The purpose of this paper is to reacquaint researchers and practitioners with Barnard's contributions to understanding of the moral conditions that underlie the authenticity of organizational leadership.
The paper identifies Barnard's insights on leadership and uses them as inputs to theorizing about authentic leadership.
As an outcome of theorizing, the paper identifies the conditions that are likely to lead to inauthentic, pseudo‐authentic or authentic leader behavior.
Examining authentic leadership from a historical perspective can open promising avenues for future research.
Leadership development programs should incorporate concepts of responsibility and conflicts of responsibility in order to provide executives with the knowledge base required for ethical decision making.
By placing contemporary discussion of authentic leadership in its proper historical context, scholars can draw on a wealth of existing theory to advance the study of authentic leadership.
