Empowering leadership: An examination of mediating mechanisms within a hierarchical structure

Vecchio, Robert P.; Justin, Joseph E.; Pearce, Craig L.

doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2010.03.014

Cited by 270 publications

(314 citation statements)

References 84 publications

(84 reference statements)

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“…EL has also shown a positive relationship with subordinates' performance (Vecchio et al, 2010). In accordance with Christen, Iyer, and Soberman (2006), here we distinguish between work effort (cf.…”

Section: Studysupporting

confidence: 77%

“…By this we mean that leadership activities to a greater extent occurs directly between the individual subordinate and his/her leader within a more traditional hierarchical context. This pattern was also noted by Vecchio et al (2010), who pointed out that "employees in governmental positions are not likely to be offered opportunities to be a part of a team culture because of inherent bureaucratic controls" (p. 531). Additionally, the municipality sector in Norway has been through a change during the last decade, involving the introduction of new management systems characterized by delegation and employee responsibility.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 65%

“…A number of studies have indicated a positive relationship between job satisfaction, defined by Locke (1976) as "a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one's job or job experience" (p. 1300), and EL, including Dewettinck and van Ameijde (2011), Konczak et al (2000), and Vecchio et al (2010). This leads to the first hypothesis:…”

Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although the field of leadership research has evolved considerably over the past decades, LMX has maintained its actuality as a relevant theoretical approach (Schriesheim, Wu, & Cooper, 2011). We also compared the subscales of ELS with transformational leadership (Bass, 1985), which is an important contemporary theory in leadership research (Avolio, Reichard, Hannah, Walumbwa, & Chan, 2009 Kark, Shamir, & Chen, 2003;Keller & Dansereau, 1995;Vecchio et al, 2010), and since they have demonstrated significant associations with psychological empowerment in previous research (e.g., Aryee & Chen, 2006;Bartram & Casimir, 2007;Boudrias et al, 2009). …”

Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The SLQII seems also largely to be related to team leadership or shared leadership (e.g., Pearce & Sims, 2002). Vecchio et al (2010) argued that work conditions generally do not "move in the more radical direction of creating a genuine self-managed team structure" (p. 531). This observation highlights the importance of studying EL at the individual level in more traditional hierarchical structures wherein leaders relate to individual employees to a greater extent than teams.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Empowering leadership: Construct clarification, conceptualization, and validation of a new scale

Amundsen

Martinsen

2014

The Leadership Quarterly

344

420

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In this paper we discuss key aspects of empowering leadership as a basis for conceptualizing and operationalizing the construct. The conceptualization resulted in eight behavioral manifestations arranged within three influence processes, which were investigated in a sample of 317 subordinates in Study 1. The results supported the validity and reliability of a two-dimensional, 18-item instrument, labeled the Empowering Leadership Scale (ELS).In Study 2 (N = 215) and Study 3 (N = 831) the factor structure of ELS was cross-validated in two independent samples from different work settings. Preliminary concurrent validation in Study 1 and 2 found that ELS had a positive relationship to several subordinate variables, among others self-leadership and psychological empowerment. In Study 3 ELS was compared with scales measuring leader-member exchange (LMX) and transformational leadership. Discriminant validity was supported, and moreover, ELS showed incremental validity beyond LMX and transformational leadership when predicting psychological empowerment. The notion of empowerment was introduced in the field of management in the 1980s, and seems based on a need for an organizational concept that could promote employee productivity (Bartunek & Spreitzer, 2006) relative to fundamental technological and commercial changes that took place both in businesses and the public sector (Fernandez & Moldogaziev, 2011;Hill & Huq, 2004). These changes led to, among others, increased customer/client orientation, more flexible, flattened, and decentralized organization designs, and improvements in quality and efficiency for most organizations. The nature of work has also changed substantially in the last decades by becoming more complex and cognitively demanding (Humphrey, Nahrgang, & Morgeson, 2007), and highly skilled and educated "knowledge workers" have become the core of a rapidly growing segment of the workforce (Parker, Wall, & Cordery, 2001). KeywordsIn this changing "landscape" empowering leadership (EL) has emerged as a particular form of leadership, distinct from other approaches such as directive, transactional, and transformational leadership (Pearce et al., 2003). At its core, employee empowerment involves enhanced individual motivation at work through the delegation of responsibility and authority to the lowest organizational level where a competent decision can be made (Conger & Kanungo, 1988;Thomas & Velthouse, 1990). As such, EL may generally be defined as (2000) noted that there is little theory focusing on the role of effective empowering leader behavior, which seems equally valid today. We therefore aimed to fill some of this lack and additionally identify key mediators of EL. Accordingly, the main purpose of the present paper is, at the individual level of analysis, (1) to theoretically underpin and define EL as guideline for (2) conceptualization and operationalization of the construct, (3) to identify central mediators, and (4) to build, refine, and validate a new instrument to measure the construct. We in...

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Section: Studysupporting

confidence: 77%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 65%