The Effect of Authentic Leadership on Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Mediating Role of Employee's Job Motivation

Abstract The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between authentic leadership and organizational citizenship behavior with respect to the role of mediating job motivation among employees of Kerman welfare organization. The survey population included 321 employees of the welfare organization of Kerman that 210 of whom were selected as sample size. The tools used to collect the data are authentic leadership questionnaire of Avolio et al. ( 2007), organizational citizenship behavior questionnaire of Podsakoff et al. (1990) and job motivation questionnaire of Alderfer et al. (1969). Structural equations modeling is used to analyze the data and the software used is SPSS and LISREL. Regarding the final model, it can be said that the authentic leadership with a coefficient of 0.341 has a positive effect on organizational citizenship behavior and employees' job motivation has a positive effect on organizational citizenship behavior with a path coefficient of 0.279. Also, the role of mediator of employee's job motivation in the relationship between authentic leadership and organizational citizenship behavior was confirmed. Introduction Studies have shown that one of the methods to encourage employees to be involved in extra-role behavior and perform organizational citizenship behavior is through strengthening the quality of organizational leadership. In this regard, one of the newest approaches in organizational leadership is theory of Authentic Leadership which can be used as a solution for the current leadership challenges (Toor and Ofori, 2008). The Authentic leaders show their thoughts and behaviors to the employees with their openness and clarity and honesty, and encourage employees to involve in extra-role behavior by building trust in the organization and by showing altruistic behaviors (Rego et al., 2012). Therefore, the authentic leadership style can be one of the methods to encourage employees to perform voluntary behaviors, including organizational citizenship behavior. Studies have also shown that authentic leaders motivate their employees by providing an environment in which the ideas are exchanged freely and this will lead to better performance (Luthans and Avolio, 2003). On the other hand, one of the other effective factors on organizational citizenship behavior is employees’ work motivation. Studies have shown that work motivation can be used as a valuable tool to understand the causes of behavior in organizations and to pre