Authentic leadership and team climate: testing cross-lagged relationships

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between authentic leadership and team climate across 22 months. More specifically, three alternative causation models (normal, reversed, reciprocal) were tested. Design/methodology/approach – The longitudinal study was conducted among 265 Finnish municipal employees (87.5 per cent women, mean age 48.4 years). The participants completed a questionnaire three times: at baseline (T1), about 14 months after baseline (T2) and about eight months after the second questionnaire (T3). Findings – The cross-lagged analyses based on structural equation modelling lent support to the reversed causation model more than the normal causation and reciprocal models. More specifically, team climate at T2 predicted authentic leadership across eight months at T3. Thus the study suggests that positive team climate (i.e. vision, participation safety, task orientation, and support for innovation) may foster authentic leadership in the long term and not vice versa. Practical/implications – The findings suggest that − besides improving team climate and authentic leadership themselves – team climate should be improved in order to enable authentic leadership to develop and flourish. It is important to emphasize that in forming the team climate employees are active agents and not passive targets. Originality/value – The study is among the first to test different causal models regarding authentic leadership and team climate. From the theoretical viewpoint, the findings suggest that follower-centric theories of leadership merit greater attention in the future.