THE EFFECTS OF GOLF COACHES? AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP AND TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP ON LEADER-MEMBER EXCHANGE AND ATHLETE?S PERCEIVED PERFORMANCE

Leadership is a competency that every leader should possess to continuously develop his/her organisation or members. Studies have examined relation-oriented authentic leadership and goal-oriented transformational leadership in the field of sport; however, scant studies have addressed the quality and effectiveness of the interrelationship between these two leadership styles. This study attempted to empirically verify the structural relationship between golf coaches??? authentic leadership and transformational leadership and leader-member exchange (LMX) and perceived athlete performance. Participants were 205 golfers who had participated in an amateur golf championship and who were selected from 10 private golf academies located in Daejeon and the Chungcheongbuk Province in South Korea. Data were collected using a questionnaire, and frequency, confirmatory factor, reliability, correlation, hierarchical regression and structural equation model analyses were conducted using SPSS version 20.0 and AMOS 20.0. Results showed that both authentic and transformational leadership had a positive effect on LMX, while authentic leadership and not transformational leadership had a positive effect on athlete???s perceived performance. Results also showed that LMX had no significant effect on athlete???s perceived performance. The implications of the effect of authentic and transformational leadership on LMX and perceived athlete performance are discussed.