| This study aimed to explicate an organization's authenticity in public relations, develop a measurement for authenticity as perceived by publics, and examine the effects of authenticity on the outcomes of relationships between organizations and publics. Through a multidisciplinary literature review, this study proposed two constructs of perceived authenticity: awareness and consistency. Authenticity was defined in this study as the publics' perception of the extent to which an organization is aware of its organizational core values and communicates and acts with its stakeholders in accordance with these values. This study hypothesized that authenticity would have an effect on transparency, trust, and distrust in organizational relationships and tested how those links also affect commitment and switching intention. An online survey of 789 respondents was conducted using existing organizations. The results of EFA and CFA indicated that a two-factor correlated measurement model was valid and reliable. The path models using SEM showed that consistency was more closely related to the outcomes of public relationships than awareness. Only consistency was positively associated with transparency, and both awareness and consistency were positively associated with trust. Whereas consistency was negatively associated with distrust, awareness was positively associated with distrust. Unlike trust, distrust did not show any indirect effects on the links between authenticity and commitment or switching intention and between transparency and the two variables. This study demonstrated how each authenticity construct affected the outcomes of public relationships and discussed the resultant different effects of authenticity, trust, and distrust on those qualities of public relationships. |
