Does authentic leadership promote higher job satisfaction in public versus private organizations? Exploring the role of vigor and engagement

Abstract

Background: Several studies have suggested that leaders showing high levels of authentic leadership increase workers’ overall job satisfaction, which is composed of different aspects with some distinctions among them. Furthermore, the implication of affective and motivational variables, such as vigor and engagement at work, respectively, have not been jointly considered for analysing the differences and similarities between public and private organizations. Thus, this study aims to analyze whether vigor at work and engagement at work play a mediating role between authentic leadership and different aspects of job satisfaction, considering both public and private organizations, to propose a trans-organizational model. Method: In this cross-sectional and cross-sectoral study, 1029 workers in private (n = 619) and public (n = 410) organizations from Spain participated completing a questionnaire. Results: Structural equation modelling was used to perform a multigroup mediation analysis (public versus private organizations) in which the invariance between groups was previously explored. The model showed a good fit to the data in which authentic leadership affected the dimensions of job satisfaction both directly and indirectly (through vigor at work and engagement). However, authentic leadership had a greater positive effect on vigor at work for private organizations; whereas work engagement was not significantly related to the job satisfaction dimension related to legal aspects for public organizations. Conclusion: The vigor at work and work engagement were important variables to explain the authentic leadership-job satisfaction relationship in both private and public organizations. Nevertheless, the relationship between work engagement and the dimensions of job satisfaction was different for both organizations.