The Relationship Between Authentic Leadership Style, Organizational Support, and Work-Life Balance

Abstract

Examining the effect of the authentic leadership style on the work-life balance of the employees has been increasingly important due to the complexity and competitiveness of the educational institutions to achieve world standards of excellence. Authentic leadership behaviors such as self-awareness, internalized moral perspective, balanced processing, and relational transparency have been identified as a top priority for educational institution employees, precisely due to that leadership’s moral and ethical nature. This quantitative study examined the moderation effect of authentic leadership style on the explanatory relationship between organizational support and work-life balance of educational institution employees in the United States. The population included educational institution employees who report to a leader. Participant selection involved random sampling from employees in educational institutions in the United States to ensure that everyone had an equal chance of being selected. Quantitative data was collected using an online survey that included Neider and Schriesheim’s 2011 Authentic Leadership Inventory, Eisenberger et al.’s 1986 Survey of Perceived Organizational Support, and Syrek et al.’s 2011 Trier Scale for Measuring Work-life Balance. A significant relationship exists between authentic leadership and work-life balance. Additionally, the four components of authentic leadership such as self-awareness, relational transparency, balanced processing, and internalized moral perspective had a positive relationship to work-life balance but was not statistically significant. Authentic leadership did not moderate the explanatory relationship between organizational support and work-life balance. There was no statistically significant relationship between organizational support and work-life balance. The interaction between authentic leadership and organizational support did not statistically relate to work-life balance. Recommendations include the need to consider authentic leadership in educational institutions. Recommendations for future research included duplicating the study with larger sample size, a different population, different research designs, and checking the effect of different moderators such as education, work experience, ethnicity, and culture.