Relationship between authentic leadership, trust and work engagement of security guards in a private security firm operating in the Western Cape

Abstract

Globally both public and private businesses are experiencing an enormous number of challenges posed by both the internal and external environment. However, the private security industry is not immune to that as they are facing challenges such as, weak and ineffective regulations and enforcement , long working hours, inconsistent recruitment and selection standards nonexistence of accountability and transparency which makes it easy for leaders to be involved in illegal practices, poorly compensations of security guards with limited or no benefits, low skills because of lack of training often undertaking dangerous jobs in contentious spaces. These challenges and allegations attributed to leaders bring about an increase in stress/workload which in turn can possibly result into loss of trust, and disengagement on part of security guards against their leaders. According to literature, a new breed of authentic leaders should be developed in order to overcome these challenges. Authentic perspective of leadership believed that, this type of leadership display high degree of integrity has a deep a sense of purpose, and committed to their core values. Consequently they promote a more trusting working relationship between them and their employees that can also translate into a motivated and engaged workforce. The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between authentic leadership of supervisors / managers, trust and work engagement of security guards in a private security firm operating in the Western Cape. A sample of 218 security guards was chosen through the non-probability convenience sampling with the use of the nonexperimental cross sectional design. A composite questionnaire consisted of biographical data section, Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ), Workplace Trust Survey (UWES) (Trust in the immediate manager sub-scale), and Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) was used in the present study. The data was analyzed by means of statistical techniques such as factor analysis, Pearson product-moment correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis.