Authentic leadership promoting employees' psychological capital and creativity ☆ Arménio Rego a, ⁎, Filipa Sousa b, 1 , Carla Marques c, 2 , Miguel Pina e Cunha d, 3 a Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal b Escola Superior de Educação e Ciências Sociais, Instituto Politécnico de Leiria, Morro do Lena, Alto do Vieiro, 2411-901 Leiria, Portugal c Departamento de Economia, Sociologia e Gestão, Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Av. Almeida de Lucena, 1, 5000-660 Vila Real, Portugal d Nova School of Business and Economics, Rua Marquês de Fronteira, 20, 1099-038 Lisboa, Portugal abstract article info Article history: Received 1 December 2009 Received in revised form 1 April 2010 Accepted 1 September 2011 Available online 28 October 2011 Keywords: Psychological capital Creativity Authentic leadership Two hundred and one employees report their psychological capital, as well as their supervisors' authentic lead- ership. Supervisors describe the employees' creativity. The main findings show that authentic leadership predicts employees' creativity, both directly and through the mediating role of employees' psychological capital. The study empirically validates theoretical arguments that suggest integrating authentic leadership and psychologi- cal capital in research, and indicates that both may foster employees' creativity, a crucial resource for helping or- ganizations to face competitive challenges, take advantage of business opportunities, and improve organizational effectiveness. © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Authentic leadership (AL) is “as a pattern of leader behavior that draws upon and promotes both positive psychological capacities and a positive ethical climate, to foster greater self-awareness, an in- ternalized moral perspective, balanced processing of information, and relational transparency on the part of leaders working with followers, fostering positive self-development” (Walumbwa, Avolio, Gardner, Wernsing, & Peterson, 2008: 94). In recent years, the topic is a target of great interest both among scholars (e.g., Avolio & Gardner, 2005; Walumbwa et al., 2008) and practitioners (e.g., George, 2003). Both argue that AL promotes positive employees' attitudes and behaviors and contributes to organizational performance. More empirical re- search is necessary for continuing to test this premise. This paper merges the AL, psychological capital (PsyCap; Luthans, Youssef, & Avolio, 2007), and creativity literatures, and shows how AL predicts employees' creativity both directly and through the medi- ating role of PsyCap (Fig. 1). PsyCap is an individual's positive psychological state of development characterized by: “(1) having confidence (self-efficacy) to take on and put in the necessary effort to succeed at challenging tasks; (2) making a positive attribution (op- timism) about succeeding now and in the future; (3) persevering to- ward goals and, when necessary, redirecting paths to goals (hope) in order to succeed; and (4) when beset by problems and adversity, sus- taining and bouncing back and even beyond (resilience) to attain suc- cess” (Luthans, Youssef, & Avolio, 2007: 3). The study answers calls to integrate AL and PsyCap literatures (Gardner, Avolio, Luthans, May, & Walumbwa, 2005; Yammarino, Dionne, Schriesheim, & Dansereau, 2008) and helps to understand the process through which AL contrib- utes to employees' creativity. Studying the antecedents of employees' creativity is important be- cause, to survive and prosper, organizations need to take full advantage of their employees' creative potential, so that innovation, change, learn- ing, performance, and competitiveness can be sustained. Creativity in the workplace represents the production of novel and useful ideas or solutions concerning products, services, processes, and procedures (Amabile, 1988, 1997; Oldham & Cummings, 1997). The goal of creative performance is to solve problems, to roll out new products and services, to take advantage of business opportunities, and to improve organiza- tional effectiveness. Individual creativity is a function of individual and social/contextual factors (Egan, 2005; Oldham & Cummings, 1997; Shalley & Gilson, 2004). One of the most relevant contextual factors is leadership. Several researchers focus on identifying the role of specific leadership behaviors and leaders' characteristics in supporting, suppressing, facilitating, or inhi- biting creativity (e.g., Hirst, van Dick, & van Knippenberg, 2009; Mumford, Scott, Gaddis, & Strange, 2002; Oldham & Cummings, 1997; Rego, Sousa, Cunha, Correia, & Saur, 2007; Reiter-Palmon and Illies, 2004; Shalley & Journal of Business Research 65 (2012) 429–437 ☆ The authors are grateful to Bruce J. Avolio, William L. Gardner, and Fred O. Walumba for their permission to use the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire. They are also grateful to Fred Luthans, Bruce J. Avolio, and Carolyn M. Youssef for their per- mission to use the PsyCap questionnaire. Miguel Cunha acknowledges support from Nova Forum. ⁎ Corresponding author at: Departamento de Economia, Gestão e Engenharia Indus- trial, Universidade de Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal. Tel.: + 351 234 370 024; fax: +351 234 370 215. E-mail addresses: armenio.rego@ua.pt (A. Rego), msousa@esel.ipleiria.pt (F. Sousa), smarques@utad.pt (C. Marques), mpc@novasbe.pt (M.P. Cunha). 1 Tel.: +351 244 820 300; fax: +351 244 820 310. 2 Tel.: +351 259 302 200; fax: +351 259 302 249. 3 Tel.: +351 212 822 725; fax: +351 213 873 973. 0148-2963/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2011.10.003 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Journal of Business Research