Leveraging Leaders

Abstract

We review and synthesize the empowering leadership literature and, as a result, suggest two new provocative lines of inquiry directing future research. Based on a set of testable propositions, we first encourage researchers to answer the question of why empowering leadership occurs. Second, we encourage researchers to explore less positive and unintended, negative outcomes of empowering leadership. To identify opportunities for future work along these two lines, we use four theoretical perspectives including (1) person-situation interactions, (2) followership theory, (3) contingency approaches to leadership, and, (4) the too-much-of-a-good-thing effect. As a result, we set an agenda for the next decade of research on empowering leadership.

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

“…Scholars and practitioners alike recognize that in increasingly complex workplace landscapes, where the pace of work and need for adaptation and innovation are also increasing (Bresman & Zellmer-Bruhn, 2013;Ilgen & Pulakos, 1999), leaders may not feasibly be able to make all work decisions on their own nor micromanage all work processes. Providing employees with greater discretion over their work, enhancing the meaningfulness of employees' work, and involving employees in decision-making are viewed as solutions for ensuring work is completed at an appropriate pace, so that organizations can keep up with external demands (Sharma & Kirkman, 2015;Srivastava, Bartol, & Locke, 2006). Previous research on empowering leadership supports that the returns of empowering leadership are mostly positive and advantageous (Chen, Sharma, Edinger, Shapiro, & Farh, 2011;Lee et al, 2018;Srivastava et al, 2006;Vecchio, Justin, & Pearce, 2010;Zhang & Bartol, 2010).…”

“…Previous research on empowering leadership supports that the returns of empowering leadership are mostly positive and advantageous (Chen, Sharma, Edinger, Shapiro, & Farh, 2011;Lee et al, 2018;Srivastava et al, 2006;Vecchio, Justin, & Pearce, 2010;Zhang & Bartol, 2010). That said, scholars acknowledge that there may be risks involved with empowering and that leaders may be reticent to empower their followers or to empower certain followers (Hakimi et al, 2010;Sharma & Kirkman, 2015). For instance, empowered employees may make mistakes, turn in inferior work products, work against the leader's goals, or otherwise attempt to usurp power (Hakimi et al, 2010;Stewart, Astrove, Reeves, Crawford, & Solimeo, 2017).…”

“…For instance, studies have shown that empowering leadership promotes followers' proactive behaviours (e.g., Martin, Liao, & Campbell, 2013;Schilpzand, Houston, & Cho, 2018). However, scholars have recently begun to propose that follower proactivity also influences leadership behaviours, such as leaders' provision of decision-making authority (e.g., Bjugstad, Thach, Thompson, & Morris, 2006;Sharma & Kirkman, 2015), though this proposition has yet to be empirically tested.…”

“…Second, empowering leadership research has primarily focused on consequences of empowering leadership, while overlooking its antecedents (Cheong, Yammarino, Dionne, Spain, & Tsai, 2018;Lee, Willis, & Tian, 2018;Sharma & Kirkman, 2015). For instance, in their review examining the effectiveness of empowering leadership, Cheong et al (2018) lament the dearth of empirical studies examining antecedents of empowering leadership and suggest that identifying why leaders decide to empower is a critical next step for moving the empowering leadership literature forward.…”

“…For instance, in their review examining the effectiveness of empowering leadership, Cheong et al (2018) lament the dearth of empirical studies examining antecedents of empowering leadership and suggest that identifying why leaders decide to empower is a critical next step for moving the empowering leadership literature forward. Given that the empowering process can be described as a dyadic phenomenon, that is produced not only by leaders but also by followers (Hakimi, Van Knippenberg, & Giessner, 2010;Sharma & Kirkman, 2015), investigating follower characteristics (i.e., proactive personality) as antecedent to empowering leadership offers a new avenue for future research to better understand why leaders decide to (or not to) empower their employees.…”