Empowering leadership: A meta‐analytic examination of incremental contribution, mediation, and moderation

Lee, Allan; Willis, Sara; Tian, Amy Wei

doi:10.1002/job.2220

Cited by 274 publications

(398 citation statements)

References 99 publications

(218 reference statements)

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“…Future research should explore whether this pattern of results is the same for other employee outcomes. For example, a recent meta‐analysis found a stronger indirect effect between empowering leadership and in‐role performance via psychological empowerment compared with trust in the leader (Lee, Willis, & Tian, ). This might be taken to suggest that the predictive validity of social exchange and motivational theories might be contingent on the outcome under study; social exchange theory might be better able to explain the interactive effects of LMX quality and LMX importance, via felt obligation, on OCB and motivation the effects via empowerment on in‐role performance.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Beyond relationship quality: The role of leader–member exchange importance in leader–follower dyads

Lee

Thomas

Martin

et al. 2019

J Occupat & Organ Psyc

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In this paper, we introduce a novel construct, leader–member exchange (LMX) importance, which we position as a meta‐perception indicating whether followers view their LMX relationship as personally important or valuable to them. Based on social exchange theory, we examine the extent to which the obligation followers feel towards their leader depends jointly on the quality and the importance of the LMX relationship. We examine how LMX importance influences the process through which LMX quality affects employees’ level of organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) by focusing on felt obligation (a measure of followers’ reciprocity obligation in the social exchange process) as a mediating variable. Across two studies, we found that high levels of both LMX quality and LMX importance interacted to engender a greater feeling of obligation in followers to repay the perceived favourable exchanges with their leader. Felt obligation predicted leader‐rated OCB, demonstrating support for our hypothesized moderated mediation model. However, psychological empowerment, when included alongside felt obligation (in Study 2), did not mediate the LMX‐OCB relationship. Overall, our findings extend the focus of LMX theory beyond the confines of LMX quality to incorporate the importance of the LMX relationship. Practitioner points Leaders should be aware that followers vary in the extent to which they perceive the leader–follower relationship to be personally important. As such, they may decide to invest heavily in helping followers understand that the relationship is instrumental for their success at work. Leaders should invest not only in trying to build positive relationships, but also in establishing the importance of these relationships. Doing so will maximize the benefits of developing a high‐quality relationship. Followers appear to be more willing to reciprocate when they perceive a high‐quality relationship with the leader and one when they perceive the relationship to be important. Thus, managers should be aware that the norm of reciprocity may vary depending on how important followers perceive the relationship to be and leaders may need to find other ways to motivate employees who do not see the relationship as important. When followers do not see the leader–follower relationship as important, managers should avoid trying to engage in reciprocity contingent influence tactics and/or try to change followers’ perceptions of the importance of the relationship.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Beyond relationship quality: The role of leader–member exchange importance in leader–follower dyads

Lee

Thomas

Martin

et al. 2019

J Occupat & Organ Psyc

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Empowering leadership differs from transformational leadership in that it explicitly encourages autonomy, control, and independence (Lee, Willis, & Tian, ). It has been found to positively shape proactivity, which is not surprising given that proactive behavior is self‐initiated.…”

Section: Social Context Factors As Antecedents Of Proactive Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

How does the social context fuel the proactive fire? A multilevel review and theoretical synthesis

et al. 2019

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Summary The role of social context (e.g., leadership, team climate, and organizational support) in shaping employee proactive behavior has received considerable attention and has been investigated across multiple forms of proactive behavior. However, the research has not been well integrated. In this review, we adopt a multilevel approach to synthesize what is known about how social context factors influence employees' proactive behavior, as well as what mechanisms underpin these effects. Our analyses show that leader‐, team‐, and organization‐related social context factors mainly influence employee proactivity through shaping “reason to,” “can do,” and “energized to” states (i.e., proactive motivational states) via individual‐, team‐, and cross‐level processes. That has been most frequently investigated is the effect of the discretionary social context, particularly leadership, on proactive behavior. We also review the interaction effects between social context factors and other factors on employee proactive behavior and found inconsistent support for the motivational‐fit perspective that stimuli with the same directions enhance each other's effect. We offer a research agenda to advance theoretical insights on this important topic.

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“…Second, empowering leadership research has primarily focused on consequences of empowering leadership, while overlooking its antecedents (Cheong, Yammarino, Dionne, Spain, & Tsai, ; Lee, Willis, & Tian, ; Sharma & Kirkman, ). For instance, in their review examining the effectiveness of empowering leadership, Cheong et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining why employee proactive personality influences empowering leadership: The roles of cognition‐ and affect‐based trust

Han

Harold

Cheong

2019

J Occupat & Organ Psyc

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We integrate followership theory and trust theory to understand the role of employees' proactivity on their leaders' attitudes, cognitions, and behaviours. We propose that (1) employees' proactive personality engenders their leaders' cognition‐ and affect‐based trust, which in turn positively influences empowering leadership; (2) the indirect effects of proactive personality on empowering leadership via cognition‐ and affect‐based trust are contingent on the level of employee task performance and organizational citizenship behaviour, respectively; and (3) the indirect effect of proactive personality on empowering leadership via affect‐ (cognition‐) based trust is stronger when the level of cognition‐ (affect‐) based trust is high rather than low. We conducted two‐wave study, with a sample of 116 supervisor–employee dyads from a large petrochemical firm in South Korea to test proposed effects. Results suggest that leaders' affect‐based trust, but not cognition‐based trust, served to mediate the effect of proactive personality on empowering leadership. Moreover, the results further support that the positive mediation of leaders' affect‐based trust on empowering leadership was present when leaders' cognition‐based trust was high, but not when it was low. Implications for future research are discussed. Practitioner points Leaders report a greater level of trust in employees with a more proactive personality. Leaders are more likely to empower employees in whom they have higher levels of both affect‐based and cognition‐based trust; in other words, employees who they like more and believe to be more competent. To help promote empowering, organizations might consider selecting on the basis of proactive personality and fostering a culture that promotes employee proactivity.

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Empowering leadership: A meta‐analytic examination of incremental contribution, mediation, and moderation

Cited by 274 publications

References 99 publications

Beyond relationship quality: The role of leader–member exchange importance in leader–follower dyads

Beyond relationship quality: The role of leader–member exchange importance in leader–follower dyads

How does the social context fuel the proactive fire? A multilevel review and theoretical synthesis

Examining why employee proactive personality influences empowering leadership: The roles of cognition‐ and affect‐based trust

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