Exploring the Association of Authentic Leadership and Psychological Capital with Innovative Work Behavior among Indian Working Professionals

What makes an employee willing to take the risk of proposing something new, to generate an idea, championed through organizational resistance and see it through to fruition? The present study argues that the answer lies, in part, in the psychological resources employees carry to work and in the leaders who help cultivate them those resources. Drawing on Positive Organizational Behavior (POB) theory and social learning theory, we examined how authentic leadership (AL) and psychological capital (PsyCap) predict innovative work behavior (IWB) among Indian working professionals. A cross-sectional survey design has been used to conduct this study. Data were collected through 354 professionals working across different industry sectors, this includes IT, healthcare, manufacturing, government or public sector and education. AL was assessed using the 16-item authentic leadership questionnaire (ALQ; Walumbwa et al., 2008). PsyCap is assessed using the PCQ-12 (Luthans et al., 2007) and IWB using the nine-item scale developed by Janssen (2000). Results showed that both AL (r =.510, p <.001) and PsyCap (r =.586, p <.001) were significantly correlated with IWB. In a combined regression model, both AL (β =.207, p <.001) and PsyCap (β =.445, p <.001) independently predicted IWB, together explaining 36.7% of its variance. Among PsyCap sub-dimensions, optimism and hope emerged as the strongest individual predictors. These findings confirm that innovation at the individual level is deeply rooted in who leads employees and what psychological reserves they bring to their roles. Implications for leadership development and HR practice in the Indian organizational context are discussed.