Authenticity and Subjective Wellbeing within the Context of a Religious Organization

Abstract

Although authenticity has a long history as a philosophical and psychological idea, this concept has received scarce attention in the business literature until very lately. Nevertheless, scholars belonging to a broad array of disciplines have pointed out the escalation in the individuals’ search for authenticity within developed societies. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to assess the link between authenticity and subjective wellbeing within the rarely explored context of faith-driven organizations, where the management of emotions attains a particular significance. Specifically, this study links authenticity with subjective wellbeing among the distinct groups that shape a large international Catholic organization. This study uses Partial Least Squares (PLS) to test our research model and hypotheses. This paper covers two noteworthy research gaps. On the one hand, it provides evidence of the relationship between authenticity and subjective wellbeing within the context of religious organizations. On the other hand, our results suggest that this relationship is not homogeneous among the distinct groups that shape the organization. Implications of the research are finally discussed.