The mediating role of positive psychological capital in the relationship between authentic leadership styles and employees' work engagement

In today's conditions, the most valuable and unique source of organizaitons is the human resource. The positive psychology perspective, which tries to understand human resources in all its aspects and emphasizes the qualities such as hope, self-efficacy, optimism and reciliency, draws attention in terms of making the most effective use of this source. Moreover, leadership approaches that contribute to the development of employees by exploring components of positive psychological capital are also gaining importance in terms of employees' work engagement. In this context, this research aims to determine the relationship between authentic leadership and work engagement of employees and the mediating role of positive psychological capital in this relationship. The study was conducted with 462 employees working in 4 and 5-star hotels operating in the provinces of the Central and Eastern Black Sea Region. The validity related to the scale of the study was determined by explanatory and confirmatory factor analysis, relations between the variables composing the research model were defined as "Structural Equation Model" and the comparison of the group averages was evaluated by ANOVA and t-test. In the findings, it has been determined that authentic leadership has a positive effect on work engagement and positive psychological capital. In addition the positive psychological capital has been accepted to contribute to the work engagement as well. Besides, it has also been established that the positive psychological capital partially has a mediating role on the effect of the the authentic leadership on work engagement. The Bootstrap test results also showed that the determined partial mediator role of positive psychological capital is significant. In conclusion, it can be stated that, in the context of research variables, authentic leaders influence the work engagement of the employees both directly with the leadership qualities they possess and also partially by supporting and developing positive psychological capital elements of the employees.