Files
Abstract
The significant and very public ethical failures of leaders in business over the past few yearspoint to the need for a new approach to leadership to respond to the crisis. The existingleadership literature is reviewed shown to offer some helpful guidance, but ultimately lacking ina consideration of leadership towards what ends (Hollander & Offerman, 1990, p. 187). Thepurpose of this research was to propose a new approach to leadership called AuthenticLeadership that accounts for leadership towards what ends and would have application in abusiness setting. The construct of Authentic Leadership and its proposed dimension aredescribed in detail and a strong rational development approach was employed to create a newmeasure of the construct. Results of this initial attempt to establish the validity of the constructfound minimal support for the model as proposed. Potential reasons the scale development effortwas not successful are discussed and suggestions for future research are provided.