The Authentic Leadership Inventory (ALI): Development and empirical tests

Abstract

This paper presents the development and preliminary validation of a new measure of authentic leadership, the Authentic Leadership Inventory (ALI). It also assesses the recently developed Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ). Results indicate some concerns with the ALQ but support the content validity, reliability, factor structure, convergent and discriminant validity, concurrent validity, and freedom from impression management response bias of the ALI. Confirmatory factor analyses also do not support treating authentic or transformational leadership as universally global constructs. Instead, it is argued that future research would better be served by using separate authentic and transformational dimensions (rather than aggregate or global measures) to understand the unique aspects of both leadership constructs.