Empowering Followers’ Affective and Normative Commitment Through Authenticity and Social Responsibility in Leadership

Leadership has always been challenging in difficult times and has called for authentic personalities of high moral character, whose values and actions will support their organizational environment. These leaders motivate followers and offer them a vision for the future as well as the power to achieve that vision, acting as role models in a concerted effort to achieve collective goals. Thus, an organization can operate in ways that enhance society, moving beyond the financial necessity to make profits. All this empowering climate affects followers’ commitment, both in its affective dimension which refers to their emotional attachment to the organization and in its normative and continuance parts which primarily focus on costs and obligations associated with remaining in a workplace. The present study aspires to explore how leaders’ social responsibility is related to followers’ affective and normative commitment and how authentic transformational leadership mediates this relationship in a way that promotes the organizational climate and the followers’ involvement in it.