1. Introduction
In the past several decades, topics on sustainable development, such as environmental protection and corporate social responsibility, have received increasing attention from many scholars [
1]. The United Nations has proposed 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs), including good health and well-being, decent work and economic growth, and responsible consumption and production [
2], which put higher demands on the development model of enterprises, emphasizing the importance of promoting individual, family, and community development at the organizational level [
3]. To achieve this goal, we need to build positive organizations that enable employees to continuously focus on their talents and gifts in a positive working environment and organizational culture to achieve high performance, satisfaction, and happiness [
4].
Positive organizations provide organizational support to employees, leading them to engage in proactive behavior at work [
5], which is referred to as “self-initiated and future-oriented actions that aim to change and improve the situation or oneself” [
6]. Such proactive behavior also plays a crucial role in the sustainable transformation of the organization. On the one hand, proactive employees will actively participate in organizational sustainable transformation and hold the assumed responsibility to realize the strategic planning of sustainable transformation [
7]. On the other hand, the sustainable development of the organization also requires employees to engage in extra-role behaviors such as voice behavior and organizational citizenship behavior to improve organizational performance and competitive advantage, coping with the constantly changing social environment [
8,
9]. To further ensure the sustainable transformation of organizations, organizations also need employees to engage in spontaneous and constructive behavior that centers on making change and improvement, which is defined as taking charge behavior [
10]. According to Morrison and Phelps [
10], employees’ taking charge behavior is different from other proactive behaviors such as organizational citizenship behavior, as it involves the voluntary and constructive effort of employees to go beyond maintaining the status quo, directed at “organizationally functional change” [
11,
12], which is more consistent with the goal of sustainable transformation of the organization [
13]. Therefore, taking charge behavior has recently attracted much attention [
14,
15,
16].
Given the importance of taking charge behavior, researchers have found many antecedents of employees’ taking charge behavior. Cai et al. [
17] classified the psychological mechanism that motivates employees to take charge as “can do,” “reason to,” and “energized to.” They found that among the factors at the individual, team, and organizational levels, leadership styles have significant influences on taking charge behavior, especially leadership behaviors such as inclusive leadership [
18], empowering leadership [
19], and ethical leadership [
20]. Although the existing research has illustrated the influence of various types of leadership on taking charge behavior, authentic leadership, as one of the new leadership theories, has received relatively less attention [
21]. Authentic leadership is characterized by being true to oneself, integrity, and fairness [
22], which plays an important role in influencing individual behavior and the implementation of organizational goals [
23]. Several studies have explored the promoting effect of authentic leadership on employees’ taking charge behavior [
24,
25], but there are some deficiencies. In the selection of a theoretical perspective, researchers have used social exchange theory [
26] to explain the promoting effect of authentic leadership on employees’ taking charge behavior, which may not fully reflect the characteristics and essence of authentic leadership. Specifically, the biggest difference between authentic leadership and other types of leadership lies in its sincerity, which is reflected in the transparent relationship, self-awareness, internalized morality, and balanced processing in the interaction with employees, which is difficult to measure simply by cost and reward. In contrast, the role of authentic leadership for employees is more reflected in stimulating their true self, providing security and development space, and enabling employees to have more positive resources to fully realize their self-value [
22].
As Luthans and Avolio [
27] originally depicted, authentic leadership comes from leaders’ positive psychological resources and in turn leads to the development of themselves and their followers. Therefore, authentic leadership is predicted to result in followers’ positive outcomes by fostering followers’ psychological capacities, which is one of the key outcomes of authentic leadership [
28]. Some studies empirically verified this process [
29], suggesting that authentic leaders foster followers’ psychological capital by creating a positive organizational climate which is moral, communicative, and supportive [
30]. To further integrate and explain the mediating effect of psychological capital, this research will introduce conservation of resource theory (COR). According to COR theory, people are constantly making efforts to preserve, maintain, and construct their valuable resources [
31]. However, in a context of constant change, employees’ taking charge behavior will consume more scarce resources of employees, potentially putting them in a loss spiral of resources [
32]. To initiate the desired gain spiral of resources, employees will need more support and help from leaders and organizations [
33]. Therefore, we assume authentic leadership will play an exemplary role in guiding employees to pay more attention to their own positive psychological resources and cultivate their positive psychological capital; thus promoting their employees’ taking charge behavior.
The interactionist perspective has also been used to view employees’ taking charge behavior, in which not only individual characteristics but also contextual factors influence taking charge behavior [
34,
35]. Employees’ taking charge behavior often requires not only resources from organizations but also intrinsic motivation from inside [
12,
36,
37]. From the perspective of COR theory, people’s reinvestment of resources depends on their perception of the value and significance of taking charge behavior [
18]. Therefore, we assume that employees with high occupational calling, who emphasize realizing self-value through work, will obtain more resources by taking charge at work to enhance the influence of authentic leadership on employees’ taking charge behavior through psychological capital.
This research will contribute to the sustainable development of the organization under the background of sustainable human resource management [
38], to further explore the influencing mechanism of how authentic leadership promotes employees’ taking charge behavior based on COR theory. We used two-wave questionnaire surveys to collect data from 199 employees and their supervisors at 16 companies in China. We utilized supervisor–subordinate dyad data to conduct regression analysis. The results not only reveal the positive impact of authentic leadership on employees’ taking charge behavior but also demonstrate the mediating effect of psychological capital and the moderating effect of occupational calling on the relationship between psychological capital and employees’ taking charge behavior. Our study has several theoretical contributions. First, applying COR theory further explains the mechanism by which authentic leadership influences employees’ taking charge behavior and expands the theoretical perspective. Second, it uses psychological capital as a mediating variable and occupational calling as a moderating variable to explore the interaction between authentic leadership and employees’ individual characteristics, which helps us to understand the process mechanism of authentic leadership in a more comprehensive way. Finally, this study provides constructive suggestions on how to promote employees’ taking charge behavior more effectively in the sustainable transformation of enterprises.
5. Discussion
5.1. Theoretical Implications
This study expands the theoretical perspective of authentic leadership influencing employees’ taking charge behavior and has several theoretical implications. First, many scholars have explored the influence of authentic leadership on employees’ proactive behaviors, such as voice behavior and organizational citizenship behavior, without paying enough attention to taking charge behavior [
50]. Only a few studies have focused on the relationship between authentic leadership and employees’ taking charge behavior [
25], but most of them are conducted from the perspective of social exchange theory and social information processing, which cannot fully reflect the characteristics and essence of authentic leadership [
88]. This study, based on COR theory, finds that authentic leadership can make employees more convinced of the return on investment brought by taking on more responsibilities and actively taking possible risks to stimulate employees’ taking charge behavior. Such a finding supports the underlying assumption of COR theory that social support brought by leaders can promote the resources available to employees and then help them initiate the gain spiral [
34]. The findings provide important theoretical insight into why subordinates of authentic leaders are more inclined to take charge.
Next, psychological capital is used as a mediator to investigate the mechanism of the effect of authentic leadership on employees’ taking charge behavior, answering the call for an integrative approach to authentic leadership and psychological capital research [
54]. Although several studies have used psychological capital as a mediator to explore the influence of authentic leadership on proactive behavior [
88,
89], few studies have used COR theory to explain this mechanism. Psychological capital, as a trait-like variable, can be developed and applied when employees possess a certain degree of positive psychological resources. The leader’s authentic behavior can provide more psychological resources for employees, and their true self plays an exemplary role, encouraging employees to explore and make use of their own advantages. This study explains the effect of authentic leadership on employees’ taking charge behavior from the perspective of COR theory, enriching the integrative approach to authentic leadership and psychological capital.
Finally, the examination of the moderating effect of employee occupational calling in this study responds to the call of previous scholars to further explore the boundary conditions of the effect of authentic leadership on employees’ taking charge behavior. Incorporating employee occupational calling into the research framework and considering the interaction between authentic leadership and employees’ individual characteristics is more conducive to integrating the influence of organizational factors and individual factors from an interactive perspective. The results are helpful for understanding the effect and mechanism of authentic leadership in a more comprehensive way. Moreover, this study focuses on the reinvestment process after resource acquisition in COR theory. It is found that when employees highly recognize the sense of meaning and value in work (feeling calling), they are more willing to reinvest resources in work and taking charge. This provides more empirical support for the hypothesis of COR theory on the process of resource reinvestment. In addition, most studies have focused on the antecedents and influencing factors of calling [
90] and paid less attention to the regulatory role of calling. This paper extends calling to the field of authentic leadership and employees’ taking charge behavior and enriches the empirical research of calling.
5.2. Practical Implications
Employees’ taking charge behavior plays an important role in the sustainable development of organizations and the enhancement of organizational cohesion. Our study provides management implications for organizations on how to promote employees’ taking charge behavior. First, organizations should pay attention to the authentic leadership development of leaders at different levels, improve the positive psychological resources of leaders themselves, and then encourage leaders to engage in authentic leadership behavior. This study found that authentic leadership has a positive effect on employees’ taking charge behavior, so organizations should establish an effective personnel selection and talent management system to promote leaders with authentic leadership. On the other hand, training programs should pay attention to the cultivation of authentic leadership and guide them to influence employees through their real selves to build a more transparent and high-quality relationship between leaders and subordinates. At the same time, authentic leadership itself can also provide human resource advantages for the long-term sustainable development of enterprises.
Second, we should strengthen the development of the psychological capital of employees. The results show that psychological capital mediates the promotion effect of authentic leadership on employees’ taking charge behavior, so managers should pay attention to the change in employees’ psychological capital in the process of showing their true self and achieving authentic leadership behavior. In the process of interaction between leaders and employees, they need to encourage employees to develop their own positive psychological capacities and promote the full use of their psychological resources. At the same time, in sustainable human resource management activities, organizations should constantly improve employees’ sense of efficacy and sense of hope for goals, help employees deal with difficulties in a resilient way, pay more attention to positive factors rather than negative ones, and thus continue to develop psychological capital for employees and promote employees’ taking charge behavior.
Third, attention should be given to the occupational calling of employees. Employees with high occupational calling are more likely to be positively influenced by authentic leadership. Therefore, more attention should be given to the level of employees’ occupational calling and a working environment conducive to their pursuit of work value. In terms of enterprise recruitment and promotion, organizations should not only examine the professional knowledge and skills of employees but also attach importance to measuring their occupational calling, promote employees who can realize their calling at work, and create a work atmosphere with mission and vision.
5.3. Limitations and Future Directions
This study has the following limitations and deficiencies. Based on COR theory, this study explores the mediating role of psychological capital between authentic leadership and employees’ taking charge behavior. All the variables and theories are proposed under Western culture, while the subjects are from China. This may not generate universal conclusions. Future research may validate this model in different culture backgrounds, to obtain more general conclusions. There may be other theoretical perspectives and mechanisms for the influence of authentic leadership on employees’ taking charge behavior. Combined with Chinese cultural characteristics, future studies can take power distance, collectivism, guanxi, traditionalism, and other variables to obtain more illuminating conclusions.
This study examined the moderating effect of employees’ personal characteristics on the effect of authentic leadership. According to COR theory, employees constantly acquire resources at work and create more resources in the investment process. Other individual factors in addition to occupational calling may also affect employees’ resource acquisition and investment processes, leading to the gain spiral of resources. On the other hand, there may be some personal traits that make employees more likely to initiate loss spirals and hinder employees from receiving support from the organization. Future research can further explore the interaction between organizational and individual factors, expanding the depth and breadth of this mechanism.
The present study analyzed the effects of authentic leadership on employees’ taking charge behavior at the micro level. However, as Bandura [
91] suggested, social phenomena often occur in groups, and these group interactions influence the very nature of psychological constructs. Authentic leadership and psychological capital are both conceptualized as being multilevel [
92], and future research may explore their relationship at the group level, combining with concepts such as organizational resilience to investigate from the perspective of the functioning of the organization. Moreover, although this study adopts a longitudinal study of two phases, all the measurement methods used in this study are questionnaires, only reflecting the subjective feelings of the participants In future research, more diversified measurement methods, such as implicit psychological capital tests and situational judgment tests, can be used.
6. Conclusions
Based on COR theory, this paper explored the effect of authentic leadership on employees’ taking charge behavior through psychological capital and examined the moderating effect of occupational calling. First, the empirical research results show that authentic leadership can positively influence employees’ taking charge behavior because authentic leadership can provide employees with strong organizational resources and create a safe working atmosphere so that employees will actively take more responsibilities at work and take the initiative to engage in employees’ taking charge behavior. Therefore, providing employees with such a supporting working environment and organizational culture is essential in building positive organizations.
Second, psychological capital acts as a mediator in the relationship between authentic leadership and employees’ taking charge behavior. In addition to directly promoting employees’ taking charge behavior, authentic leadership can also influence employees’ taking charge behavior indirectly through psychological capital. Authentic leadership is derived from the positive psychological resources of leaders and acts on the positive psychological resources of employees, so it can help employees better develop their positive psychological capacities. Positive psychological capacity is a necessary precondition for employees to have sufficient resources for reinvestment and thus to engage in more taking charge behavior.
Third, the higher the occupational calling of employees is, the stronger the effect of authentic leadership on employees’ taking charge behavior will be through psychological capital. Individuals with high occupational calling will respond more to the support from authentic leadership and recognize the authentic behavior of leaders, which is beneficial for employees to make full use of positive psychological resources and reinvest in subsequent employees’ taking charge behavior. By introducing COR theory, this study provides a new theoretical perspective for promoting the flourishing development of employees and emphasizes the important role of the exploration and exploitation of psychological resources.