Investigating the effect of authentic leadership on employee job satisfaction with emphasis on the mediating role of job involvement

The present study was conducted with the aim of investigating the effect of authentic leadership on the job satisfaction of employees, emphasizing the mediating role of job involvement. The method of this study was descriptive-survey type. The statistical population of the research was 311 employees and managers of the central organization of Islamic Azad University (275 employees and 36 managers), of which 158 people were selected based on Cochran's formula and by simple random sampling as the sample size of employees. The census method was used to collect the managers' information due to the limited statistical population. To collect the data, the standard questionnaires of Ladahl and Kenger (1965) on job involvement with a reliability coefficient of (0.85), and Minnesota job satisfaction with a reliability coefficient of (0.88), and the authentic leadership of Walumba et al. (2008) with a reliability coefficient (0.90) was used; whose validity was confirmed by academic experts and their reliability was also confirmed through Cronbach's alpha coefficient test. In order to analyze the data, structural equation technique was used through Statistical software LISREL and Spss version 22. Quantitative findings from the test of research hypotheses showed that authentic leadership has a positive and significant effect on both job involvement and job satisfaction of employees. Job involvement has a positive and significant effect on employee job satisfaction. Job involvement has played a mediating role in the impact of authentic leadership on job satisfaction. The results of the research also showed that the components of transparency in relationships, balanced processing, internal aspects, and self-awareness had the most influence on job engagement and job satisfaction, respectively.