Authentic Leadership, Ethical Climate & Workplace Incivility: How Authentic Leadership Prevents Deviant Work Behavior-A Case from Pakistan

Abstract

Inadequacies of seasoned leadership styles and unethical leadership practices have resulted in manynegative consequences for individuals and organizations. Authentic leadership is a character-drivenleadership model equipped with morality, integrity, and authenticity but little is known whetherauthentic leadership can impact workplace incivility-a deviant work behavior. Workplace incivility,with its deteriorating consequences, is a prevalent phenomenon in organization irrespective ofcountry origin or nature of the organization. Indeed, the research community has paid littleattention to this area. This study, drawing on Social Learning Theory and Leader-Member ExchangeTheory, attempts to fill this gap. This study also attempts to identify the mediating mechanismthrough which authentic leaders translate their positive influence. Based on data collected from 127respondents from the healthcare sector in Karachi, this study employs AMOS and PROCESS todetermine the goodness of model fit and to test proposed hypotheses respectively. Findings of thisresearch suggest that authentic leaders negatively influence workplace incivility. Ethical climatepartially mediates the impact of authentic leadership on workplace incivility. This study hassignificant theoretical implications. Keywords: Authentic leadership, ethical climate, workplace incivility