A Sense of Authenticity as a Factor in Employee Involvement

Abstract

The sense of authenticity is measured as being free to express ones feelings and private matters in front of team members or managers. This sense includes a level of emotional control required in the work environment. However, too much control leads to superficial behaviour and causes burnout and feeling less authentic at work. The need to control one’s emotions and behaviour at work before customers or a boss or even other employees has a strong impact on the individual’s sense of authenticity at work. To find correlations between those factors the author built a scale to measure the sense of authenticity one feels at work. She estimated some counterproductive behaviours, including the amount of time one devotes to looking for another job, gossiping, wasting time on private matters, and defusing emotions with team members. The results show that the less trust and more control over behaviour and emotions the individual exhibits, the lower his or her sense of authenticity. A decreased sense of authenticity causes an increase in counterproductive behaviours and a decrease in organisational commitment.