Describing the Role of Authentic Leadership in Intentional Organizational Forgetting, Given the Mediatory Role of Personnel Empowerment

Much research has been done about authentic leadership, which indicates its effect on organizational factors such as performance, organizational citizenship behaviour, human resource empowerment, trust to management, organizational commitment, emotional intelligence, organizational learning, etc. (Wong & Laschinger, 2012; Kara, Uysal, Sirgy& Lee, 2013). Of course, further research and study shows lack of research about its effect on organizational forgetting. On the other hand, despite much research that has been done about knowledge management and organizational learning, organizational forgetting and its management have not been comprehensively studied so far. The novelty of this research is that it has been formulated based on this theoretical gap. The purpose of this
paper is to consider the relationship between authentic leadership and intentional organizational forgetting and psychological Empowerment in the National Oil Products Distribution Company of Sistan and Baluchestan Province. In this paper, after having a brief look upon the theoretical fundamentals and the literature according to the conceptual model and research hypotheses, methodology and data analysis are considered using structural equations model.
Case study Statistical population of the research includes the staffs of National Oil Products Distribution Company of Sistan and Baluchestan Province, who were 294 individuals at the time of conducting this research. In this paper, Morgan’s table is used to determine the sample size and it was estimated as 165 individuals.
Materials and methods In terms of purpose, this is an applied study and in terms of data collection, it is a descriptive-survey research. The main measurement tool is questionnaire which includes standard questionnaires of Avolio et al.’s Authentic Leadership (2007), De Holan’s Organizational Forgetting (2004) and Spreitzer’s Empowerment (1995). After making some changes in them in order to make them proportionate with the statistical population and asking the experts’ opinions, these questionnaires were used to measure the validity of questions. In order to analyze the research data, in the first stage, reliability of questions was calculated using Cronbach’s alpha test and it was obtained as 0.86 for authentic leadership items, 0.81 for organizational forgetting and 0.93 for psychological Empowerment. This shows a suitable and acceptable reliability for the questionnaire. Data normality was considered using Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. In the next stage, the relationship between the variables was considered using the correlation test, and finally the research hypotheses were tested using structural equations modeling.
Results and discussion As can be seen in structural function pattern, the model is in a desirable status, so that authentic leadership and psychological Empowerment with coefficients 0.57 and 0.43 have direct, positive and significant effect on organizational forgetting (the first and second hypotheses). Also, the coefficient 0.52 indicates the direct, positive and significant effect of authentic leadership on staffs’ psychological capital (the third hypothesis). Given the T-value, authentic leadership has a significant relationship with intentional organizational forgetting (T=6.01) and psychological Empowerment (T=5.55). Moreover, the model shows a significant relationship between psychological Empowerment and intentional organizational forgetting (T=4.88). Therefore, hypotheses 1, 2 and 3 are confirmed. According to second model (indirect measurement of the effect of the independent variable on dependent variable) it is observed that, according to the role of the mediator variable, the path coefficient value between the independent and dependent variables has decreased from 0.61 to 0.57. Therefore, the variable of psychological Empowerment has a relative effect on the relationship between authentic leadership and intentional organizational forgetting; hence the fourth hypothesis is confirmed.
Conclusion Findings of the research indicate that fitting indices are in a desirablestatus for confirmatory factor analysis models for all the latent variables. The results of testing the hypotheses show that authentic leadership has positive, direct and significant effect on intentional organizational forgetting (the first hypothesis). The review of literature of the research indicates that previous studies which were based on experimental data have not tested the effects of authentic leadership on intentional organizational forgetting; hence we cannot directly compare the results of those studies with other ones. So far no research has dealt with the effects of authentic leadership on intentional organizational forgetting; however, in some studies, the relationship between other leadership styles such as transformational leadership, transactional leadership, pragmatic leadership and intentional organizational forgetting has been studied and the positive relationships among them have been approved. According to this, it can be said that the results of this research are indirectly consistent with the studies by TaghvaiYazdi (2015), Azizinejadet al. (2014), Moshabaki et al. (2011) Moshabaki and Rabieh (2007).The results of testing the second hypothesis show that psychological Empowerment has a positive, direct and significant effect on intentional organizational forgetting. The results and findings of this hypothesis conform to the findings of Kamarehei & Safari (2015).
The results of testing the third hypothesis indicate that authentic leadership has a positive, direct and significant effect on psychological Empowerment of the staffs. results of this research are indirectly consistent with the studies by Walumbwa et al (2010), Emuwa (2013), Laschinger et al (2013). Also, the results of testing hypothesis four show that psychological Empowerment as a mediator variable is partly effective on the relationship between authentic leadership and intentional organizational forgetting.