Running head: HOW AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP INFLUENCES TEAM PERFORMANCE
How Authentic Leadership Influences Team Performance: The Mediating Role of Team
Reflexivity
Joanne Lyubovnikova
1
*, Alison Legood¹, Nicola Turner,
1
and Argyro Mamakouka¹
1
Aston University
Joanne Lyubovnikova PhD
Email: J.Lyubovnikova@aston.ac.uk
Alison Legood, PhD
Email: a.legood2@aston.ac.uk
Nicola Turner
Email: turnenj1@aston.ac.uk
Argyro Mamakouka
Email: mamakoua@aston.ac.uk
HOW AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP INFLUENCES TEAM PERFORMANCE
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Abstract
This study examines how authentic leadership influences team performance via the mediating
mechanism of team reflexivity. Adopting a self-regulatory perspective, we propose that authentic
leadership will predict the specific team regulatory process of reflexivity, which in turn will be
associated with two outcomes of team performance; effectiveness and productivity. Using survey
data from 53 teams in three organizations in the United Kingdom and Greece and controlling for
collective trust, we found support for our stated hypotheses with the results indicating a
significant fully mediated relationship. As predicted the self-regulatory behaviors inherent in the
process of authentic leadership served to collectively shape team behavior, manifesting in the
process of team reflexivity, which, in turn, positively predicted team performance. We conclude
with a discussion of how this study extends theoretical understanding of authentic leadership in
relation to teamwork and delineate several practical implications for leaders and organizations.
Keywords: Authentic leadership, reflexivity, self-regulation; team performance, team
processes
HOW AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP INFLUENCES TEAM PERFORMANCE
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How Authentic Leadership Influences Team Performance: The Mediating Role of Team
Reflexivity
Hardly a day goes by without another example of unscrupulous organizational leadership
appearing in the media (Trevino & Brown, 2014). This upsurge of interest in moral behavior,
coupled with the falling levels of trust in leaders across the world (Avolio & Walumbwa, 2014),
has prompted scholars to look beyond traditional leadership theories, such as transactional and
transformational leadership, and consider more contemporary positive forms of leadership as a
means for promoting organizational effectiveness. In turn, frameworks such as Authentic
Leadership Theory (Luthans & Avolio, 2003) have flourished in the organizational psychology
literature (Gardner et al., 2011). Given their focus on authenticity, self-awareness and self-
regulation (Avolio et al., 2004; Avolio & Gardner, 2005), authentic leaders are thought to
promote ethical conduct and discourage nefarious behavior amongst their followers, with a rich
body of empirical studies supporting associations between authentic leadership and a host of
organizationally relevant outcomes (Avolio & Walumbwa, 2014).
Whilst research into authentic leadership is blossoming and a solid theoretical basis now
exists, considerable gaps in the theory pertain. Firstly, research to date has focused largely at the
individual level (Gardner et al., 2011), neglecting the consideration of group-level outcomes and
how authentic leaders can leverage aspects of team performance (Yammarino et al, 2008). Given
that teams provide the fundamental building blocks of modern organizational designs (Mathieu et
al, 2013), the prevalence of flatter group-based structures necessitates the study of team level
processes and outputs, and how authentic leaders might influence such collectives. Further, the
limited research that has focused at the group level of analysis (e.g., Černe et al., 2013; Clapp-
Smith et al., 2009; Rego et al., 2014; Rego et al., 2013) has typically adopted a positive
organizational behavior lens to explain how authentic leaders facilitate the development of
HOW AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP INFLUENCES TEAM PERFORMANCE
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collective interpersonal processes (Gardner & Schermerhorn, 2004; Luthans, 2002). However,
given that authentic leadership theory is firmly rooted in the concept of self-regulation (Bandura,
1991; Gardner et al., 2011), the omission of self-regulation theory from the examination of how
authentic leaders influence teams is problematic (Yammarino et al., 2008). Avolio and Gardner
(2005) argue that self-regulation is the process through which authentic leaders are able to align
actions with their true values and intentions, and thus make their authentic selves transparent to
followers. Through processes of positive social exchange (Blau, 1964) and social information
processing (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1977), authentic leaders have been shown to shape the self-
regulatory processes of their subordinates (Avolio et al., 2004). Despite this, research is yet to
examine how such leaders might engender collective self-regulatory processes in the teams that
they lead. Such research is important as it extends our understanding of how authentic leaders can
uniquely shape not only individual behavior, but also group level processes, beyond those which
are interpersonal in nature.
Accordingly, the primary goal of this study is to explain how authentic leaders foster
heightened team performance through the stimulation of a specific team regulatory process;
namely team reflexivity (West, 2000). Indeed, as team working becomes increasingly prevalent
in modern organizations, there is a pressing need to better understand ways in which leadership
can leverage aspects of team performance. We thus theorize that authentic leaders will foster the
development of team self-regulation geared towards authenticity, as manifested in the process of
team reflexivity, which ensures that team objectives are regularly reviewed and that collective
actions remain appropriately aligned with the team’s true intentions and values. In turn, we
expect that team reflexivity will predict two aspects of team performance; team productivity and
team effectiveness (see figure 1).
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Insert Figure 1 about here
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Our study offers a number of theoretical contributions to the literature. Firstly, by
adopting a team self-regulatory perspective (Kozlowski & Ilgen, 2006), we present a test of an
alternative conceptual framework for explaining the authentic leadership – team performance
nexus, thus extending understanding beyond the positive organizational behavior tradition that
has dominated the literature to date (Avolio & Walumbwa, 2014). Secondly, through utilizing
Marks, Mathieu and Zaccaro’s (2001) taxonomy of team processes, the study findings serve to
advance the nomological network of authentic leadership through the consideration of team
reflexivity as a specific transition process that authentic leaders are able to shape. In doing so, we
also contribute to the limited literature that has examined the impact of authentic leadership at the
group level of analysis (Yammarino et al., 2008). Thirdly, while a handful of previous studies
have considered how other leadership frameworks are related to reflexivity (e.g., Hirst et al.,
2004), research on the determinants of reflexivity remains scarce (Schippers et al., 2013). We
therefore contribute to the reflexivity literature by confirming authentic leadership as a key
predictor of this important transition process, and examine its consequences for team
performance. Furthermore, from a practical standpoint, our findings afford leaders with
alternative strategies for fostering team performance through the development of authentic
leadership and team meta-routines built on the notions of team reflexivity, thus contributing to
organizational practice.
