The Effect of Authentic Leadership on Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Mediating Role of Employee's Job Motivation

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between authentic leadership and organizational citizenship behavior with respect to the role of mediating job motivation among employees of Kerman welfare organization. The survey population included 321 employees of the welfare organization of Kerman that 210 of whom were selected as sample size. The tools used to collect the data are authentic leadership questionnaire of Avolio et al. ( 2007), organizational citizenship behavior questionnaire of Podsakoff et al. (1990) and job motivation questionnaire of Alderfer et al. (1969). Structural equations modeling is used to analyze the data and the software used is SPSS and LISREL. Regarding the final model, it can be said that the authentic leadership with a coefficient of 0.341 has a positive effect on organizational citizenship behavior and employees' job motivation has a positive effect on organizational citizenship behavior with a path coefficient of 0.279. Also, the role of mediator of employee's job motivation in the relationship between authentic leadership and organizational citizenship behavior was confirmed. Studies have shown that one of the methods to encourage employees to be involved in extra-role behavior and perform organizational citizenship behavior is through strengthening the quality of organizational leadership. In this regard, one of the newest approaches in organizational leadership is theory of Authentic Leadership which can be used as a solution for the current leadership challenges (Toor and Ofori, 2008). The Authentic leaders show their thoughts and behaviors to the employees with their openness and clarity and honesty, and encourage employees to involve in extra-role behavior by building trust in the organization and by showing altruistic behaviors (Rego et al., 2012). Therefore, the authentic leadership style can be one of the methods to encourage employees to perform voluntary behaviors, including organizational citizenship behavior.
Studies have also shown that authentic leaders motivate their employees by providing an environment in which the ideas are exchanged freely and this will lead to better performance (Luthans and Avolio, 2003).
On the other hand, one of the other effective factors on organizational citizenship behavior is employees’ work motivation. Studies have shown that work motivation can be used as a valuable tool to understand the causes of behavior in organizations and to predict the effects of managerial actions (Moradi et al., 2015).
Therefore, it can be said that the authentic leaders can provide some conditions for happening the extra-role and voluntary behavior including organizational Citizenship Behavior by increasing the employee's work motivation.
According to the above mentioned issues, the main question is whether the employee's work motivation plays a mediating role in the relationship between Authentic Leadership and organizational citizenship behavior? The present applied study is descriptive-correlational. The statistical population of this study consisted of 321 employees of Welfare Organization of Kerman. Structural equation modeling was used in this study; therefore, 210 samples were selected by random sampling. And different questionnaires were used to collect data. Avolio et al.'s 16-item questionnaire (2001) which included four aspects of self-awareness, balanced processing of information, internalized moral perspective, and transparency in the relations was used to measure authentic leadership, Alderfer's 15-item ERG questionnaire (1996) which included variety of skills, job identity, job importance, job independence and job feedback was used to measure work motivation and finally, podsakoff et al.’s 15 item organizational citizenship behavior questionnaire (1990) which included altruism, responsibility, chivalry, civic virtue, and respect and reverence. Structural equation modeling was also used to analyze the data by using SPSS and LISREL software.

The results showed the positive and significant effect of authentic leadership on organizational citizenship behavior (0.314) and work motivation (0.655) and also positive and significant effect of work motivation on organizational citizenship behavior (0.297).
The results also showed that Authentic Leadership can influence Organizational Citizenship Behavior both directly and indirectly through employee's work motivation. The value of direct effect and indirect effect through work motivation equals to 0.341 and 0.194, respectively. Based on the calculations, the significant value was 0.002 for examining the medicator role of work motivation by using Bootstrap method. Therefore, the effect of mediating role of work motivation on the relationship between authentic leadership and organizational citizenship behavior was confirmed. (In the Boot strap method, if the significance level is less than 0.05, the role of the mediator is also confirmed).
Discussion and In this study, Authentic Leadership, employee's work motivation and organizational citizenship behavior were explained theoretically and then tested. In fact, the present study tried to examine the possibility of influence and determine the probable impact of authentic leadership on organizational citizenship behavior in regard to employee's motivation in employees of Welfare Organization of Kerman. The results of analysis also showed that Authentic Leadership can have positive influence on Organizational Citizenship Behavior both directly and indirectly through employee's work motivation. The value of direct effect and indirect effect through work motivation equals to 0.341 and 0.194, respectively