Empowerment at work: An empirical study on Empowering Leadership and Psychological Empowerment
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/JPM.2020.004Keywords
Empowering leadership, Psychological Empowerment, Portuguese Workers, Pearson’s correlation coefficient, Linear regressionAbstract
Research Purpose: The aim of the present study is threefold. First, it intends to describe workers’ psychological empowerment in a sample of Portuguese workers. Secondly, to describe empowering leadership perceived by employees about their hierarchical superiors. Finally, to examine the relationships between psychological empowerment dimensions and empowering leadership dimensions.
Method: A cross-sectional survey design was adopted with a convenience sample of Portuguese workers (N = 125). Cronbach’s alpha was utilized to examine the reliability of the dimensions. Pearson’s correlation coefficient and simple linear regressions were used to analyze the association between empowering leadership and psychological empowerment dimensions.
Measuring Instruments: Spreitzer’s Psychological Instrument and the Empowering Leadership Scale were administered.
Main findings: The results revealed significant and positive correlations between empowering leadership and psychological empowerment dimensions, especially employee self-determination.
Implications/limitations: This research demonstrates that leaders can have an active role in increasing employee psychological empowerment, which can be an antecedent of positive employee attitudes and work outcomes. It is suggested in future studies to use more extensive and more representative samples. Furthermore, longitudinal and experimental research designs will verify if there is a significant causal relationship between empowering leadership and psychological empowerment.
Value of the paper: This study empirically confirms that empowering leadership is associated with employees’ psychological empowerment among Portuguese workers.
Keywords: empowering leadership, psychological empowerment, Portuguese workers, Pearson’s correlation coefficient, linear regression
Type of paper: Research paper
References
Amundsen, S. and Martinsen, Ø. L. (2013) ‘Empowering leadership: Construct clarification, conceptualization, and validation of a new scale’, Leadership Quarterly. Elsevier Inc., 25(3), pp. 487–511. doi: 10.1016/j.leaqua.2013.11.009.
Amundsen, S. and Martinsen, Ø. L. (2015) ‘Linking Empowering Leadership to Job Satisfaction, Work Effort, and Creativity: The Role of Self-Leadership and Psychological Empowerment’, Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 22(3), pp. 304–323. doi: 10.1177/1548051814565819.
Arnold, J. A., Arad, S., Rhoades, J. A. and Drasgow, F. (2000) ‘The empowering leadership questionnaire: The construction and validation of a new scale for measuring leader behaviors’, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 21(3), pp. 249–269. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1099-1379(200005)21:3<249::AID-JOB10>3.0.CO;2-#.
Carless, S. (2004) ‘Does psychological empowerment mediate the relationship between psychological climate and job satisfaction?’, Journal of Applied Psychology, 18(4), pp. 405–425.
Chen, G., Sharma, P. N., Edinger, S. K., Shapiro, D. L. and Farh, J. L. (2011) ‘Motivating and Demotivating Forces in Teams: Cross-Level Influences of Empowering Leadership and Relationship Conflict’, Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(3), pp. 541–557. doi: 10.1037/a0021886.
Chiang, C. F. and Hsieh, T. S. (2012) ‘The impacts of perceived organizational support and psychological empowerment on job performance: The mediating effects of organizational citizenship behavior’, International Journal of Hospitality Management. Elsevier Ltd, 31(1), pp. 180–190. doi: 10.1016/j.ijhm.2011.04.011.
Conger, J. A. and Kanungo, R. N. (1988) ‘The Empowerment Process: Integrating Theory and Practice.’, Academy of Management Review, 13(3), pp. 471–482. doi: 10.5465/amr.1988.4306983.
Dewettinck, K. and Van Ameijde, M. (2011) ‘Linking leadership empowerment behaviour to employee attitudes and behavioural intentions: Testing the mediating role of psychological empowerment’, Personnel Review, 40(3), pp. 284–305. doi: 10.1108/00483481111118621.
Fong, K. H. and Snape, E. (2015) ‘Empowering leadership, psychological empowerment and employee outcomes: Testing a multi-level mediating model’, British Journal of Management, 26(1), pp. 126–138. doi: 10.1111/1467-8551.12048.
Heckathorn, D. D. (2011) ‘Comment: Snowball versus respondent-driven sampling’, Sociological Methodology, 41(1), pp. 355–366. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9531.2011.01244.x.
Heckathorn, D. D. and Cameron, C. J. (2017) ‘Network Sampling: From Snowball and Multiplicity to Respondent-Driven Sampling’, Annual Review of Sociology, 43(1), pp. 101–119. doi: 10.1146/annurev-soc-060116-053556.
Kirkman, B. L. and Rosen, B. (1999) ‘Beyond Self-Management: Antecedents and Consequences of Team Empowerment’, Academy of Management Journal, 42(1), pp. 58–74.
De Klerk, S. and Stander, M. W. (2014) ‘Leadership Empowerment Behaviour, Work Engagement and Turnover Intention: the Role of Psychological Empowerment’, Journal of Positive Management, 5(3), p. 28. doi: 10.12775/jpm.2014.018.
Koberg, C. S., Boss, R. W., Senjem, J. C. and Goodman, E. A. (1999) ‘Antecedents and Outcomes of Empowerment empirical: Evidence from the health care industry’, Group and Organization Management, 24(1), pp. 71–91. doi: 10.1177/1059601199241005.
Konczak, L. J., Stelly, D. J. and Trusty, M. L. (2000) ‘Defining and measuring empowering leader behaviors: Development of an upward feedback instrument’, Educational and Psychological Measurement, 60(2), pp. 301–313. doi: 10.1177/00131640021970420.
Kraimer, M. L., Seibert, S. E. and Liden, R. C. (1999) ‘Psychological empowerment as a multidimensional construct: A test of construct validity’, Educational and psychological measurement, 59(1), pp. 127–142. doi: 10.1177/0013164499591009.
Kundu, S. C., Kumar, S. and Gahlawat, N. (2019) ‘Empowering leadership and job performance: mediating role of psychological empowerment’, Management Research Review, 42(5), pp. 605–624. doi: 10.1108/MRR-04-2018-0183.
Martínez-Córcoles, M., Schöbel, M., Gracia, F. J., Tomás, I. and Peiró, J. M. (2012) ‘Linking empowering leadership to safety participation in nuclear power plants: A structural equation model’, Journal of Safety Research, 43(3), pp. 215–221. doi: 10.1016/j.jsr.2012.07.002.
Mónico, L., Salvador, A., dos Santos, N. R., Pais, L. and Semedo, C. (2019) ‘Liderança Tóxica e Empoderadora: Estudo de Validação de Medidas em Amostra Portuguesa’, Revista Iberoamericana de diagnóstico y evaluación/e avaliação psicológica, 4(53), pp. 129–140. doi: 10.21865/RIDEP53.4.10.
Quinn, R. E. and Spreitzer, G. M. (1997) ‘Seven Questions Every Leader Should Consider’, Organizational Dynamics, 26(2), pp. 37–49. doi: 10.1016/S0090-2616(97)90004-8.
Raub, S. and Robert, C. (2013) ‘Empowerment, Organizational Commitment, and Voice Behavior in the Hospitality Industry: Evidence from a Multinational Sample’, Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 54(2), pp. 136–148. doi: 10.1177/1938965512457240.
Santos, J., Gonçalves, G., Orgambídez Ramos, A., Borrego Alés, Y. and Mendoza Sierra, M. (2014) ‘Adaptação da escala de Empowerment Psicológico de Spreitzer numa amostra portuguesa’, Avaliaçao Psicologica: Interamerican Journal of Psychological Assessment, 13(3), pp. 325–332.
Seibert, S. E., Silver, S. R. and Randolph, W. A. (2004) ‘Taking empowerment to the next level: a multiple-level model of empowerment, performance and satisfaction’, Academy of Management Journal, 47(3), pp. 332–349. doi: 10.1145/2071639.2071650.
Seibert, S. E., Wang, G. and Courtright, S. H. (2011) ‘Antecedents and Consequences of Psychological and Team Empowerment in Organizations: A Meta-Analytic Review’, Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(5), pp. 981–1003. doi: 10.1037/a0022676.
Sharma, P. N. and Kirkman, B. L. (2015) ‘Leveraging Leaders: A Literature Review and Future Lines of Inquiry for Empowering Leadership Research’, Group and Organization Management, 40(2), pp. 193–237. doi: 10.1177/1059601115574906.
Spreitzer, G. M. (1995) ‘Psychological Empowerment in the Workplace: Dimensions, Measurement, and Validation’, Academy of Management Journal, 38(5), pp. 1442–1465. doi: 10.5465/256865.
Spreitzer, G. M. (2008) ‘Taking Stock: A Review of More Than Twenty Years of Research on Empowerment at Work’, in Organizational Behavior Handbook, pp. 54–72.
Srivastava, A., Bartol, K. M. and Locke, E. A. (2006) ‘Empowering Leadership in Management Teams: Effects on knowledge sharing, efficacy and performance’, Academy of Management Journal, 49(6), pp. 1239–1251.
Tabachnick, B. G. and Fidell, L. S. (2007) Using Multivariate Statistics. 7th Editio, Boston: Pearson Allyn and Bacon. 7th Editio. Edited by Pearson. Boston.
Taber, K. S. (2018) ‘The Use of Cronbach ’ s Alpha When Developing and Reporting Research Instruments in Science Education’, Research in Science Education. Research in Science Education, 48(6), pp. 1273–1296. doi: 10.1007/s11165-016-9602-2.
Teixeira, A., Nogueira, M. A. and Alves, P. (2016) ‘Empoderamento psicológico em enfermagem: tradução, adaptação e validação do “Psychological Empowerment Instrument”’, Revista Portuguesa de Enfermagem de Saúde Mental, 16(16), pp. 27–33. doi: 10.19131/rpesm.0154.
Thomas, K. W. and Velthouse, B. A. (1990) ‘Cognitive Elements of Empowerment: An “Interpretive” Model of Intrinsic Task Motivation’, Academy of Management Review, 15(4), pp. 666–681. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10945/45984.
Tripathi, N. and Bharadwaja, M. (2020) ‘Empowering Leadership and Psychological Health: The Mediating Role of Psychological Empowerment’, Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 32(3), pp. 97–121. doi: 10.1007/s10672-020-09349-9.
Wilkinson, A. (1998) ‘Empowerment: theory and practice’, Personnel Review, 27(1), pp. 40–56.
Xue, Y., Bradley, J. and Liang, H. (2011) ‘Team climate, empowering leadership, and knowledge sharing’, Journal of Knowledge Management, 15(2), pp. 299–312. doi: 10.1108/13673271111119709.
Zhang, X. and Bartol, K. M. (2010) ‘Linking empowering leadership and employee creativity: the influence of psychological empowerment, intrinsic motivation, and creative process engagement’, Academy of Management Journal, 53(1), pp. 107–128. doi: 10.5465/amj.2010.48037118.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Positive Management
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Copyright
Articles submitted to the journal should not have been published before in their current or substantially similar form, or be under consideration for publication with another journal. Authors submitting articles for publication warrant that the work is not an infringement of any existing copyright and will indemnify the publisher against any breach of such warranty. For ease of dissemination and to ensure proper policing of use, papers and contributions become the legal copyright of the publisher unless otherwise agreed.
Plagiarism and ghostwriting
In response to the issue of plagiarism and ghostwriting the editors of the Journal of Positive Management has introduced the following rules to counteract these phenomena:
1. Contributors should be aware of their responsibility for a content of manuscripts.
2. Collective authors are obliged to reveal the contribution and an affiliation of each author (i.e. who is an author of specified part of a paper).
3. Any act of dishonesty will be denounced, the editors will inform appropriate institutions about the situation and give evidence of all cases of misconduct and unethical behaviour.
4. The editors may ask contributors for financial disclosure (i.e. contribution of specified institutions).
Stats
Number of views and downloads: 464
Number of citations: 0
