Authentic leadership competences and positional favouritism: impact on positive and negative organisational effectiveness

The world of business has become complex and, therefore, it is important for organisations to employ leaders with authentic principles. With this in mind, we explored how authentic leadership internal and external competences together with positional favouritism influence positive organisational effectiveness (job satisfaction and perceived organisational performance) and negative organisational effectiveness (turnover intentions and organisational politics). The sample consisted of 997 subordinates and 127 managers surveyed from public and private banks across Ghana. Second order confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical multiple regression were used to analyse the data. We found that authentic leadership, internal and external competences increase positive organisational effectiveness while negative organisational effectiveness is decreased. Positional favouritism increases negative organisational effectiveness while positive organisational effectiveness is decreased. Authentic leadership internal competence together with positional favouritism had a negative influence on positive organisational effectiveness. Positional favouritism together with authentic leadership internal and external competences had a positive influence on turnover intentions. The discussion, implications, limitations and future research are discussed.