Leader Self-Awareness and Follower Psychological Empowerment Across Cultures

Abstract

Leader self-awareness is one of four components theorized in the conceptualization of authentic leadership. This study begins investigation into individual components of authentic leadership, first, by examining measurement invariance for leader self-awareness across ten national cultures, and second, by examining its relationship with follower psychological empowerment. Evidence for metric invariance was supported, but scalar invariance was not found, suggesting that comparing correlations of leader self-awareness with empowerment is warranted, but comparing average mean levels across cultures is not an apples-to-apples comparison. A positive relationship between leader self-awareness and follower empowerment was significant at the individual and work unit levels, and there were significance differences in effect sizes for some countries compared to the United States.