Authentic student leadership development: structural equation model testing differences among student leader populations

ABSTRACT

Objective

There remains a need for effective and ethical development in students, for cohesive and connected societies of moral actors. This paper adopts an authentic leadership development in students perspective as a possible complement to discipline expertise. This research explored whether taking leadership roles while studying had a positive effect on students’ development of authentic leadership attributes, including demographic contributions.

Method

This study comprised a quantitative survey of undergraduate students (n = 415) at an Australian university using structural equation modelling to test relationships between student leadership status and authentic leadership.

Results

Results demonstrated that student leaders exhibited higher authentic leadership than students who were not leaders. Demographics (e.g. gender) also explained variance across authentic leadership scores. Authentic leadership also served as a useful predictor of whether students intended to take up formal student leadership roles.

Conclusions

Practical implications of this research include opportunities for policy development to support leadership opportunities and training for higher education students as a method of developing their authentic leadership.

KEY POINTS

What is already known about this topic:

1. Developing student leadership at university is a pressing goal for higher education institutions.

2. Authentic leadership is built on self-awareness, sincerity, balanced processing, and positive moral perspectives.

3. There is a unique opportunity to understand how authentic leadership may contribute to better student leadership outcomes.

What this topic adds:

1. This research finds that students who engage in formal leadership tend to have higher levels of authentic leadership.

2. Access to student leadership roles is an important mechanism to university policy towards cultivating ethical and effective leadership in graduates.

3. Student-led institutions may benefit from stronger development opportunities for their Student Presidents, Councillors, and other formal leadership roles.

KEYWORDS:

• Authentic leadership
• student leadership
• leadership development
• academic integrity, extracurricular activities

Introduction

Corruption and malfeasance are well documented in business, government and higher education institutions (Gardner et al., 2011; Kiersch & Byrne, 2015). Some scholars argue a decreased emphasis on individual character as the cause (Wright, 2015), while others suggest increased societal complexity is mostly to blame (Kezar & Eckel, 2004). Specific cases of fraud and catastrophic events such as the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) highlight the need for solution-focused research into the ethical challenges such crises present (Peus et al., 2012).

Looking at ethical behaviours within higher education (e.g., Jensen & Ottesen, 2022), student propensity to engage in academic misconduct has reached “epidemic” proportions (McCabe et al., 2006) with students from business disciplines sometimes included in the worst offenders in this area (Klein et al., 2007). Specific studies (e.g., Wright, 2015) have observed an increase in undergraduate business cheating rates from 23% in 1941 to 88% in 2011 in some courses. Considering that other studies have found that undergraduate cheating is likely to translate to cheating later in life (Neubaum et al., 2009), higher education offers an opportunity for early leadership intervention that can enable effective response to cheating behaviours (both in studies, and in later employment).

Authentic leadership was developed as an antidote to unethical conduct like the dotcom bust (Luthans & Avolio, 2003). Authentic leadership was originally defined by its antecedents (i.e., positive psychological capacity and a highly developed organisational context) and its three main outcomes (i.e., self-awareness, positive self-regulation, and positive self-development) (Luthans & Avolio, 2003). More recently, authentic leaders have been described as individuals with five key attributes: high awareness, sincerity, balanced processing, positive morals, and informal influence (Crawford et al., 2018).

Research into leadership is needed in the higher education sector (Foreman-Brown et al., 2023; Hall et al., 2008; Skalicky et al., 2018). This is particularly relevant, if educators are to respond to growing concerns of academic integrity, of which new software like ChatGPT is creating new pedagogical challenges for (Crawford et al., 2023; Perkins, 2023). In recognition of authentic leaders being less likely to cheat, through their higher integrity (Avolio & Gardner, 2005), we seek to understand the conditions that are most likely to create and nurture authentic leadership within undergraduate studies. In exploring the relationship between the leadership attitudes and behaviours of undergraduate students, we seek to identify types of activities undergraduates pursue that enable authentic leadership development.

Leadership development among undergraduate students is a commonplace in higher education (Smart et al., 2002), but typically without an effective leadership framework (Whitehead, 2009). In this context, our study explores authentic leadership behaviours in students, specifically, investigating a leadership development pathway provided in a higher education institution with research questions:

1. Does university student leadership opportunities predict authentic leadership?

2. Do certain demographics predict authentic or student leadership?

Student leadership

Student leadership is a common topic in education research (e.g., Dempster & Lizzio, 2007; Dugan, 2006; Eva & Sendjaya, 2013; Skalicky et al., 2018; Whitehead, 2009), with recognition that development of leadership skills is an important outcome of undergraduate studies (Hall et al., 2008). Student leadership enables student voice (Moore, 2022). Research into student leadership typically examines roles such as student union representatives or university sport captains (Skalicky et al., 2018). Leadership skills can be increased throughout university study and involvement in university life (Pascarella, 2006; Wright, 2015).

The development of leadership skills and abilities among students is inconsistent across the higher education sector, with no clear unified approach to student leadership development; which is concerning given the increased rates of cheating and narcissism in students over the past decade (Eva & Sendjaya, 2013; Wright, 2004, 2015). In one study for example, Australian university students admitted to cheating (41%), plagiarism (81%), and falsifying documents or dishonest excuse-making (25%) (Marsden et al., 2005).

In drawing on the dominant leadership perspective that defines leadership as a process whereby an individual influences follower(s) to achieve common goal or goals (Northouse, 2015), we seek to define student leaders. Much of the literature articulates positional student leadership roles as the strongest predictor of leadership (Dugan, 2006; Kezar & Moriarty, 2000), noting that some evidence highlights that leadership is about influence, relationships, and behaviour rather than positions (Eddy & VanDerlinden, 2006). Therefore, for this study, a student leader is defined as a student who is:

Elected, appointed or has volunteered to lead fellow students (individual or groups) to achieve shared goals (e.g., student welfare and autonomy) through advocacy and representation within their university.

Synthesising perspectives from the literature, this study’s definition of student leadership was aligned to formal student leader roles (e.g., elected members of student unions and student society executives); our method adopted a positional-perspective for leadership role and an intrapersonal perspective of authentic leadership, whereby authenticity is measured by oneself, and not others. This is primarily because many student leaders do not have “direct reports” and tend to exhibit leadership and influence across multiple contexts differently (e.g., Dugan, 2006; Kezar & Moriarty, 2000); in contrast to traditional leaders who regularly and consistently display leadership in temporal and physically consistent places (e.g., a leader in a specific workplace, with similar direct reports).

Authentic leadership

Gardner et al’s. (2011) review of authentic leadership examined 13 definitions of authentic leaders and leadership published between 1967 and 2009, revealing varying approaches to defining and measuring the construct. Similarly, Lawler and Ashman (2012) identified three overarching perspectives of the authentic leadership construct, ranging from intrapersonal (Shamir & Eilam, 2005), developmental (Avolio & Gardner, 2005) and interpersonal (Eagly, 2005). For the purposes of our research, we have adopted an intrapersonal perspective of authentic leadership, whereby authenticity is measured by oneself, and not others. Thus, an authentic leader “influences and motivates followers to achieve goals through their sincerity and positive moral perspective, enabled through heightened awareness and balanced processing” (Crawford et al., 2020, p. 126).

The first dimension, self-awareness is a demonstrated understanding of one’s strengths and weaknesses, including how they make sense of the world (Avolio et al., 2009). One inherent fallacy in the construction of self-awareness is that human beings can redefine themselves (Lawler & Ashman, 2012). Because authentic leaders can be distinguished from inauthentic leaders using self-concept characteristics (Shamir & Eilam, 2005), they are able to redefine and assess their new “true” self, rather than their authentic self. Student leaders are more likely to experience situations where their actions and decisions are challenged, prompting reflection and self-efficacy (e.g., Wang et al., 2023), than students who primarily focus on their studies. In this study, we propose that student leaders will be more self-aware than non-leader students.

The second dimension, relational authenticity is defined as the presentation of oneself through the open sharing of information and feelings in context with a situation (Avolio et al., 2009). Expressing oneself openly and honestly is considered a virtue and therefore a component of acting authentically (Lopez & Rice, 2006). Although the terms “relational authenticity” and “relational transparency” are often used interchangeably, they are not necessarily the same. Relational authenticity can be conceptualised as being genuine and honest in one’s relationship with others (Kernis & Goldman, 2006). In contrast, relational authenticity is, defined as expressing oneself openly and in a straightforward manner, which does not implicitly require honesty. This study focused on relational authenticity as it encompasses a more holistic approach to honesty and openness.

The third dimension, moral identity is the degree to which a person identifies themselves as a moral person (Zhu et al., 2011). That is, an individual’s moral identity is measured according to their commitment to one’s sense of self. This is like an internalised moral perspective but also incorporates lines of action which facilitate the welfare of others (Hart et al., 1998). Individuals with a strong moral identity are more likely to commit to higher moral principles and remain loyal to moral values (Zhu et al., 2011); to inspire others to act ethically and place the collective interest over their personal interests and ego (Bergman, 2002; Zhu et al., 2011). We propose that student leaders will have a stronger moral identity than non-leader students, as student leaders are likely to have taken up leadership positions from their desire to support and promote student interests within their university setting.

The fourth dimension, balanced processing is the objective analysis of relevant data before making decisions (Avolio et al., 2009). Individual leaders should understand their inherent strengths and weaknesses as a part of a higher self-awareness and have the capacity to acknowledge their motivational biases (Gardner et al., 2005), with motivations effected by environment (Arslan et al., 2022). We believe that people attracted to student leadership roles seek to better understand their own cognitions and demonstrate higher balanced processing. In addition, the regular need to review decisions means individuals on committees are likely to develop their ability to think critically, and in a balanced manner. Importantly, and critically, if authentic leadership serves as a higher order latent construct as suggested (Crawford et al., 2020; Walumbwa et al., 2008), then it should have a stronger predictive relationship with student leadership than its individual dimensions.

Extending beyond the authentic leadership behaviours, we turn to explore demographics that are suggested to influence student leadership baseline scores. Cooper et al. (2005) argue that researchers should measure demographics as part of their measurement of authentic leadership as these may be related to, or influence, a study’s efficacy. In addition, existing student outcomes such as study abroad decisions, have been linked to several demographic characteristics (Luo & Jamieson-Drake, 2015). In the field of leadership, many individual factors can affect the quality and style of leadership adopted (Titus, 2004). Thus, in addition to studying the differences between student leaders and non-leaders, this research examined which demographics were significantly related to a student’s authentic leadership qualities. The following represent the main attributes uncovered by our review of the literature. This study tests for relationships of gender (Eagly, 2005; Saw et al., 2023), age (Peus et al., 2012; Titus, 2004; Walumbwa et al., 2008), geographic upbringing (George, 2003; particularly given new COVID-19 home learning contexts:; Easterbrook et al., 2023), study area (Sánchez-Ruiz et al., 2010), student status (i.e., level and modality of study: Hudd et al., 2009; Pascarella, 2006), and enrolment type (i.e., domestic or international: Antonio, 2001; Černe et al., 2013; Niu & Sternberg, 2003).

H1:

Student leadership membership will predict authentic leadership.

H2:

University student leaders will have a higher self-awareness score than students.

H3:

University student leaders will have a higher relational authenticity score than students.

H4:

University student leaders will have a higher moral identity score than students.

H:5:

University student leaders will have a higher balanced processing score than students.

H6:

Authentic leadership will have a stronger positive association with student leadership differences than individual dimensions.

H7:

That key demographics will not be collective predictors of authentic or student leadership.

Methods

Procedure

This study comprised a paper-and-pen quantitative survey designed to test authentic leadership for student leaders and students (i.e., awareness, relational authenticity, moral identity, and balanced processing: SSHREC Ethics Ref No: H0015073). Data collection was by convenience sampling, voluntary participation invited through a) workshops and lectures, and b) informal student society meetings and student union meetings of a regional Australian university. Key demographics affecting leadership such as gender, study area and student status, and student status and enrolment, were also identified and incorporated as hypotheses tested by the survey. We adopted the use of a self-assessment survey, as student leaders do not typically have “direct reports” to complete other-raters forms, noting social desirability bias limitations (Gardner et al., 2010). For the student context, we adapted the self-assessment survey definition to reshape the construct for self-assessment. For example, sincerity and informal influence are best answered by other raters. We replaced sincerity with its intrapersonal counterpart “relational transparency” from authenticity theory (Kernis & Goldman, 2006; Walumbwa et al., 2008). Of the two authentic leadership instruments limitations of conceptual clarity, leader centricity, bias towards the “authentic person” over the “authentic leader”, philosophical ambiguity, and failure to recognise personality and individual differences were identified (Crawford et al., 2020). In total, 608 surveys were distributed, of which 422 were returned and 415 were considered valid for analysis (response rate = 68.26%).

Participants

The final sample was generally representative except for a skew towards younger students (≤20, 69.1%), domestic students (78.4%), first-year students (71.4%), and full-time on-campus students (79.9%). These statistics reflect a typical enrolment for an Australian university. Less than 10% of participants were formal student leaders (9.4%); with leader roles across student society executives (63.9%), student union leaders (22.2%), and university committee members (13.9%). Past student leaders tended to have roles on student society executives (45.8%).

Measures

This study comprises four key measures alongside demographic questions and categorical variables relating to student leadership roles. All measures were a 7-point Likert scale from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7).

Awareness was measured using nine existing items in the Situational Self-Awareness Scale (Govern & Marsch, 2001), for example “I am conscious of my inner feelings”. Asking questions relating to demographics can temporally influence the reliability of a self-awareness score (Govern & Marsch, 2001), and was therefore positioned early in the survey. The scale presented strong reliability (α = .80).

Relational authenticity was measured using items developed from a thematic analysis of existing instruments: AI-3 (Kernis & Goldman, 2006); ALQ (Walumbwa et al., 2008); Authenticity in Relationships Scale (AIRS: Lopez & Rice, 2006). Based on the thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006), 14 overarching themes were deductively identified and converted into a 9-item pilot scale. A sample item includes “I believe honesty is extremely important”. The scale presented reasonable reliability (α = .76), given the ALQ is under copyright, the authors cannot present the full relational authenticity subset, however, the in a principal components exploratory factor analysis, there was one factor with an Eigenvalue of 3.506, and all components loading > .30.

Moral identity was tested with an existing instrument (Zhu et al., 2011). To enable consistency across the questionnaire, the scale was adapted slightly to facilitate a 7-point Likert scale instead of its 5-point published version. A sample item includes “I am committed to my moral principles”. The scale presented strong reliability (α = .87)

Balanced processing items were identified through thematic analysis of four existing scales: AI-3 (Kernis & Goldman, 2006), the ALQ (Walumbwa et al., 2008) and the ALI (Neider & Schriesheim, 2011) – and one PhD thesis (Lagan, 2007). A sample item includes “I critically evaluate the information I have before making a decision”. The initial nine item scale presented lower than hoped reliability (α = .80) and validity (EFA held 56.95% variance explained over three factors), and after visual inspection of the data it appeared that four drafted items represented two different factors to balanced processing, after these four items were deleted, the final scale was much more coherent (46.72% variance explained over a single EFA factor, with factor loadings between .59 and .76) and reliable (α = .71).

Data analysis

Maximum likelihood confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in IBM’s AMOS v28 was used to assess model fit. This included the chi-square test (χ2/df), Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI), Comparative Fit Index (CFI), Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR), with cut-offs considered from Hu and Bentler (1999). A systematic review of leadership measures since 2000 (Crawford & Kelder, 2019) highlighted that the average score for CFI was 0.96, TLI (.95), and SRMR (.066), with anything above 0.7 considered reliable.

Results

Model specification

Using a maximum likelihood factor analysis to test the validity of the aggregate measure of authentic leadership, it was identified to be generally rigorous (χ2 = 794.895, df = 421, CFI = .90, RMSEA = .051, SRMR = .057, composite reliability = .88). Individually, the awareness scale presented strong model fit (χ2 = 48.89, df = 11, CFI = .99, RMSEA = .044, SRMR = .030 composite reliability = .75). The relational authenticity subscale also showed strong fit (χ2 = 36.467, df = 18, CFI = .98, RMSEA = .050, SRMR = .029; composite reliability = .75). Balanced processing showed robustness (χ2 = 72.976, df = 18, CFI = .89, RMSEA = .086, SRMR = .062). And, finally the moral identity scale also showed evidence of robustness (χ2 = 3.608, df = 3, CFI = .99, RMSEA = .022, SRMR = .009; composite reliability = .87).

Student leadership differences

Hypothesis 1 was considered using structural equation modelling (χ2 = 12.88, df = 5, p = .03, CFI = .98, TLI = .97, RMSEA = .03). Student leadership was predicted by authentic leadership (β = .28, p = .002), as per Figure 1.

Figure 1. Authentic leadership and student leadership model.

In confirming Hypothesis 2 through 5, individual relationships were tested in AMOS. Self-awareness predicted student leadership differences (β = .07, p < .001). Relational authenticity (β = .06, p = .002), moral identity (β = .05, p < .001), and balanced processing (β = .13, p < .001) also predicted student leadership differences. Table 1 highlights mean and standard deviation (SD) scores across student leaders and students, noting that dimension t-test was significant (p < .01).

Table 1. Mean differences between student leaders and students.

M (SD)	Awareness	Relational Authenticity	Moral Identity	Balanced Processing	Authentic Leadership
Leaders	5.39 (.68)	5.36 (.74)	5.75 (.97)	5.13 (.69)	5.41 (.65)
Student	4.81 (.83)	4.97 (.78)	5.14 (1.01)	4.62 (.54)	4.88 (.61)

Demographic controls

When considering significant differences between gender, age, geographic upbringing, study area, student status, and enrolment, some significant differences emerged (see Table 2). Noteworthy though, these relationships demonstrated good model fit in a structural equation model. Demographics had varied significant predictive effects on the authentic leadership measure (χ2 = 28.53, df = 20, p = .10, CFI = .99, TLI = .97, RMSEA = .06). Gender predicted authentic leadership (β = .12, p = .03), so too did study area (β = .02, p = .05), and enrolment type (β = .15, p = .02). The location a person grew up in (β = .02, p = .06) and age (β = .02, p = .39) did not. In a model test (χ2/df = 1.84, p = .01, CFI = .96, TLI = .92, RMSEA = .05), where authentic leadership was predicted by student leadership differences (β = .49, p < .001), and student leadership was not predicted by gender, age, study area, geographic upbringing, or enrolment status. Only study area (β = .02, p < .001) and enrolment type (β = .08, p = .03) had significant relationships.

Table 2. Significance testing on demographics and authentic leadership.

Demographics		M (SD)	n	%
Gender t (412) = −2.01*, d = −0.21	Male	4.87 (.67)	213	51.4
	Female	5.0 (.58)	201	48.6
Age F (6, 407) = 3.03** η2 = .04 Rs = .08	≤ 20	4.91 (.60)	386	69.1
	21–25	4.94 (.65)	92	22.2
	26–30	4.82 (.90)	10	2.4
	31–35	4.99 (.48)	12	2.9
	36–40	5.95 (.82)	5	1.2
	41–45	5.34 (.41)	6	1.4
	46–50	N/A	0	0
	51 ≤	4.55 (.67)	3	0.7
Geographic upbringing F (4, 404) = 1.46 η^2 = .01 Rs = −0.05	Rural area or village	4.93 (.72)	86	0.21
	Small country town	5.07 (.59)	68	0.17
	Large town	4.89 (.46)	83	0.20
	Small to medium city	4.94 (.53)	89	0.22
	Major city	4.84 (.77)	83	0.20
Primary study area F (4, 389) = 3.37**η^2 = .01	Technical studies	4.88 (.74)	111	28.2
	Natural studies	4.90 (.57)	113	28.7
	Social sciences	4.88 (.57)	127	32.2
	Arts	5.71 (.41)	4	1.0
	Humanities	5.17 (.64)	39	9.9
Student status F (5, 407) = .754 η^2 = .01	Full-time, on-campus	4.92 (.63)	330	79.9
	Full-time, distance	4.65 (.411)	50	1.0
	Full-time, blended	5.02 (.61)	4	12.1
	Part-time, on-campus	5.00 (.62)	20	4.8
	Part-time, distance	5.19 (.11)	7	0.5
	Part-time, blended	5.19 (.69)	2	1.7
Enrolment t (119.152) = −2.03* d = −0.25	International	4.80 (.75)	89	21.6
	Domestic	4.97 (.59)	323	78.4

*p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001; Seven-point Likert scale where 1 = ‘strongly disagree’ and 7=“strongly agree”.

Authentic leadership and its subscales

In testing Hypothesis 6, authentic leadership and student leadership were examined across three models. Model 1 (χ2 = 12.88, df = 5, p = .03, CFI = .98, TLI = .97, RMSEA = .03) comprised student leadership predicted by authentic leadership. Model 2 (χ2 = 434.67, df = 6, p = .00, CFI = .07, TLI = .55, RMSEA = .42) comprised student leadership predicted by the four dimensions of authentic leadership. Model 3 (χ2 = 66.91. df = 6, p = .00, CFI = 1.40, TLI = .43, RMSEA = .40) comprised student leadership predicting the four dimensions of authentic leadership. Thus, in confirming Hypothesis 6, authentic leadership was the strongest predictor of student leadership, against its dimensions.

Discussion

This study explored whether formal student leadership roles was predicted by authentic leadership scores. Our study considered four dimensions of authentic leaders (self-awareness, relational authenticity, moral identity, and balanced processing) and overall authentic leadership. If being a student leader increases the likelihood of a natural authentic intervention, it is unsurprising that university student leaders score higher across the four dimensions of authentic leadership. This aligns with research suggesting positional leadership roles are the best indicators of leadership (Dugan, 2006; Kezar & Moriarty, 2000).

The first dimension of authentic leadership, self-awareness, was higher in university student leaders than students. Student leaders in the sample were also more consistent in their authentic leadership scores, with lower standard deviations, than students. This is possibly because students who are exposed to formal leadership roles are more likely to be scrutinised or praised for their decision-making, thus, it is possible their formal leadership roles allow them to develop more self-awareness. This result also aligns with the Govern and Marsch (2001) research using external environmental tools to increase participant self-awareness. Humans can redefine themselves constantly (Lawler & Ashman, 2012), and as such, exposure to leadership roles of increased responsibility and pressure could result in development of emotional intelligence, emotion-gratitude (Riggio, 2024; Waters & Stokes, 2015), and self-awareness.

Relational authenticity was also higher in student leaders than students. Perhaps formal university student leadership roles have higher degrees of reporting, most commonly within regular formal or semi-formal meetings where they would report their progress to other members of the committee or group. Leaders are also required to be more transparent (Bennis et al., 2010) and this may result in more transparency and relational authenticity among student leaders. Relational authenticity does not presuppose the possibility that student sense of loneliness, which evidence says is increasing, also has a material effect on their ability to form meaningful relationships with other students (Crawford et al., 2024), and their student leadership may support a response.

Moral identity in student leaders was also higher in student leaders than students. The nomination to a student leadership role usually requires a student to be passionate in something that role includes; otherwise, they would not nominate. A person with a higher level of moral development develops their own set of morals and ethical frameworks (Bergman, 2002). Individuals with a higher moral identity are likely to facilitate the welfare of others, and they may choose to do this through a nomination to student leader roles. Corporate governance rules and regulations in the university student leadership organisations may also direct student leaders towards more ethical actions.

Balanced processing was also higher in student leaders. This was not surprising given that university student leaders are likely to have more experience attending committee meetings and carefully considering information provided by the members. Hence, complying with governance requirements (and repeated behaviour over time) may enable the facilitation of developing balanced processing behaviours in student leaders.

Demographics also posed interesting outcomes, with gender, study area, and enrolment type predicting authentic leadership. Study area and enrolment type predicted student leadership uptake. Gender demonstrated a significant difference, and despite that leadership is often considered a masculine term (Eagly, 2005), females in this study had a higher leadership score. Study area also demonstrated significant difference, with arts and humanities scoring higher than natural sciences, social sciences, and technical studies. However, it did not significantly matter whether a student studied on-campus, distance, full-time, part-time, or some combination. Prior research suggested leadership in higher education is increased through involvement in university life as well as through study (Pascarella, 2006), but this was not consistent with our results.

Domestic students had higher authentic leadership scores than their international counterparts, suggesting some potential challenges for understanding how diverse students build a sense of belonging (Allen et al., 2022) and develop their leadership. It is uncertain whether this finding is due to the tool, the underlying construct, or reflects genuine differences between cultural backgrounds. Interestingly though, where a student “grew up” (lived for most of their formative years) was not important. It could be worth retesting this with a wider geographic sample given the relative homogenous nature of the sample.

Effectively developing leadership capabilities and ethical behaviours is an important goal of universities and these insights provide benefit to further development (Choi-Lundberg et al., 2024). According to the findings of this research, universities and other education institutions that aim to develop leadership skills and leadership potential in their graduates will be able to tailor their programs. For example, identifying antecedents which caused higher authentic leadership scores in arts and humanities students may provide a framework for education in social science, natural science, and technical study faculties. Likewise, in the context of contemporary higher education, cultivating ethical leadership behaviours may also curb academic integrity concerns that are a significant challenge for universities (Perkins, 2023). In this context, the approach to resolving future academic integrity challenges may stem from a focus on positive promotion of good leadership over detection techniques.

University students from the social sciences were low performing in comparison to three other disciplines in terms of their authentic leadership scores. From a business perspective, this may suggest a need for change in the methods by which business students are educated. Course content and course structure could more effectively incorporate certain activities to facilitate leadership.

In highlighting some implications of this research, it is also important to note the limitations of the study. Firstly, while the final sample was moderate (n = 415), it only comprised students from one university. While efforts were made for a stratified recruitment, there were limitations in the number of student leaders, students of older age brackets, students from arts and humanities, and distance students, therefore further research should aim to have a more balanced sample. This research explored formal university student leadership roles as a possible antecedent to authentic leadership, with significant results. However, it is acknowledged that students with higher scores may be more inclined to participate in student leadership roles (e.g., Anderson et al., 2022). Our research focused on undergraduate student leadership and found a relationship between prior student leadership roles and authentic leadership. As such, further research could evaluate the authentic leadership potential in other student leadership levels and years, and seek to classify student leadership more broadly without the formalised constraint we applied (Marshall & Guthrie, 2024). In addition, the demographics we used were based on existing literature and further research could consider other demographics. Longitudinal studies could also evaluate the effect these attributes have over longer periods of time, particularly given those hypotheses that were supported had small and very small effect sizes.

Recognising the limitations of the balanced processing dimension, and the aim to collate like-constructs for the measurement tool, there is genuine need to develop a more rigorous approach (e.g., Crawford & Kelder, 2019) to measuring authentic leaders and their behaviours. In addition, self-assessments are fraught with social desirability bias (Day et al., 2014) along with scores affected by the self-awareness of the respondent. Use of peers with strong knowledge of the student leader paired with student leader responses could mitigate this, given that student leaders outside of senior students do not typically have direct reports. Understanding ways in which authentic leadership can be effectively implemented into curriculum and student leadership programs is of importance, particularly in a post-COVID-19 re-imagining of education (King et al., 2023). For authentic leadership to progress to practice, further empirical studies could be conducted in organisations worldwide to understand educational processes which can positively affect authentic leadership behaviours. It is possible this study is limited by common method bias, although the aim was not to deeply understand the interpersonal context of authentic leadership, but rather to assess intrapersonal perceptions of self-awareness, morals, and processing of information. These are reasonable responses to possible bias (e.g., Conway & Lance, 2010), but are not exhaustive.

Finally, this research does not assume authentic leadership is mutually exclusive to other forms of leadership and discriminant validity for the pilot instrument and other authentic leadership measures is important to increase its validity. Authentic leadership is not the only form of organisational leadership that may apply to student leaders, and therefore future research could consider other styles of leadership and the degree to which they are prevalent among this cohort.

Conclusions

This research aimed to measure authentic leadership capabilities in a different leadership context (students: n = 415). This research provides initial evidence that participation in student leadership programs enables university students to improve their overall authentic leadership capacity along with each of its dimensions. It also provided early evidence that perhaps there may be an alternate approach to responding to academic integrity concerns, although this area of research was not the focal point in this study; other scholars should continue this examination. Future research could extend this understanding to wider ranges of student and organisational leadership, along with empirically evaluating other demographics in different settings.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). Artificial intelligence was not used in the development of this paper or underlying research.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to institutional review board restrictions.