The effects of authentic leadership on worker engagement : investigating the roles of basic psychological need satisfaction and psychological capital in military and emergency services : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in (Psychology) at Massey University, New Zealand

Abstract

Organisations are continuously in pursuit of improvement, whether that is regarding increased efficiency or profit, stronger outputs, enhanced outcomes, higher levels of wellbeing, or increased sustainability. However, these improvements rely on the people within the organisations making it happen. Research has shown that there is a strong link between leadership and worker engagement and explicitly between authentic leadership and engagement. However, the topic remains convoluted and mostly unexplained with very little research investigating specific pathways. This dearth of knowledge inhibits any pragmatic response to how organisations should be developing their leaders or increasing worker engagement. There is an even larger gap in research dedicated to exploring these pathways within emergency services and military fields even though the hierarchical nature of these industries generates a heavy reliance on leadership to produce desired outcomes. This study aimed to address this by examining how authentic leadership is related to engagement through basic psychological need satisfaction and psychological capital and investigated the possibility that neuroticism plays a moderating role. Two hundred and nine employees working in emergency services or military organisations were surveyed using an online survey and the data gathered was used to conduct several regression analyses to test the hypothesised models. The study revealed that authentic leadership was positively associated with basic psychological need satisfaction and worker engagement. It showed that need satisfaction was positively associated with psychological capital which was shown to be positively associated with engagement. It also revealed that need satisfaction and psychological capital sequentially mediated the relationship between authentic leadership and worker engagement. Neuroticism, however, was not a significant moderator of neither the relationship between authentic leadership and engagement nor between psychological capital and worker engagement. This research serves as an important exploratory step towards assisting the field in demystifying the role that authentic leadership may play in increasing and maintaining sustainable worker engagement. Equally, it goes towards enabling clearer direction for organisations in military and emergency services sectors wanting to develop more robust, outcomes focused programmes that improve engagement through leadership development.