A social exchange perspective on employee performance in Sierra Leone's public sector: the roles of authentic leadership, participative decision-making, and trust.
Ibrahim Sallieu Jalloh, Shixiang Li, Guangjin Zhang, H M Wasif Rasheed, Rashid Khurshid
{"title":"A social exchange perspective on employee performance in Sierra Leone's public sector: the roles of authentic leadership, participative decision-making, and trust.","authors":"Ibrahim Sallieu Jalloh, Shixiang Li, Guangjin Zhang, H M Wasif Rasheed, Rashid Khurshid","doi":"10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1885753","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Purpose: </strong>Based on Social Exchange Theory (SET) and Social Information Processing (SIP), this research attempts to explore the effect that Participative Decision-Making (PDM) has on the performance of employees working in Sierra Leone's public sector using Affective Trust, Work Engagement, Affective Commitment, and Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) as mediating variables in relation to Authentic Leadership as a moderating variable.</p><p><strong>Design/methodology/approach: </strong>The study used a quantitative and cross-sectional research design. Data collection was conducted among public sector employees in Sierra Leone using a convenience sampling method. The study applied Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to assess the measurement and structural model hypotheses.</p><p><strong>Findings: </strong>The empirical results reveal that participative decision-making (PDM) associate with employee performance through affective trust, which associate to work engagement and affective commitment, resulting in organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). The variable of work engagement proved itself as a better predictor of OCB than affective commitment. Besides, authentic leadership moderated the relationship between affective trust and work engagement/affective commitment.</p><p><strong>Originality/value: </strong>The current research contributes to the SET and SIP frameworks by validating a step-by-step process leading to PDM, which ultimately influences Employee Performance. The study fills one of the significant gaps in the literature by providing evidence from an unexplored area of public sector employees in Sierra Leone.</p>","PeriodicalId":12525,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Psychology","volume":"17 ","pages":"1885753"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8000,"publicationDate":"2026-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13716561/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Frontiers in Psychology","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1885753","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2026/1/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Purpose: Based on Social Exchange Theory (SET) and Social Information Processing (SIP), this research attempts to explore the effect that Participative Decision-Making (PDM) has on the performance of employees working in Sierra Leone's public sector using Affective Trust, Work Engagement, Affective Commitment, and Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) as mediating variables in relation to Authentic Leadership as a moderating variable.
Design/methodology/approach: The study used a quantitative and cross-sectional research design. Data collection was conducted among public sector employees in Sierra Leone using a convenience sampling method. The study applied Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to assess the measurement and structural model hypotheses.
Findings: The empirical results reveal that participative decision-making (PDM) associate with employee performance through affective trust, which associate to work engagement and affective commitment, resulting in organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). The variable of work engagement proved itself as a better predictor of OCB than affective commitment. Besides, authentic leadership moderated the relationship between affective trust and work engagement/affective commitment.
Originality/value: The current research contributes to the SET and SIP frameworks by validating a step-by-step process leading to PDM, which ultimately influences Employee Performance. The study fills one of the significant gaps in the literature by providing evidence from an unexplored area of public sector employees in Sierra Leone.
期刊介绍:
Frontiers in Psychology is the largest journal in its field, publishing rigorously peer-reviewed research across the psychological sciences, from clinical research to cognitive science, from perception to consciousness, from imaging studies to human factors, and from animal cognition to social psychology. Field Chief Editor Axel Cleeremans at the Free University of Brussels is supported by an outstanding Editorial Board of international researchers. This multidisciplinary open-access journal is at the forefront of disseminating and communicating scientific knowledge and impactful discoveries to researchers, academics, clinicians and the public worldwide. The journal publishes the best research across the entire field of psychology. Today, psychological science is becoming increasingly important at all levels of society, from the treatment of clinical disorders to our basic understanding of how the mind works. It is highly interdisciplinary, borrowing questions from philosophy, methods from neuroscience and insights from clinical practice - all in the goal of furthering our grasp of human nature and society, as well as our ability to develop new intervention methods.