Authentic Leadership Questionnaire: Case of Its Validation through Structural Equation Modelling; Evidence from Pakistan

Abstract

Authentic leadership is an emerging construct which has attracted scholars and practitioners alike due to the felt need of ethical climate in organizations among rising corporate scandals. Though considerable attempts have been made to further refine the construct by undertaking validation studies in different cultures, no study has reported validation of authentic leadership questionnaire in the Pakistani context. This study offers new contributions towards the validation of the authentic leadership questionnaire from Pakistani context and reports the results of confirmatory factor analysis, reliability, and construct validity by analyzing responses from three independent nationally representative samples (n=580). Such need has been felt by many authors to provide the evidence of validity in other cultures like Asia. Using structural equation modeling through AMOS, this study concludes that the authentic leadership questionnaire is a valid and reliable construct in the Pakistani culture too. The model fit indices indicate that the second order model of authentic leadership is more robust and preferable than the first order model and the composite factor. Positive impact of authentic leadership on championing and partial mediation of management support and affective commitment to change between authentic leadership and championing indicate predictive validity of authentic leadership questionnaire. Implications, limitations, and future recommendations are discussed.