Received: 7 January 2020

DOI: 10.1002/smi.2973

RESEARCH ARTICLE
- -
Revised: 13 July 2020 Accepted: 15 July 2020

How authentic leadership impacts on job insecurity:

The multiple mediating role of psychological empowerment
and psychological capital

Dawei Wang1 | Wenjing Kan1 | Shaotian Qin1 | Chaoyue Zhao1 |

Yuchen Sun1 | Wenxu Mao1 | Xiaohua Bian2 | Yaping Ou1 | Ziyu Zhao3 |
Yixin Hu1

1
School of Psychology, Shandong Normal
University, Jinan, China Abstract
2
North China University of Water Resources Previous studies have suggested that leadership style may have an impact on job
and Electric Power, Zhengzhou, China
insecurity among employees. Authentic leaders encourage the development of the
3
Department of Psychology, Swansea
University, Swansea, UK
people around them by practicing real values, beliefs and behaviours, being sub-
ordinate oriented and making honest evaluations of the behaviour and performance
Correspondence
of employees. Authentic leadership, often considered the ‘root construct’ of other
Yixin Hu, School of Psychology, Shandong
Normal University, Jinan, China. positive leadership forms, conforms to Chinese culture and hence, may be the most
Email: huyixin2005@163.com suitable leadership style for organizations following this culture. As the effect of

Funding information
authentic leadership on job insecurity is unclear, this study aimed to examine the
National Natural Science Fund of China, mechanism between job insecurity and authentic leadership and further explore the
Grant/Award Number: 31471002; Natural
mediating effect of psychological empowerment and psychological capital. The re-
Science Foundation of Shandong Province of
China, Grant/Award Number: ZR2014CM033; sults of this study, involving 451 employees from 68 departments of a communi-
‘Dongyue Scholar’ Fund of Shandong Normal
cations enterprise in China, revealed that authentic leadership has a cross‐level
University, Graduate Enterprise Program of
China, Grant/Award Numbers: negative impact on employees' job insecurity. Moreover, psychological empower-
201610445184, 201710445187; The
ment and psychological capital played a multiple mediating role between authentic
innovation team project of psychological and
neural mechanisms of human decision‐making; leadership and job insecurity.
Key R&D program in Shandong Province of
China, Grant/Award Number:
KEYWORDS
2015GSF120015
authentic leadership, job insecurity, psychological capital, psychological empowerment

1 | INTRODUCTION their work environment, specifically their expectation of whether

Recurrent economic crises in recent decades have created concern
for the global economic situation and led to a deterioration in the
work environment worldwide. Reforms and reorganizations are
becoming a frequent occurrence (Barrech, Baumert, Gündel, & Lad-
wig, 2018). Employees increasingly worry about whether they will be
able to retain their job, thus creating a sense of job insecurity. Job
there are risks to the continuity of their work, and anxiety over the
stability of their jobs (Sverke, Hellgren, & Näswall, 2002). Job inse-
curity influences individuals' attitudes and the physical conditions of
employees (Aronsson et al., 2017; Barrech, Baumert, Emeny, Gündel,
& Ladwig, 2016; Jiang, 2018; Jiang & Probst, 2017; Kim & Kim, 2018).
It also influences their attitudes towards work and the organization,
which, if neglected, may be detrimental to the organization. Chinese

-
insecurity refers to the employees' perception and interpretation of culture depicts a strong tendency towards uncertainty avoidance

Dawei Wang and Chaoyue Zhao are co‐first authors.

Stress and Health. 2020;1–12. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/smi © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 1
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FIGURE 1 The cross‐level serial mediation
model
(Hofstede, 1984), meaning that some citizens view change as
dangerous and are less likely to accept it (Lucas, 2006). Job insecurity
among the Chinese is further heightened by the tension between
Chinese culture and the current economic situation, which is domi-
nated by economic transition and changing work environments.
Previous studies have highlighted job insecurity as an important risk
factor for workload, lack of control, role ambiguity, role conflict and
poor interpersonal relations at work (Baillien & De Witte, 2009; Leka,
Jain, Zwetsloot, & Cox, 2010).
To reduce potential losses, organizations should aim to instil job
security among their employees (Näswall, Sverke, & Hellgren, 2005).
Psychological outcomes for individuals are the result of continuous
interaction with the external environment (Ng & Lucianetti, 2016),
suggesting that job insecurity can be affected by the situation vari-
ables in the working environment. Leadership, as a distinctly impor-
tant factor in the work environment, has gradually gained research
attention (Cummings et al., 2010). As a positive style of leadership,
authentic leadership is intended to alleviate employees' job insecu-
rity, yet its actual impact remains unclear.
Authentic leadership combines a leader's positive psychological
ability with highly developed organizational structures (Stajkovic &
Luthans, 2003). Authentic leadership, the ‘root construct’ of other
positive leadership forms, encourages the development of followers
by practicing real values, beliefs and behaviours, making truthful
evaluations of the behaviour and performance of employees and
being subordinate oriented (Gardner, Avolio, Luthans, May, &
Walumbwa, 2005). Joo, Lim, and Kim (2016) believed that as
authentic leadership conforms to Chinese culture, it may be the most
suitable leadership style for organizations in China.
Authentic leadership, a positive leadership style, plays an
important and unique role in an organization and is likely to affect job
insecurity. Moreover, psychological empowerment and psychological
capital may mediate the effect of authentic leadership on job inse-
curity. Psychological empowerment refers to the comprehensive
psychological perception that individuals experience at the work-
place, which includes four aspects, namely work meaning, self‐
efficacy, autonomy and influence (Thomas & Velthouse, 1990; Wang
& Zhang, 2011). Psychological capital is a positive psychological state
of individuals, characterized by self‐efficacy, optimism, hope and
resilience (Luthans, Avey, Clapp‐Smith, & Li, 2008). Authentic lead-
ership aims to foster a close leader–employee relationship, full of
trust and balance (Lithari et al., 2012). It aims to promote disclosure,
sharing of information and being considerate of the employee's
perspectives (Avolio, Reichard, Hannah, Walumbwa, & Chan, 2009).
These characteristics can effectively improve employee's
ET AL.
self‐efficacy, work meaning and hope, thereby increasing psycho-
logical empowerment and psychological capital. Psychological
empowerment and psychological capital enable the development of a
positive perception of employees' ability, hence reducing job inse-
curity. The roles of psychological empowerment and psychological
capital in mediating leadership style and employees' psychological
outcomes have been extensively studied (Olaniyan & Hystad, 2016),
but the mediating role between authentic leadership and job inse-
curity remains unclear. At the same time, previous studies on
authentic leadership tend to focus on a single level, which is not in
line with the actual situation of enterprises. Therefore, this study
aggregates authentic leadership at the team level to explore its
impact on job insecurity.
Although psychological empowerment and psychological capital
partly explain the approaches by which authentic leadership affects
job insecurity, the precise mechanism needs to be examined. Psy-
chological empowerment and psychological capital may play inde-
pendent mediating roles between authentic leadership and job
insecurity, videlicet and parallel mediation. They may also play a
serial mediating role between authentic leadership and job insecurity.
Conger and Kanungo (1988) proposed that psychological empower-
ment ‘enables’ a process of improving self‐efficacy. People with high
psychological empowerment believe in themselves, and are confident
of solving difficulties they encounter, and thus have a high level of
self‐efficacy and resilience. Therefore, authentic leadership may
improve employees' psychological capital by increasing their levels of
psychological empowerment, which in turn reduces job insecurity. To
sum up, this study intends to build a cross‐level serial mediation
model, as shown in Figure 1.
2 | THEORY AND HYPOTHESES
2.1 | Authentic leadership and job insecurity
Authentic leadership, based on positive psychology and positive
organizational behaviour, has attracted attention as a new leadership
theory (Avolio, Gardner, Walumbwa, Luthans, & May, 2004). It con-
sists of four dimensions, namely self‐awareness, internalized moral,
balanced processing and relational transparency (Walumbwa, Avolio,
Gardner, Wernsing, & Peterson, 2008). As a positive leadership,
authentic leadership can have a positive impact on the psychological
outcomes of employees (Hu et al., 2018; Hu et al., 2018; Woolley,
Caza, & Levy, 2011). With the importance of employees' job inse-
curity being increasingly recognized by companies, more research is
WANG ET AL.
needed to explore its antecedents. Job insecurity is a subjective
perception and evaluation of unemployment risk, and studies have
shown that positive leadership can alleviate it (Loi, Lam, & Chan,
2012). Nevertheless, few studies have explored the influence of
authentic leadership on employees' job insecurity and the mechanism
of this influence.
Authentic leaders are willing to show their true selves and are
committed to building an equal and harmonious team climate in
which employees feel a sense of belonging to the organization and do
not doubt the viability of their work, thus reducing job insecurity
(Meng, Cheng, & Guo, 2016). According to the conservation of re-
sources theory, individuals strive to obtain, maintain, cultivate and
protect their resources, including material resources (e.g., money),
condition resources (e.g., status, power and friends), energy re-
sources (e.g., time and knowledge) and personal characteristics (e.g.,
personality, self‐esteem and self‐efficacy) (Hobfoll, 1989). Authentic
leadership focuses on relational transparency, which strengthens the
relationship between leader and subordinate and accords greater
trust to employees (Walumbwa, Christensen, & Hailey, 2011). This
increased trust makes employees feel that their status in the team
has been improved, helping them to obtain various conditional re-
sources. At the same time, the balanced processing of authentic
leadership entails appropriate decentralization, which will enhance
employees' work autonomy and self‐efficacy, and will also enable
employees to obtain various psychological resources. In the case of
having sufficient psychological resources, employees can cope with
various difficulties in the workplace, while reducing their psycho-
logical uncertainty. All of this contributes to lowering job insecurity
(Olaniyan & Hystad, 2016).
Previous studies have shown that leadership is a team‐level
variable (Day, Fleenor, Atwater, Sturm, & Mckee, 2014). Employees
in each department or team have only one direct leader, so the
authentic leadership they perceive is similar. Therefore, in this study,
authentic leadership is defined as the aggregation of authentic
leadership perceived by all members of a team. As a variable at the
team level, authentic leadership has a cross‐level impact on em-
ployees' job insecurity. In light of this, we formulated the following
hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1 Authentic leadership will have a negatively impact on job
insecurity.
2.2 | The mediating role of psychological
empowerment
Psychological empowerment is a comprehensive psychological
perception that individuals experience at the workplace, which is
focused on four aspects: work meaning, self‐efficacy, autonomy and
influence (Thomas & Velthouse, 1990; Wang & Zhang, 2011). Work
meaning refers to an individual's perception of goals and purpose
value of work in accordance with their value system and standards.
Self‐efficacy refers to an individual's perception of their own ability
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to accomplish tasks. Autonomy refers to an individual's under-
standing of the degree to which they have the right and power to
make decisions. Job impact or influence refers to an individual's
perception of their influence on organizational strategy or manage-
ment (Thomas & Velthouse, 1990). Walumbwa, Wang, Wang,
Schaubroeck, and Avolio (2010) suggested that authentic leadership
significantly improves employees' level of psychological empower-
ment. Authentic leadership generates strong trust and positive
emotions (Hsiung, 2012), motivates employees to engage in honest
behaviour and improves their sense of self‐efficacy, so as to enhance
their perception of psychological empowerment (Wang, Song, & Sun,
2014; Wang, Sui, Luthans, Wang, & Wu, 2014). At the same time,
authentic leadership gives employees greater cognitive and
emotional support, such as autonomy and decision‐making power,
enabling them to acquire more resources (Ilies, Morgeson, & Nahr-
gang, 2005). In addition, the social information processing theory
states that individual psychology and behaviour are not only deter-
mined by individual needs or goals, but also influenced by sur-
rounding environmental cues (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978). These social
cues improve employees' sense of self‐efficacy and affirmation, as
well as their levels of psychological empowerment (Hu et al., 2018;
Hu et al., 2018). Employees with high psychological empowerment
will feel that the organization attaches importance to them, make
themselves attached to the organization, and identify themselves as
members of the organization (Chiang & Hsieh, 2012). As a result, they
do not worry about losing their jobs due to lack of recognition and
reducing their job insecurity. At the same time, high psychological
empowerment means that employees have more autonomy and de-
cision‐making power, which is a precious resource for employees
(Wang & Zhang, 2011). The acquisition of such resources enables
employees to complete their work with more flexibility, and thus
reduce their sense of uncertainty and even job insecurity. Accord-
ingly, we formulated the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2 Psychological empowerment will mediate the relationship
between authentic leadership and job insecurity. Authentic lead-
ership will reduce job insecurity by enhancing psychological
empowerment.
2.3 | The mediating role of psychological capital
Luthans et al. (2008) derived the concept and structure of psycho-
logical capital from positive psychology and positive organizational
behaviour (Peterson, 2006; Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000;
Wright, 2003). They proposed psychological capital as a positive
psychological state held by an individual, as characterized by four
dimensions, namely self‐efficacy, optimism, hope and resilience
(Luthans et al., 2008). These four dimensions promote each other and
contribute to the success of employees and organizations as a whole
(Luthans, Avolio, Avey, & Norman, 2007; Luthans, Youssef, & Avolio,
2007). As a transparent and ethical leadership model, authentic
leadership encourages transparency and considers the opinions of
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followers (Avolio, Walumbwa, & Weber, 2009). This type of leader-
ship boosts employees' confidence and hope by encouraging sup-
portive behaviour. When employees encounter setbacks, authentic
leadership helps them cope positively, thus increasing their resilience
(Ilies et al., 2005). Research suggests that authentic leadership
positively predicts psychological capital (Hu et al., 2018; Hu et al.,
2018; Plessis & Boshoff, 2018).
Meanwhile, high psychological capital can keep employees posi-
tive in the face of pressure (such as job insecurity) and help them to
cope well with stress and challenges (Avey, Luthans, & Jensen, 2009;
Avey, Luthans, & Youssef, 2010; Luthans, Youssef, & Avolio, 2007).
Millard (2011) proposed that psychological resources provided by
psychological capital could offset ‘psychological debt’ (including job
insecurity and job pressure), thus generating net psychological worth
to a certain extent. Having high psychological capital increases self‐
efficacy and optimism among employees. Employees with high psy-
chological capital have a tendency to believe that all the obstacles in
the process of achieving goals can be solved (Antoni, Carver, &
Lechner, 2009; Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). They are hopeful
about the future of the organization (Diao & Gao, 2014) and have
strong emotional ties with the leader, thus feeling less uncertain
about their jobs and experiencing less job insecurity. On the contrary,
employees with low psychological capital do not have a good vision of
their work, are unable to devote themselves positively to their work
and lack resources to deal with setbacks in the workplace. Accord-
ingly, they are more likely to doubt whether they are qualified for the
job, resulting in a sense of job insecurity (Wang et al., 2019). In light
of this, we propose the following hypothesis.
Hypothesis 3 Psychological capital will mediate the relationship between
authentic leadership and job insecurity. High psychological capital
will enable authentic leaders to reduce job insecurity.
2.4 | The serial mediating role of psychological
empowerment and psychological capital
Psychological empowerment and psychological capital may inde-
pendently mediate the relationship between authentic leadership
and job insecurity, but the possibility of a serial mediating rela-
tionship requires further investigation. The balanced processing and
relational transparency of authentic leadership can give employees
more autonomy, which can increase employees' perception of psy-
chological empowerment (Zhang, Song, Wang, & Liu, 2018). Em-
ployees with high psychological empowerment believe that they
have higher value to the organization, so they have an optimistic
attitude to face the work in the organization and are full of hope for
their future. At the same time, the autonomy brought by psycho-
logical empowerment will also enable employees to have a higher
sense of self‐efficacy (Hu et al., 2018; Hu et al., 2018), making them
more confident to deal with their own work, and employees can
quickly recover even if they encounter setbacks, so as to have
higher resilience. Therefore, psychological empowerment can
ET AL.
enhance employees' psychological capital. Moreover, previous
studies have reported that psychological empowerment can have a
positive impact on psychological capital (Hu, Zheng, & Li, 2015;
Zhang, 2012). In conclusion, we infer that authentic leadership will
first increase employees' perception of psychological empowerment,
then improve their psychological capital and finally reduce their job
insecurity. In other words, we posit that psychological empower-
ment and psychological capital play a serial mediating role in the
relationship between authentic leadership and job insecurity.
Accordingly, we formulated the following hypothesis.
Hypothesis 4 Psychological empowerment and psychological capital play
a multiple mediating role between the authentic leadership and job
insecurity.
3 | METHODS
3.1 | Sample and procedures
The sample constituted 500 employees of a communications enter-
prise in China. Employees were required to meet the following
criteria: belonging to a specific department or team, having a direct
leader within the same team or department and the team or
department workplace being unified, with steady communication
among members.
All procedures involving human participants in this study were in
accordance with the ethical standards of the Academic Board of
Shandong Normal University, and the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and
its later amendments. Participation was voluntary and anonymous,
based on written informed consent and the right to withdraw
participation at any time. Furthermore, the experimenter collected
the questionnaires immediately after completion.
After eliminating unqualified questionnaires and departments
with less than five employees, data for 451 participants from 68
departments were valid, with a recovery rate of 90.2%. Among these,
69.8% were females and 30.2% were males. With regard to age,
12.4% were under 25 years old, 50.1% were 26–30 years old, 31.3%
were 31–35 years old, 5.8% were 36–40 years old and 0.4% were
41–50 years old. Regarding working years, 0.4% of the participants
had worked for less than 1 year, 17.1% for 1–3 years, 33.5% for 4–6
years, 27.1% for 7–9 years and 22.0% for more than 10 years. The
average department size is 6.89 (SD ¼ 1.39), ranging from 5 to 11.
3.2 | Measures
3.2.1 | Authentic leadership
The Authentic leadership questionnaire, developed by Walumbwa
(2008) and composed by Zhou (2010), measures four theoretically
related substantive factors including ‘subordinate oriented’, ‘inter-
nalized moral perspective’, ‘leadership qualities’ and ‘honesty’.
WANG ET AL.
Sample items include, ‘My immediate superior never publishes false
information’ (honesty), ‘My immediate supervisor is innovative’
(leadership qualities), ‘My immediate superior honestly evaluates my
contribution’ (subordinate oriented) and ‘My immediate superior is
able to observe social ethics’ (internalized moral perspective). The
17‐item questionnaire is rated on a 5‐point scale ranging from 1
(totally disagree) to 5 (totally agree). The coefficient alpha for this
study was 0.97.
3.2.2 | Psychological empowerment
The psychological empowerment scale was developed by Spreitzer
(1995) and translated by Li, Li, Shi, and Chen (2006). The scale
consists of four dimensions, namely meaning, self‐efficacy or
competence, self‐determination and impact. Sample items include
‘What I do is very meaningful for me’ (meaning), ‘I have all the skills
to get the job done’ (self‐efficacy or competence), ‘I have a lot
of independence and autonomy in how to do my job’ (self‐
determination) and ‘I had a big impact on what happened in my
department’ (impact). The 12‐item scale is rated on a 5‐point scale
ranging from 1 (totally disagree) to 5 (totally agree). The coefficient
alpha for this study was 0.89.
3.2.3 | Psychological capital
The psychological capital questionnaire was developed by Luthans
et al. (2008) and translated by Li, Zhou, Zhao, Wang, & Sun (2016).
It measures four components of psychological capital including self‐
efficacy, hope, optimism and resilience. Sample items include, ‘I
believe I can analyse long‐term problems and find solutions’ (self‐
efficacy), ‘I have many solutions to any problem’ (hope), ‘I always
look on the bright side of my work’ (optimism) and ‘I'm generally
comfortable with stress at work’ (resiliency). The 24‐item ques-
tionnaire is rated on a 6‐point scale ranging from 1 (totally
disagree) to 6 (totally agree). The coefficient alpha for this study
was 0.95.
3.2.4 | Job insecurity
Job insecurity was measured with the 25‐item scale established by
Hu and Li (2010), which contains five dimensions, namely insecurity
of job loss, job execution, payment and promotion, excessive
competition and interpersonal relationship (Appendix 1). Sample
items include ‘The thought of unemployment worries me’ (insecurity
of job loss), ‘I am worried that staying in my current job won't
improve my abilities’ (insecurity of job execution), ‘I worry about
whether my salary level can be improved in the future’ (insecurity of
payment and promotion), ‘I am afraid that I will be eliminated by the
unit without special efforts’ (insecurity of excessive competition) and
‘I am worried that my good relationship with my boss will not last’
- 5
(insecurity of interpersonal relationship). The coefficient alpha for
this study was 0.96.
4 | RESULTS
4.1 | Common method bias
This study adopted the Harman single‐factor technique to estimate
the influence of common method bias. The results showed that there
were 12 factors emerged, with an interpretation rate of the popu-
lation variance of 70.36%. The interpretation rate of the first com-
mon factor was 29.21%, indicating that there was no serious common
method bias in this study (Podsakoff, Mackenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff,
2003; Zhou & Long, 2004).
4.2 | Aggregation tests
To evaluate the aggregation of authentic leadership at the team
level, as reported by individual employees, we computed the intra-
class correlations (ICCs (1) and (2)) as well as the within‐group
agreement score (Rwg). For ICCs, ICC (1) and ICC (2) of authentic
leadership were 0.38 and 0.80, respectively. The mean and median
values of within‐group agreement scores for authentic leadership
were 0.97 and 0.98, respectively (James, Demaree, & Wolf, 1984).
Moreover, the results of a one‐way ANOVA demonstrated signifi-
cant differences in the team‐level means of authentic leadership
ratings, F(67, 383) ¼ 5.02, p < 0.001. Therefore, the results support
the aggregation of the authentic leadership at team level for further
analyses.
4.3 | Confirmatory factor analyses
We used Mplus 7.0 to conduct confirmatory factor analyses. The
measurement model fitted the data acceptably (χ2 [2850] ¼ 5650.59,
p < 0.001, root‐mean‐square error of approximation ¼ 0.05,
comparative fit index ¼ 0.90, Tucker–Lewis index ¼ 0.90, standard-
ized root‐mean‐square residual ¼ 0.06). We further examined
several alternative measurement models and compared them with
the four‐factor model. As shown in Table 1, the four‐factor model fits
our data better than other models, suggesting that our respondents
could distinguish the focal constructs clearly.
4.4 | Correlation analysis
Table 2 shows means, standard deviations and correlations of the
study variables. The results show that there is a significant positive
correlation between psychological empowerment and psychological
capital (r ¼ 0.60, p < 0.01) and a significant negative correlation
between psychological empowerment and job insecurity (r ¼ 0.23,
6
- WANG ET AL.

T A B L E 1 Results of confirmatory
Measurement models χ2 df χ2/df RMSEA CFI TLI SRMR
factor analysis of the measurement
Four‐factor (A, B, C, D) 5650.59 2850 1.98 0.05 0.90 0.90 0.06 models

Three‐factor (A, B þ C, D) 11393.08 2922 3.90 0.08 0.71 0.70 0.07

Two‐factor (A þ B þ C, D) 15434.96 2924 5.28 0.10 0.57 0.55 0.11

One‐factor (A þ B þ C þ D) 21109.27 2925 7.22 0.12 0.37 0.35 0.16

Abbreviations: A, authentic leadership; B, psychological empowerment; C, psychological capital;

CFI, comparative fit index; D, job insecurity; RMSEA, root‐mean‐square error of approximation;
SRMR, standardized root‐mean‐square residual; TLI, Tucker‐Lewis index.

TABLE 2 Descriptive statistics and correlations among study variables (N ¼ 451)

M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Individual level (N ¼ 451)

Gender 1.30 0.46 ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐

Age 2.32 0.78 0.01 ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐

Marriage 1.25 0.44 0.04 0.35** ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐

Education 3.02 0.69 0.03 0.30** 0.06 ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐

Years of working 3.53 1.03 0.23** 0.61** 0.34** 0.17** ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐

Psychological empowerment 3.70 0.55 0.05 0.08 0.06 0.08 0.02 ‐ ‐ ‐

Psychological capital 4.56 0.69 0.22** 0.06 0.06 0.01 0.07 0.60** ‐ ‐

Job insecurity 2.98 0.79 0.04 0.06 0.04 0.06 0.03 0.23** 0.30** ‐

Team level (N ¼ 68)

Team size 6.89 1.39 ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐

Authentic leadership 4.02 0.49 0.06 ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐

Note: Gender was coded as ‘1’ for women and ‘2’ for men. Age was coded as ‘1’ for under 25 years old, ‘2’ for 26–30 years old, ‘3’ for 31–35 years old,
‘4’ for 36–40 years old and ‘5’ for 41–50 years old. Marital status was coded as ‘1’ for married and ‘2’ for unmarried. Education was coded as ‘1’
for junior high school diploma, ‘2’ for high school diploma, ‘3’ for associate degree, ‘4’ for undergraduate diploma and ‘5’ for master diploma. Years
of working was coded as ‘1’ for less than 1 year, ‘2’ for 1–3 years, ‘3’ for 4–6 years, ‘4’ for 7–9 years and ‘5’ for more than 10 years.
**p < 0.01.

p < 0.01). Psychological capital has a significant negative correlation
with job insecurity (r ¼ 0.30, p < 0.01).
4.5 | Mediation analysis
Mplus7.0 was used to verify the mediating effect of psychological
empowerment and psychological capital on the relationship between
authentic leadership and job insecurity. First, variables at the group
level and individual level were grand mean centred (Hofmann &
Gavin, 1998). The results show that authentic leadership has a sig-
nificant positive impact on psychological empowerment (γ ¼ 0.35, p <
0.001) and psychological capital (γ ¼ 0.58, p < 0.001) and has a
significant negative impact on job insecurity (γ ¼ 0.32, p < 0.001).
Hypothesis 1 was thus supported. Psychological empowerment had a
significant positive impact on psychological capital (γ ¼ 0.19,
p < 0.05), and psychological capital had a significant negative impact
on job insecurity (γ ¼ 0.31, p < 0.001). The impact of psychological
empowerment on job insecurity was not significant (γ ¼ 0.04,
p > 0.05).
Subsequently, we used the Monte Carlo method to test the
mediation effect (Preacher, Zyphur, & Zhang, 2010). As shown in
Table 3, the 95% confidence interval of the indirect effect of
authentic leadership on job insecurity via psychological empower-
ment was not significant ( 0.069, 0.039), thus the results do not
support Hypothesis 2. The 95% confidence interval of the indirect
effect of authentic leadership on job insecurity via psychological
capital was significant ( 0.254, 0.103), thus supporting Hypothesis
3. Furthermore, the 95% confidence interval of the indirect effect of
authentic leadership on job insecurity via psychological empower-
ment and psychological capital was significant ( 0.037, 0.004),
which supports Hypothesis 4.
At the same time, we analysed another path (authentic leader-
ship → psychological capital → psychological empowerment → job
insecurity) to verify our serial mediated hypothesis. The results show
that this path is not significant ( 0.044, 0.025), which further con-
firms our research model.
Given that the indirect effect of authentic leadership on job
insecurity via psychological empowerment was not significant, we
speculated that psychological capital must play a completely
WANG ET AL.
TABLE 3 The results of Monte Carlo test for mediating effect
Estimate SE 5% LLCI 5% ULCI
AL→PE→JI 0.02 0.03 0.069 0.039
AL→PC→JI 0.18*** 0.05 0.254 0.103
AL→PE→PC→JI 0.02* 0.01 0.037 0.004
AL→PC→PE→JI 0.01 0.02 0.044 0.025
Abbreviations: AL, authentic leadership; JI, job insecurity;
PC, psychological capital; PE, psychological empowerment.
*p < 0.05; ***p < 0.001.
mediating role between psychological empowerment and job inse-
curity. To test our ideas and to further test Hypothesis 2, we
excluded psychological capital and examined only the mediating ef-
fect of psychological empowerment between authentic leadership
and job insecurity. The results show that authentic leadership
significantly positively affects psychological empowerment (γ ¼ 0.35,
p < 0.001), and that psychological empowerment significantly nega-
tively affects job insecurity (γ ¼ 0.25, p < 0.01). The 95% confidence
interval of the indirect effect of authentic leadership on job insecurity
via psychological empowerment was significant ( 0.141, 0.038),
which supports Hypothesis 2.
5 | DISCUSSION
5.1 | Theoretical contributions
Firstly, this study verified that authentic leadership significantly and
negatively affects job insecurity, which supports Hypothesis 1. While
the influence of leadership style on job insecurity has gradually
attracted attention, the relationship between authentic leadership
and job insecurity has rarely been studied. Our empirical data vali-
date our hypothesis, and we explain the relationship based on the
conservation of resources theory. Authentic leadership is a prom-
ising, open and multi‐perspective creative form of leadership, which
builds positive and authentic leadership relationships by expressing
one's true values, beliefs and behaviour patterns (Zhou, Ma, Cheng, &
Xia, 2014). In this situation, employees can obtain a higher sense of
self‐worth and satisfaction in work, thereby acquiring more re-
sources to resist and alleviate job insecurity. In addition, the con-
servation of resources theory explains authentic leadership as a
positive leadership style, with a high degree of responsibility con-
sciousness and altruism (Yang, Yang, Han, & Mao, 2016). It strives to
motivate employees to obtain, maintain, develop and protect their
own resources, reduce resource threat or resource loss and ulti-
mately reduce job insecurity. Although this result is consistent with
previous findings (Olaniyan & Hystad, 2016), the current study builds
on the limitations of previous studies that analysed authentic lead-
ership on a single level. In the working environment, one team is
often led by one direct leader, so team members will experience
similar authentic leadership. In this study, authentic leadership was
aggregated at the team level, which is not only more in line with the
- 7
actual situation of enterprises, but is also more appropriate for
examining the influence of authentic leaders on job insecurity
(Gonzalez‐Roma & Hernandez, 2017).
Secondly, the study also examined the mediating effect of psy-
chological empowerment on authentic leadership and job insecurity,
finding that authentic leadership can reduce job insecurity by
increasing psychological empowerment, which supports hypothesis 2.
We speculate that this effect is mainly due to the role model of
authentic leadership. As a positive leadership, authentic leadership
can provide emotional and cognitive support to employees, so that
employees can obtain sufficient work autonomy and decision‐making
rights, thereby enhancing their sense of empowerment (Ilies et al.,
2005). This can improve employees' sense of work control and make
them think they are competent for their work, so that they do not
have to worry about losing their jobs, thus, reducing their sense of
job insecurity. This finding makes it clear that psychological
empowerment is an important transmission mechanism between
authentic leadership and job insecurity. It also indicates to some
extent that employees' perception of empowerment can affect their
perception of work. It is worth mentioning that in the initial serial
mediation analysis, the mediating effect of psychological empower-
ment was not significant. After the removal of psychological capital,
the mediating role of psychological empowerment was significant.
This shows that psychological capital plays a completely mediating
role between psychological empowerment and job insecurity, and
also highlights the relevance of our research on the underlying
influencing mechanism.
Thirdly, the findings also suggest that psychological capital
mediated the relationship between authentic leadership and job
insecurity partially, which supports hypothesis 3. Therefore,
authentic leadership may further reduce employee job insecurity by
improving their psychological capital. Subordinates may be influ-
enced by an authentic leader's positive attributes, and employees'
self‐efficacy, optimism, hope and resilience can be improved by an
authentic leader's transparent and supportive style (Rego, Sousa,
Marques, & Cunha, 2012), thereby enhancing their psychological
capital. Consistent with past research, having high psychological
capital also reduces employees' job insecurity (Millard, 2011; Probst,
Gailey, Jiang, & Bohle, 2017). In addition, based on the conservation
of resources theory, authentic leadership makes employees feel that
their personal resources (e.g., self‐esteem and self‐efficacy) and
conditional resources (empowerment and status) are protected,
which enhances employees' psychological capital, and reduces work
stress and anxiety, thereby reducing job insecurity.
Finally, the results also examined the mediating effect of psy-
chological empowerment and psychological capital on authentic
leadership and job insecurity, which supports Hypothesis 4. The re-
sults supported a multiple mediation rather than a parallel mediation
role. In line with our hypotheses, authentic leadership enhances
psychological empowerment and psychological capital, thereby
reducing employees' job insecurity. The social information processing
theory suggests that individual psychology and behaviour are not
only dependent on individual needs and goals, but also influenced by
8
- WANG
environmental cues. Authentic leadership strives to actively build a
positive working environment, cultivate a high trust relationship
among employees (Wang, Song, & Sun, 2014), show more empow-
erment behaviours, and truthfully evaluate the performance of sub-
ordinates. This enhances clarity regarding work goals and improves
decision‐making among employees. Simultaneously, all the charac-
teristics of an authentic leader, including truthfulness, integrity, self‐
demonstration and subordination, provide positive environmental
clues for employees and effectively improve their perception of
psychological empowerment (Walumbwa et al., 2010). Having high
psychological empowerment motivates employees to work better
and improves their sense of self‐efficacy. When employees perceive
more psychological empowerment, they will be more optimistic and
hopeful about their work and future, thus improving their confidence
and self‐efficacy, and further maintaining high psychological capital.
According to the conservation of resources theory, individuals with
more resources are less likely to be affected by resource loss (Cao &
Qu, 2014). Having high psychological capital means having greater
psychological resources, positive expectations for future results,
improved psychological resilience and greater confidence in one's
ability to cope with various pressures and challenges at work. This
positive psychological state may help employees overcome anxiety,
stress and other negative emotions, and motivate them to work
harder and perform better, thereby reducing job insecurity.
At the same time, we also carried out an analysis of another
serial mediation path, and the result was not significant. This in-
dicates that authentic leadership will first affect employees'
perception of psychological empowerment, allowing them to feel
fully autonomous, leading them to treat work with a more optimistic
and positive attitude, thereby improving their psychological capital.
This is in line with our expectation that the sincerity and trans-
parency of authentic leadership enables employees to feel empow-
ered, allowing them to obtain various psychological resources and
improve their sense of optimism, hope and self‐efficacy. This further
validates our Hypothesis 4, that is, authentic leadership improves
psychological capital by influencing employees' perception of psy-
chological empowerment, thus reducing job insecurity (as opposed
to the promotion of psychological capital leading to perceptions of
higher psychological empowerment). Our study has analysed
authentic leadership as a team‐level variable and constructed a
cross‐level serial mediation model, investigating the impact and
mechanism of authentic leadership on job insecurity. This result
enables us to further clarify the mechanism of the influence of
authentic leadership on job insecurity and reveal the dynamic psy-
chological changes of employees, which provides a new perspective
for future studies.
5.2 | Practical significance
First, this study revealed a negative relationship between authentic
leadership and job insecurity. According to our results, authentic
leadership can significantly reduce employees' job insecurity, so it is
ET AL.
important to train leaders to possess the characteristics of authentic
leadership. Leadership training has been shown to improve the
effectiveness of leaders (Zhang, Li, Ullrich, & Van Dick, 2015). Thus,
targeted training can help leaders to assume the characteristics of
authentic leadership and teach them how to direct employees with
confidence and optimism, thereby reducing their job insecurity.
Compared with training a large number of employees, training
leaders can save manpower, material resources and financial re-
sources while also improving enterprise efficiency (Ailio, 2018). At
the same time, organizations should also encourage leaders and
subordinates to establish a sincere and truthful team atmosphere and
strive to create a harmonious organization culture. In addition,
immoral behaviour should be criticized and eliminated, and high
moral standards should also be advocated to guide authentic lead-
ership behaviour.
Second, this study revealed that psychological empowerment
plays a mediating role between authentic leadership and employee
job insecurity. Therefore, to reduce employee job insecurity, orga-
nizational leaders should strive to improve the psychological
empowerment of their employees. Enterprises should give employees
more decision‐making power and autonomy, and create a decen-
tralized and supportive corporate culture, so as to improve
employees' perception of empowerment. At the same time, a trans-
parent reward and punishment mechanism can be formulated to
create an equal and harmonious organizational atmosphere, which
can reduce work insecurity.
Third, given the mediating role of psychological capital in the
relationship between authentic leadership and job insecurity, man-
agers should provide specific operational support by promoting
effective communication, training, coaching and consulting. Organi-
zations should provide an employee assistance program and psy-
chological counselling to carry out team building activities, thereby
enhancing psychological capital, fostering confidence, hope, will po-
wer and ‘indomitable spirit’. Employees experience less job insecurity
when they are confident, hopeful for the future and willing to tackle
difficult challenges.
Lastly, this study suggests that psychological empowerment and
psychological capital play a multiple mediating role between
authentic leadership and job insecurity. Authentic leadership may
increase psychological capital by fostering psychological empower-
ment, which eventually reduces job insecurity. This implies that or-
ganizations should, in particular, pay attention to the role of
psychological empowerment and cultivate an understanding of this
concept among leaders. Organizations should also provide corre-
sponding support for establishing quality relationships between
leaders and employees, with a view to encouraging employees to
participate in group decision‐making, giving them more decision‐
making power and autonomy at work and building an organizational
culture that encourages empowerment and support. These measures
can not only create a harmonious work environment, but also reduce
job insecurity. Increasing the psychological capital of employees
through training may effectively reduce job insecurity, which, in turn,
reduces risks and losses to the organization.
WANG ET AL.
6 | LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
The current findings should be considered in light of the following
shortcomings. First, different types of enterprises have different
management modes, and supervisors have different powers. There-
fore, employees may experience different levels of job insecurity in
different enterprises (Keim, Landis, Pierce, & Earnest, 2014). How-
ever, the participants of this study all worked for a single state‐
owned enterprise in North China, which may affect the external
generalizable of the findings. Future research should be based on
data collected from individuals from multiple industries to increase
the diversity and to make the conclusions more generalizable. In
addition, the data were collected using self‐report measures, which
may be influenced by common method bias, self‐protection and the
urge to maintain social desirability. Although the statistical analysis
revealed no trace of common method bias, future studies should
measure all the variables at different time points. Moreover, our
inference of the causal relationship between authentic leadership
and job insecurity is influenced by the cross‐sectional design of this
study. Follow‐up studies or intervention experiments should be
conducted to further verify the multiple mediation models we have
established.
The results of this study revealed that psychological empower-
ment and psychological capital only partially explain the relationship
between authentic leadership and job insecurity, suggesting that
there might be other mediating factors. Therefore, future research
should aim to uncover additional factors which may have important
theoretical and practical significance in alleviating job insecurity.
Furthermore, this study did not examine the internal and external
situational factors, such as cultural factors and organizational envi-
ronment, which may affect the effectiveness of leadership. Due to
deterioration in the global work environment, leaders need to deal
with dynamic work demands and external pressure. Therefore, future
research should also assess the extent to which authentic leadership
can effectively coordinate the internal and external environment of
an organization.
Finally, a vast body of current research focuses on the conse-
quences of job insecurity. There are relatively few studies that
examine the impact of leadership style on job insecurity, let alone the
underlying mechanism. Future research should explore the impact of
other leadership styles on job insecurity, in order to develop a more
comprehensive perspective of the antecedents of job insecurity.
7 | CONCLUSION
We have investigated the role that authentic leadership plays in
reducing employees' job insecurity. The results have shown that
psychological empowerment and psychological capital play a multiple
mediating role between authentic leadership and job insecurity. This
implies that authentic leadership increases employees' psychological
capital by increasing psychological empowerment, which, in turn,
reduces job insecurity.
- 9
A CK NO W L E D GE M E NT S
This study was supported by National Natural Science Fund of China
(grant no. 31471002), ‘Dongyue Scholar’ Fund of Shandong Normal
University, the innovation team project of psychological and neural
mechanisms of human decision‐making, the Graduate Enterprise
Program of China (grant/award no. 201610445184 and
201710445187), Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province
of China (grant/award no. ZR2014CM033) and Key R &D program in
Shandong Province of China (grant/award no. 2015GSF120015).
CO N F L I C T O F I N T E R E S T
All listed authors have no conflicts of interest.
OR CI D
Dawei Wang https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3817-5223
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How to cite this article: Wang D, Kan W, Qin S, et al. How
authentic leadership impacts on job insecurity: The multiple
mediating role of psychological empowerment and
psychological capital. Stress and Health. 2020;1–12. https://
doi.org/10.1002/smi.2973

APPENDIX 1 Job Insecurity Scale (Hu & Li, 2010)

There is no right or wrong answer to the following questions. Please tick ‘√’ according
to your actual situation. Where 1 ¼ ‘strongly disagree’, 2 ¼ ‘disagree’, 3 ¼ ‘neutral’, Strongly Strongly
4 ¼ ‘agree’ and 5 ¼ ‘strongly agree’ disagree Disagree Neutral Agree agree

1 The thought of unemployment worries me 1 2 3 4 5

2 I am afraid my present job will not last long 1 2 3 4 5

3 The idea of being fired really scares me 1 2 3 4 5

4 I am afraid I will be fired at any time 1 2 3 4 5

5 I am afraid I will not be able to keep my current job for a long time 1 2 3 4 5

6 The instability of my current job worries me. 1 2 3 4 5

7 I feel uneasy about the possibility of losing my present job soon 1 2 3 4 5

8 I am worried that I will be the first to be laid off if the organization encounters 1 2 3 4 5
financial difficulties

9 I am afraid I will lose my present job and it is hard to find a comparable one 1 2 3 4 5

10 Not being taken seriously by my leaders worries me 1 2 3 4 5

(Continues)
12
- WANG ET AL.

APPENDIX 1 (Continued)

There is no right or wrong answer to the following questions. Please tick ‘√’ according
to your actual situation. Where 1 ¼ ‘strongly disagree’, 2 ¼ ‘disagree’, 3 ¼ ‘neutral’, Strongly Strongly
4 ¼ ‘agree’ and 5 ¼ ‘strongly agree’ disagree Disagree Neutral Agree agree

11 I worry that a good relationship with my leader will not last forever 1 2 3 4 5

12 I am worried that my work ability will not be recognized by the leader 1 2 3 4 5

13 I am worried that the complicated interpersonal relationship in the organization will 1 2 3 4 5

bring all kinds of adverse consequences

14 The lack of an important influence of my work in the organization worries me 1 2 3 4 5

15 I am worried that it is difficult for the organization to provide necessary job resources 1 2 3 4 5
(people, materials, information, etc.) at work

16 I am worried that staying in my current job will not improve my abilities 1 2 3 4 5

17 It worries me that I am only doing repetitive work in my current organization 1 2 3 4 5

18 I am worried that I need to constantly improve my knowledge and ability to cope with 1 2 3 4 5
my current job

19 I am afraid that the organization will constantly improve the requirements of its 1 2 3 4 5
employees

20 I am afraid that my position in the company will be replaced by others soon 1 2 3 4 5

21 I am afraid that I will be eliminated by the unit without special efforts 1 2 3 4 5

22 I worry about whether my salary level can be improved in the future 1 2 3 4 5

23 I was worried that I did not receive equivalent treatment in the organization 1 2 3 4 5

24 I am worried about my lack of promotion space in the organization 1 2 3 4 5

25 I worry about whether I can always maintain my current salary 1 2 3 4 5