The Relationship Between Organizational Authenticity Perceptions and Employees’ Work Performance: Evidence From a Field Experiment

Abstract

The concept of organizational authenticity—the consistency between an organization’s espoused values and its lived practices—has garnered considerable interest in academic discourse. While the authenticity literature has paid much attention to external stakeholders (e.g., clients), the notion of organizational authenticity perceptions of an important stakeholder—employees—has been understudied. Despite prior evidence of external stakeholders’ positive reactions to organizational authenticity perceptions, whether and how it can also affect employees and their work performance remains an open question. I undertook a randomized field experiment in a large, global consulting company to examine how employee perceptions of organizational authenticity affect their work performance. Compared with the control group, those who perceived their organization as authentic demonstrated higher performance. I show evidence that employee trust in the organization mediates the relationship between employee perceptions of organizational authenticity and work performance. Alternative mediators—organizational identification and organizational likability—did not explain this relationship. The study’s results advance the literature by revealing the important role of organizational authenticity perceptions among an internal stakeholder—employees—and the way it affects work performance.