Authentic leadership among academic administrators at International Islamic University Malaysia

Abstract

There is international interest in the study of authentic leadership among different sectors such as management, economics, health, and politics. Of recent the impact of leadership behaviour on organizational performance has been a topic of interest among scholars. The alternative leadership paradigm known as authentic leadership (AL) has received a heightened level of research attention among scholars. The recent social drama has gradually caused an increased urge, among researchers and thereby sets the ball rolling, on leadership study from new perspectives. Contemporary leadership theory describes authentic leadership in relation to self – awareness, balance processing of information, relational transparency, internalized moral perspective. The core theory of AL focused on the leaders self, concept, self development, altruistic actions, authenticity, psychological well-being and internal regulation. A quantitative research design was employed to investigate the formulated research questions that guide the thrust of this study. A total of 338 academic and administrative staffs at International Islamic university were employed to rate the authentic leadership behaviour of their academic administrator using standardized instrument on authentic leadership created by, Avolio, Gardener, & Walumbwa, (2007). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was employed to validate the dimensions and items. The result from (CFA) reveals the presence of three dimensions (self – awareness, relational transparency, and internalized moral perspective) of authentic leadership as proposed by Aviolo et al (2007). Consequently the study did not find any differences in the perception of academic administrators AL for self-awareness and internalized moral dimension but find a significant difference in relational transparency of academic administrators. However, the study did shows that there are differences in the perception of respondent relational transparency on AL between academic and administrative staffs. In addition, the influence of respondent’s academic qualification shows that academic qualification of respondents influenced self-awareness and internalized moral factors and this could not be said of relational transparency. Consequently gender was found not to influence staffs perceptions of AL across the dimensions of AL.