Authenticity is an important concept in positive psychology and has been shown to be related to well-being health and leadership effectiveness. The present paper introduces employee authenticity as a predictor of relevant workplace behaviors namely employee silence and prohibitive voice. Converging evidence across two studies using cross-sectional and longitudinal designs demonstrates that when responding to hypothetical problematic workplace events (Study 1) or actual workplace experiences (Study 2) individual differences in employees’ authenticity predicted more self-reported voice behaviors and less silence that emanated from various motivations. Furthermore authenticity scores consistently yielded predictive utility over and above the contribution of a broad set of individual and organization- based characteristics. Finally organizational identification moderated the relation between authenticity and silence such that for employees with high levels of identification the relation between authenticity and silence was stronger.
Citation:
The Journal of Positive Psychology , 2013 Vol. 8, No. 4, 346 – 360