Authentic Leaders and Business Tourism: An Exploration of Authentic Relationships

With increasing global accessibility, business travel has become a key mechanism to share knowledge across modernist nation borders. Such business travel typically includes conferences, training events, meetings, pitches, and working retreats. Yet, at the end of each of these activities, the rate of continued knowledge sharing, and network establishment likely diminishes. This chapter explores the role of authentic leaders and authentic relationships as a catalyst to create meaningful exchanges of knowledge and a genuine desire to maintain relationships after the business tourism activity ends. The implications, if founded, include a need to train and develop authentic leader behaviors for employees who are likely to engage in business tourism activities. The effect? Higher creativity and innovation, more knowledge sharing, and better cross-cultural connectivity.