Effect of empowering leadership on employees' workplace loneliness: a moderated mediation model.

Background: Workplace loneliness has become a prevalent experience among employees in organizations; however, there is limited empirical research on how leaders can address and mitigate this issue. Drawing upon self-determination theory and empowering leadership theory, this study examines the impact of empowering leadership on workplace loneliness by exploring the mediator of role breadth self-efficacy and the moderator of leader-member conversational quality. Methods: A time-lagged research design was used, collecting data through a two-wave online survey involving 531 employees in Chinese public sectors. The participants consisted of 321 males and 210 females, with an average age of 35 years (SD = 7.36). Results: Our findings indicate that empowering leadership positively influences employees' role breadth self-efficacy, reducing their workplace loneliness. Moreover, leader-member conversational quality strengthens this indirect effect, suggesting that empowering leadership is more effective in reducing workplace loneliness when leader-member conversational quality is high. Conclusion: This study expands and enriches research on the antecedents of workplace loneliness from the leadership approach, providing valuable insights for organizations to implement interventions that effectively alleviate employees' workplace loneliness.

How Does Empowering Leadership Relate to Work Engagement? The Roles of Organisational Identification and Workplace Well-Being.

Scholars tend to believe that effective leadership contributes to facilitating employee work engagement. Based on social identity theory and self-determination theory, this study explored how empowering leadership affects employee work engagement through the mediating roles of organisational identification and workplace well-being. A sample of 3645 front-line employees in China participated in this study. A structural equation model analysis was performed to examine the hypothetical model. Sex, age, degree of education, wage income per month (RMB), and subjective social class were covariables. The results indicated that (a) empowering leadership was positively related to work engagement, (b) organisational identification and workplace well-being played a partial mediating role in the relationship, and (c) organisational identification and workplace well-being had a chain mediating effect on empowering leadership and work engagement. These findings advance the understanding of the effect of empowering leadership on employees' working attitudes and behaviours. They also contribute to potential interventions that boost employee work engagement.

Crafting a Job among Chinese Employees: The Role of Empowering Leadership and the Links to Work-Related Outcomes.

The present study aims to examine the process through which empowering leadership shapes employees' work engagement and in-role performance by facilitating job-crafting behaviors, specifically seeking resources, seeking challenges, and reducing demands. Based on the extensive data from 733 Chinese employees across various organizations located predominantly in Chongqing and Xi'an, China, we carried out different types of statistical analysis such as confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine the relationships among empowering leadership, specific job-crafting behaviors, work engagement and in-role performance, test our hypothesis and our conceptual model. The results from structural equation modeling (SEM) suggested that empowering leadership was positively related to employees' work engagement and in-role performance; empowering leadership was positively related to employees' job crafting (seeking resources, seeking challenges and reducing demands); seeking resources, seeking challenges and reducing demands were positively related to in-role performance, and seeking challenges and reducing demands were positively related to work engagement. In the relationship between empowering leadership and in-role performance, seeking resources serves as a mediating factor. Similarly, seeking challenges mediates the association between empowering leadership and both work engagement and in-role performance. Furthermore, reducing demands mediates the links between empowering leadership and both work engagement and in-role performance. The implications of these findings are subsequently discussed.

The impact of empowering and transformational leadership on innovative behaviour: the mediating role of psychological empowerment in health-care sector.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to test a four-variable research model using organizational behavior, social and technical systems, and leadership theories. This study set out to determine how different leadership philosophies, such as transformational leadership and empowering leadership, affected innovation. In addition, the model's mediating role for psychological empowerment was quantified. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: This study used a quantitative approach, which is primarily a questionnaire, to gather information from 320 health-care sector workers at four public hospitals in the Basrah Governorate. FINDINGS: The majority of the relationships in the research model were shown to be positive by data analysis outcomes. The findings also showed how crucial the mediating variable was in preserving the link between the independent and dependent variables. Discussions were made on the theoretical and practical ramifications and suggestions for additional research. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: This study concentrated on the application of contemporary leadership styles, gathered information on them and combined them into a single model to boost innovation. This study, which was conducted in the setting of the Iraqi health-care industry, stands out from previous studies because it used a large sample to provide conclusive and significant results, making it a valuable resource for academicians who seek to cultivate innovation.

Does meaningful work mediate the relationship between empowering leadership and mental health? Evidence from Malaysian SME employees.

Introduction: In Malaysia, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) account for more than half of all employment and 98.7% of all businesses. There is little research on empowering behaviors in SMEs, despite leadership empowerment being often practiced. Therefore, the study aims to investigate how empowering leadership affects employees' mental health. The study also reveals meaningful work's role in mediating the relationship between empowering leadership and employees' mental health. Methods: A stratified random sample approach was used to collect data from 516 employees of Malaysian SMEs. The data was analyzed, and the hypothesis was tested using structural equation modeling (AMOS 21.0) with bootstrap confidence intervals computed to evaluate the mediating effect. Results: The results demonstrate that empowering leadership significantly improves employees' mental health. Furthermore, the association between empowering leadership and mental health is partially mediated by meaningful work. Discussion: This study contributes to the present empowering leadership-meaningful work-mental health model for SME employees, which reduces stress and anxiety at the workplace and positively impacts psychological empowerment and their capacity to control their overall emotions in instances of success.

Leveraging Empowering Leadership to Improve Employees' Improvisational Behavior: The Role of Promotion Focus and Willingness to Take Risks.

Improvisational behavior is an individual's spontaneous and creative behavior in the face of emergencies, using existing material and emotional resources to respond quickly and effectively to uncertain situations. Despite increasing interest in this behavior, its antecedents remain unclear, with particular ambiguity regarding the relationship between empowering leadership and employee improvisational behavior. The present article addresses this ambiguity with the theory of reasoned action to examine whether the impact of empowering leadership on employees' improvisational behavior is determined by employees' attitudes toward such behavior. In this study, a multi-source design was adopted, and data (339 valid samples) were collected from five Internet companies in China's Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. Hierarchical regression and bootstrapping methods were used to test the hypotheses. The results reveal that (1) employees' promotion focus moderates the relationship between empowering leadership and improvisational behavior and (2) employees' willingness to take risks mediates the moderating effect of promotion focus. Our findings demonstrate employees' attitudinal utility in explaining when improvisational behavior is most likely to occur under empowering leadership.

Empowering leadership during the COVID-19 outbreak: Implications for work satisfaction and effectiveness in organizational teams.

The COVID-19 pandemic generated unprecedented challenges for social and organizational life. We set out to explore how empowering leadership and leadership support were affected as a result of the team-based organization starting to implement flexible and remote work practices after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. We collected data in a cross-lagged design and used the two-condition MEMORE mediation procedure to analyze data on work satisfaction and team effectiveness obtained just before and immediately after the COVID-19 outbreak in 34 organizational teams. Our results show that the COVID-19 outbreak did not significantly impact perceptions of empowering leadership or perceived leadership support. However, teams that experienced changes in empowering leadership also reported proportional changes in work satisfaction and effectiveness. Finally, we show that the association between empowering leadership and leadership support, on the one hand, and work satisfaction in teams, on the other hand, is moderated by team size, such that the strength of the association is higher in small rather than large organizational teams. We conclude by arguing that the team-based organization absorbed well the impact and disruptions associated with the COVID-19 outbreak. We also stress the role of empowering leadership as a driver of work satisfaction and the effectiveness of organizational teams.

Entrepreneurs' role overload and empowering leadership: A reciprocal relationship based on conservation of resources.

Introduction: Role overload is not new, but its increasing prevalence in recent years calls for further research. This study considers empowering leadership as a means of resource investment and proposes that it is exerted by entrepreneurs to reduce their role overload. This study adds clarity by revealing how entrepreneurs' role overload is mitigated via the intermediate mechanism of empowering leadership. Hypotheses are derived from conservation of resources theory. Methods: Data were collected from 315 entrepreneurs in China using a three-round questionnaire survey. Results: This study finds that entrepreneurs' previous experience of role overload positively relates to their current empowering leadership behavior and their previous empowering leadership behavior negatively relates to their current role overload, which implies a mediating role of empowering leadership. Specifically, the second stage of the indirect effect of previous role overload on current role overload through empowering leadership is moderated by top management team (TMT) heterogeneity. When TMT heterogeneity is higher, the negative indirect effect is stronger. Discussion: This study contributes to the idea of positive psychology and extends the scope of conservation of resources theory into the fields of entrepreneurship and leadership.

The Double-Sided Effect of Empowering Leadership on Constructive Voice Behavior: Focusing on the Mediating Effects of Task Significance and Task Overload.

Focusing on job characteristics, this study examined the double-sided effect of empowering leadership on constructive voice behavior. We obtained and analyzed a total of 294 questionnaire responses from pairs of subordinates and supervisors in various industries in Korea. The results supported our hypotheses that task significance and task overload partially mediate the relationship between empowering leadership and constructive voice behavior. Specifically, we found that empowering leadership can promote constructive voice behavior by inducing a recognition of task significance and can suppress constructive voice behavior by causing task overload. These results confirm that empowering leadership indirectly influences constructive voice behavior through job characteristics. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications and highlight directions for future research.

The effect of empowering leadership on miners' unsafe behavior: a cross-level chain mediation model.

Miners' unsafe behavior has always been a key issue in coal mine safety management. Numerous studies have shown that leadership is an important factor influencing miners' unsafe behavior. A cross-level structural model was constructed based on social cognitive theory, using psychological safety and safety climate as intermediary variables, to analyze the effect of empowering leadership on miners' unsafe behavior. Data were gathered from 272 coal miners on 59 working teams. Multilevel regression analysis and the Monte Carlo method were employed to analyze the influence of the empowering leadership on miners' unsafe behavior. The results showed that empowering leadership was negatively related to miners' unsafe behavior. Psychological safety and safety climate mediated the relationship between empowering leadership and miners' unsafe behavior, and also jointly mediated in the chain. These findings enrich existing research results on miners' unsafe behavior and provide a beneficial enlightenment to coal mine safety management.

Research on the influence of role stressors on unsafe behavior among construction workers in China.

Individuals' unsafe behavior is identified as one of the important reasons leading to construction industry accidents. The purpose of the present study is to explore the mechanism of role stressors' impact on unsafe behavior, the mediating role of psychological strain and the moderating role of empowering leadership among construction workers. The sample used for the analyses in this study includes 600 employees from 10 different construction companies in China. Bootstrap analysis was performed to explore the mediating role of psychology strain, and hierarchical linear regression analysis was performed to explore the moderating role of empowering leadership. The results showed that role stressors were positively related to unsafe behavior; psychology strain mediates the relationship between role stressors and unsafe behavior; and empowering leadership moderates the relationship between psychological strain and unsafe behavior. The findings indicate that empowering leadership can decrease unsafe behavior.

Empowering self-direction in return to work of employees with low and high levels of education: A qualitative comparative study.

BACKGROUND: Dutch legislation encourages active participation of employees in their return-to-work (RTW) process. Empowering leadership may support employees' self-direction in this process (i.e. by allowing and enabling their involvement in decision-making). OBJECTIVE: Building upon a previous study, we aimed to study (1) how representatives of a university, i.e. an employer for employees with high levels of education (EH), manage RTW, (2) the similarities and differences between the RTW management of employers (or representatives thereof) of employees with low (EL) and high levels of education, and (3) the degree to which the employers' roles resemble empowering leadership. METHODS: Qualitative methodology was applied. A thematic analysis of interview transcripts (rq1) was followed by a comparison of themes (rq2) and pattern matching (rq3). RESULTS: (1) EH tend to engage in dialogue and accommodate their employees as much as possible. (2) EL and EH showed several similarities, such as aiming to meet legal requirements on RTW management. Compared to EL, EH tend to focus more on facilitating employees. (3) Empowering leadership seems to be more common among EH. CONCLUSIONS: Compared to employees with low levels of education, those with high levels of education may be granted more opportunity to self-direct their RTW. The study results provide starting points for employers for employees with both low and high levels of education who aim to enable employees' self-direction in RTW, and help them to develop empowering leadership styles.

The relationship between empowering leadership and radical creativity.

Drawing on the conservation of resource theory, we theorized and tested a serial mediation model linking empowering leadership with employee radical creativity through job control and willingness to take risks. We tested our hypotheses using data collected from a time-lagged and multisource survey of 385 employees in 84 research and development teams from 20 different companies. The results demonstrated that empowering leadership had a positive indirect effect on employee radical creativity via job control and willingness to take risks, and the error management climate was found to strengthen this indirect effect. Theoretical and practical implications are also provided in the discussion section.

The Impact of Empowering Leadership on Employee Improvisation: Roles of Challenge-Hindrance Stress and Psychological Availability.

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to explore the effect of empowering leadership on employee improvisation, including the mediating roles of challenge stress and hindrance stress as well as the moderating role of psychological availability. Methods: Four proposed hypotheses were tested using hierarchical regression analysis and the bootstrapping method by reference to two waves of data collected in 2021 from 248 employees working for organizations located in southern China. Results: The results showed that empowering leadership had a positive effect on employee improvisation, which was mediated by challenge stress and hindrance stress. That is, empowering leadership promoted challenge stress and decreased hindrance stress, thereby stimulating employee improvisation. Furthermore, psychological availability strengthened the positive effect of challenge stress on employee improvisation and weakened the negative effect of hindrance stress on employee improvisation. Psychological availability also moderated the indirect relationships among empowering leadership, challenge/hindrance stress and employee improvisation. Conclusion: In theoretical terms, this study identifies a new antecedent of employee improvisation: empowering leadership. This study also advances knowledge concerning the mechanism by which empowering leadership exerts its influence by drawing on cognitive transactional theory. Moreover, this study's exploration of the moderating role of psychological availability enriches the literature concerning the boundary conditions of the challenge-hindrance stress model. In practical terms, this study provides useful insights that can help organizations activate employee improvisation and manage employees' work pressure.

Impact of empowering leadership on emotional exhaustion: A controlled interventional study in a large French university hospital complex.

AIM: The aim of this study is to assess the effect of a systemic intervention on the evolution of empowering leadership and emotional exhaustion in a university hospital sub-centre compared to a control sub-centre, both being part of a large French university hospital complex. BACKGROUND: Empowering leadership is a promising strategy for developing hospital team engagement and performance. However, the bureaucratic functioning of large hospitals, characterized by a managerial culture of control and a stratified organization, can be a barrier to empowering leadership. METHODS: The intervention included empowering leadership training, direct field experimentation of empowering leadership and coaching, involving all the sub-centre hierarchical levels for 12 months. Data were collected before and after the intervention. A total of 441 and 310 participants were, respectively, included in the intervention and control sub-centres. RESULTS: Empowering leadership was decreased, and emotional exhaustion was increased in the control sub-centre, while the scores remained stable in the intervention sub-centre. The increased emotional exhaustion in the control sub-centre could partially be explained by the change in empowering leadership. CONCLUSION: In a context of decreased empowering leadership and increased emotional exhaustion, the intervention had a protective effect. Implications for the design of future interventions were discussed. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: This study unequivocally showed the benefit of transforming hospital management towards empowering leadership, to prevent increased emotional exhaustion. REGISTRATION NUMBER: This study is registered on ClinicalTrials.gov on 4 July 2019 (NCT04010773).

Can empowering leadership promote employees' pro-environmental behavior? Empirical analysis based on psychological distance.

Leadership styles, especially empowering leadership, affect the psychological relationship between employees and organizations, and then affect employees' positive behavior in the organization. In this research, we studied the effects of empowering leadership and psychological distance on employees' pro-environmental behavior and explored the mechanism of green organizational climate (GOC). By adopting correlation analysis, statistical analysis, and regression analysis, we conducted a multisource field study of 873 valid employee questionnaires to verify our theoretical model. The results showed that empowering leadership had a significant positive impact on psychological distance and employees' pro-environmental behavior; and psychological distance played a partly intermediation role in the relationship between empowering leadership and employees' pro-environmental behavior. Moreover, GOC can promote employees' pro-environmental behavior, but it cannot regulate between psychological distance and employees' pro-environmental behavior. The findings obtained some intriguing insights that could help to better guide employees toward pro-environmental behavior.

How empowering leadership influences medical workers' work-family conflict in the post-pandemic era: A moderated mediation model of leadership "black box".

After experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic, the status and mechanisms of leadership, and the challenges for medical workers in terms of family-work conflicts, have caused widespread concern. In the post-pandemic era, based on role theory and the stressor-detachment model, this paper seeks to break the "black box" of negative effects that can be caused by leadership, research the mechanism and boundary conditions of those negative effects, and explore factors to reduce those negative effects. We recruited 1,010 Chinese medical workers fighting COVID-19 on the frontline. Our study results showed that there was a significant negative correlation between empowering leadership and work-family conflict, and this relationship was completely mediated by role stress, while psychological detachment moderated the relationship between role stress and work-family conflict. Moreover, psychological detachment moderated the mediating effect of empowering leadership on work-family conflict through role stress. Therefore, higher levels of psychological detachment were less conducive to medical workers' family-work conflict. This study has important theoretical significance and practical value for revealing the negative effects and mechanisms of empowering leadership and for medical workers to better deal with work-family relations.

Toxic Leadership and Empowering Leadership: Relations with Work Motivation.

Purpose: The present study aims to verify the association between two opposing models of leadership, toxic and empowering, and the different dimensions of work motivation. Participants and Methods: Three questionnaires (Toxic Leadership Scale, Empowering Leadership Questionnaire, and Multidimensional Work Motivation Scale) were applied to 408 workers. Cluster analysis was performed. Results: Cluster analysis produced eight clusters based on the different configurations of leadership dimensions, namely coercive, centralizer, false paternalistic, toxic role model, coach, narcissistic-empowering, toxic, and empowering. Those clusters relate differently to work motivation dimensions. Conclusion: The profiles with higher scores in empowering leadership dimensions are more generally related to autonomous regulation (identified and intrinsic work motivation). The profiles with higher toxic leadership dimensions are more related to amotivation and controlled regulation (extrinsic work motivation). One profile stood out: the narcissistic-empowering profile that combines high scores in narcissistic leadership and empowering leadership dimensions. This profile unexpectedly relates significantly to autonomous regulation. This study contributed to the knowledge of the work motivation dimensions concerning empowerment and toxic leadership. Therefore, it contributes to deepening the nomological network of the concepts and providing inputs to human resource processes suitable to improving the organizational results and the workers' quality of life.

The Impact of Empowering Leadership on Preschool Teachers' Job Well-Being in the Context of COVID-19: A Perspective Based on Job Demands-Resources Model.

The COVID-19 epidemic in the early 2020s is making a big difference for educators around the world. For the past 2 years, the curriculum and working patterns have been overturned in response to this epidemic, which has brought unprecedented challenges and physical and mental stress to preschool teachers. This situation can have a drastic impact on the acquisition of job well-being for preschool teachers. During this special time, the leader's management style will also influence the psychological feelings of the organization's staff. For example, empowering leadership is an important management function that empowers subordinates, emphasizes the meaning of work, promotes participation in decision-making, and expresses confidence. Therefore, in the current COVID-19 pandemic context, it is worthwhile to explore the topic of empowering leadership to ensure preschool teachers' well-being, by balancing work demands and work resources in a way that facilitates a sense of organizational support and reduces job stress, while relatively fewer studies have been conducted on the relationship between preschool teachers' job well-being in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on this, this study proposed a research model from the theoretical perspective of the Job Demands-Resources Model to explore the influence of empowering leadership, sense of organizational support, and job stress on preschool teachers' job well-being in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. To achieve the purpose of this study, a convenience sampling method was used to invite 500 preschool teachers in China to complete a questionnaire survey, and after removing invalid samples and data with incomplete answers, reliability and validity analyses and model fit tests were conducted, followed by a structural equation modeling method for path analysis. The results of the study showed that (1) in the kindergarten work context, empowering leadership showed a significant negative effect on job stress, but a significant positive effect on job well-being and a significant positive effect on sense of organizational support. (2) Sense of organizational support had a significant negative effect on job stress but a significant positive effect on preschool teachers' job well-being. (3) Preschool teachers' job stress and job well-being showed a significant negative effect. The contribution of this study was to explore the relationship between understanding leadership empowerment and preschool teachers' job well-being in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic based on the Job Demands-Resources Model, which will facilitate educational organizational contexts to empower preschool teachers to work harder to reduce their job stress as well as enhance their sense of organizational support and promote the acquisition of job well-being.

Managing Organizational Inertia: Indonesian Family Business Perspective.

The ability to transform on a regular basis is critical in the effort to adapt to external challenges; however, changes to an organization's fundamental characteristics may increase the likelihood of failure. Because of this, organizational restructuring efforts appear to engender cynicism, which appears to be one of the most significant obstacles facing contemporary businesses, particularly in this area. Organizational inertia is the term used to describe this aversion to change, as well as the desire to maintain the current status quo. A new organizational culture capable of combating the incidence of organizational stagnation is required by massive social, economic, and technological difficulties, and firms that employ the concept of empowering leadership will be able to meet these challenges. For the purposes of this study, a framework for discussing the phenomena of organizational cynicism was developed and implemented.