The Impact of Authentic Leadership during Organizational Change Processes in the Restaurant Industry : A replication-extension study of followers’ perception of authentic leadership, trust, and emotions, during organizational change in Norwegian restaurants.

Abstract

This study is a replication-extension study of Vik and Skeie’s (2021) study “The impact of authentic leadership during organizational change processes”, who produced a replicationextension study of Agote, Aramburu and Lines’ study from 2016. The study answers the following overall research question “How does followers’ perception of authentic leadership affect followers’ trust and followers’ emotions during organizational change processes?”. This study is founded empirically on 12 semi-structured interviews with managers from the restaurant industry in Norway. The results indicate that followers' perception of authentic leadership is associated with higher levels of trust, that followers' perception of authentic leadership is associated with positive emotions in the workplace, and that trust can prevent negative emotions amongst followers, during organizational change. These findings are similar to the findings of Vik and Skeie (2021) and Agote et al. (2016). Our results also indicated that higher levels of trust is related to positive emotions, and that follower’s perception of authentic leadership is associated with mitigating negative emotions among followers, during organizational change, something that Vik and Skeie (2021) and Agote et al. (2016) did not find. As such, this study is a contribution to the research on authentic leadership, trust, and emotions, during organizational change, and furthermore, the study may be of particular interest to leaders and managers in the restaurant industry in Norway.