In recent years, China’s construction industry has been developing rapidly, so the requirements for the comprehensive quality and innovation ability of employees have become higher and higher. However, at present, the quality of employees in China’s construction enterprises is generally low, and the innovative vitality and efficiency of employees are not high. Moreover, the long working hours and high intensity of the construction industry have led to a rising trend of employee turnover year by year. Therefore, how to choose the right leadership style, enhance employees’ organizational commitment and innovative behavior has become the core of human resource management work in construction companies.
Based on the social exchange theory, COR theory, and social identity theory, this study aims to investigate the impact of authentic leadership on organizational commitment and innovative behaviors through organizational identification in China’s construction industry. And positive psychological capital was added as a moderating variable. Total of 393 employees and 62 teams from construction enterprises were used as survey samples, and multi-level data analysis using SPSS 26.0 and Mplus 8.0 was employed. The results showed that authentic leadership was positively related with organizational commitment and innovative behavior while authentic leadership enhanced organizational commitment and innovative behavior through organizational identification. Moderating effects of positive psychological capital was also found. This study discusses the theoretical and practical implications of these results. First, This study extends the study of the outcome variables of authentic leadership in the construction company by studying organizational commitment and innovative behavior of employees from the organizational level across levels. Second, This study uses authentic leadership in the Chinese context as an entry point for research to complement research on the impact of authentic leadership styles on employees’ organizational commitment. Third, this study expanded the mediating role of organizational identification between authentic leadership and innovation behavior. Fourth, this paper identified the moderating role of psychological capital between authentic leadership and organizational commitment and innovative behavior in the Chinese context, and the findings complement related research on psychological capital. Also, this paper puts forward the recommendations for human resource management. And considers the limitations and possible future research directions.