Environment Fit Theory, this model offers six formally stated propositions and responds to recent calls for process-based authentic leadership theorising.

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Authors (1)

Rishabh Tripathi
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Indian Institute of Technology...

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Article Information

Published in:

Apr - June 2026 (Vol. 1, Issue 2, 2026)

IJMSP210001

IJMSP-01-000012

44 - 50

2026-05-01

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How to Cite

Tripathi, R. (2026). Authentic Leadership and Organizational Outcomes: An Integrated Conceptual Framework of Ethical Influence, Psychological Empowerment, and Trust. International Journal of Management and Sustainability Practices, 1(2), 44 - 50. https://ijmsp.com/articles/IJMSP210001

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