Authentic leadership and organizational citizenship behavior: the mediating role of work engagement in a Confucian cultural context.

INTRODUCTION: In contemporary higher education, particularly within Confucian cultural contexts characterized by high power distance and hierarchical structures, leadership plays a critical role in fostering positive employee behaviors. Despite growing interest in authentic leadership, limited research has examined its influence on organizational citizenship behavior in non-Western settings, especially considering underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions. This study addresses this gap by investigating the relationship between authentic leadership and organizational citizenship behavior, with work engagement as a mediating mechanism and education level and work experience as moderating variables in Vietnamese higher education institutions. METHODS: A quantitative cross-sectional design was employed, collecting data from 542 lecturers at 10 public universities in Southern Vietnam. Data were analyzed using regression-based techniques and mediation-moderation analysis. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: The findings reveal that authentic leadership has a significant positive effect on organizational citizenship behavior and that work engagement partially mediates this relationship. However, the moderating effects of education levels and work experience were not statistically significant. These results highlight the importance of authentic leadership in enhancing engagement and promoting discretionary behaviors among academic staff, regardless of demographic differences. Practically, the study suggests that higher education institutions should prioritize leadership development initiatives that emphasize ethical behavior, transparency, and relational integrity to strengthen engagement and institutional effectiveness.