Authentic performances: The role of impression management in audience understanding of leaders' authenticity

Abstract

Due to the increase in scandals and failures in organisations, public concerns have increased over leadership, and authentic leadership has been promoted as the most feasible response to these concerns (Liu, 2010). However, there seem to be diverse views on what encompasses authentic leadership. Three qualitative studies were therefore conducted in varied settings in order to obtain participants’ understanding of authenticity and the role that impression management played in their understanding of authenticity. Study 1 involved group discussions after the participants were shown two video clips of organisational leaders. Study 2 involved a case study in an organisational setting, where interviews were carried out in addition to participant observation. Study 3 involved interviews with participants from diverse industries, in order to confirm the findings of the first two studies. All the three studies were consistent in the findings indicating that there is not one thing called authenticity and that impression management and authenticity are related. The findings only confirmed what we found in the literature indicating diverse views on what authenticity entailed, and therefore, that there is not one thing called authenticity.