Authentic with students, masked with colleagues: conceptualizing teacher workplace authenticity impact model (TWAIM): a qualitative study

Purpose Workplace authenticity is the degree to which employees feel connected with their true selves in work spheres. This study aims to elucidate the positive outcomes of workplace authenticity among secondary school teachers and its cushioning effect against adverse organizational conditions leading to job dissatisfaction and burnout syndromes. Further, we examine how authentic leadership and organizational politics influence workplace authenticity outcomes. Design/methodology/approach An open-ended essay questionnaire was used to collect and analyse 30 qualitative data points from a collectivistic country, India. We followed open, axial and selective coding with Gioia methodology for analysis and conceptualized the teacher workplace authenticity impact model (TWAIM). Findings The study finds that workplace authenticity helps teachers nurture job motivators such as psychological safety, person-organization fit and affect-based trust, and it acts as a buffer against workplace criticism and work strain. Authentic leadership amplifies the positive attributes of workplace authenticity, while organizational politics weakens it. Teachers find themselves more authentic when interacting with students than with colleagues. We also find that junior teachers experience more inauthenticity in the workplace, which enkindles quitting intentions. Originality/value The TWAIM integrates analytically derived concepts developed through systematic qualitative analysis with the Job Demands-Resources framework to explain how outcomes of workplace authenticity are connected to job satisfaction and burnout syndromes among secondary school teachers. Although the model is qualitative, the transparency in articulating its analytical procedures enables conceptual replicability in similar educational contexts.