Antecedents and outcomes of authentic leadership across culture: A meta-analytic review

Based on 214 primary studies (N = 196,300), the current study employed meta-analytical techniques to examine the antecedents and outcomes of authentic leadership, and whether cultural differences at the national level and research designs moderated the relationships between authentic leadership and all outcomes. Our findings revealed that leaders’ emotional intelligence and the organizational ethical climate was significantly related to authentic leadership, and that authentic leadership was significantly related to a wide variety of subordinate-, leader-, and performance-related outcomes. Moreover, leader-member exchange and follower job satisfaction was found to mediate the relationship between authentic leadership and both follower job performance and OCB, and cultural differences (i.e., power distance and individualism) were found to moderate the relationships between authentic leadership and its outcomes. We also ran supplementary analysis to explore the influence of follower features and research design.