The role of empowering leadership and psychological empowerment on nurses’ work engagement and affective commitment

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to investigate to role of empowering leadership and psychological empowerment on nurses' work engagement and affective commitment. Design/methodology/approach Self-administered questionnaire data from 231 nurses working in a university hospital in Saudi Arabia were analysed using a cross-sectional research design using structural equation modelling (SEM) to assess the relationship between empowering leadership (EL), affective commitment (AC) and work engagement (WE) while testing for the mediating role of psychological empowerment (PE). Findings SEM analysis demonstrated that EL significantly relates to AC. AC similarly significantly relates to WE. Further, the results showed that PE substantially mediates the relationship between EL and WE. There is no significant direct relationship found between EL and WE. Practical implications The study findings are essential for nursing managers. They illustrate that nurses become more committed to their organisation and, in return, more engaged with their work when they receive EL. Therefore, nursing managers could train their leaders to practice EL as increased WE has been found to result in other positive work attitudes such as reduced turnover intention. Originality/value This study corroborates the relationships between EL, AC and WE, as well as the mediating role of PE. However, this research is unique as the long-established relationship between EL and WE was not supported. It shows that the propositions of leader-member exchange theory may not hold for unique non-Western contexts, in this case, Saudi Arabia.

Clinicians' psychological empowerment to engage in management as part of their daily work

“…Their study confirms the employees' psychological empowerment in general, but not explicitly in relation to managerial work. Similarly, Bobbio et al (2012) and Al Otaibi et al (2022) confirmed the importance of empowering leadership in health care, which indicates that employees are empowered to lead their own work. All six studies (Al Otaibi et al, 2022;Bobbio et al, 2012;Bonias et al, 2010;Leggat et al, 2010Leggat et al, , 2011McAlearney et al, 2011) emphasized the importance of investigating psychological empowerment as an effect of organizational initiatives to support empowerment; in other words, micro-level studies of employees are important for understanding the effects of organizational initiatives such as highperformance work systems (HPWS).…”

Nurse students’ views of factors that increase or decrease the attractiveness of the nursing profession

“…Research confirms that empowering leadership practices, for example, transformational leadership, can influence nurse retention and work engagement. [6,41,42] Some researchers, for example Schuck [43] and de Zulueta, [44] have strongly advocated compassionate leadership, which emphasizes presence and empathy and goes beyond traditional leader-follower roles by seeing leadership as a dynamic shared or distributed process. Last, according to some participants in this study, nurses should consider the impact their negative attitudes have on the image and appreciation of the nursing profession.…”

Empowering leadership and organizational exploration: the role of preoccupation with failure and leader gender

“…According to Faulks et al (2021), empowering leaders aim to assist their team members to develop to their full potential, proactively engage with their best interests, and encourage them to express themselves openly. Additionally, empowering leaders positively affect employees' work engagement (Al Otaibi et al, 2022;Arshad et al, 2022) and their selfleadership, thus contributing to project success (Ahmad et al, 2022). As per Murray et al (2022), when employees feel empowered and safe, they are not reluctant to raise concerns, ask questions, report mistakes, and make suggestions for improvement.…”

“…(2021), empowering leaders aim to assist their team members to develop to their full potential, proactively engage with their best interests, and encourage them to express themselves openly. Additionally, empowering leaders positively affect employees’ work engagement (Al Otaibi et al. , 2022; Arshad et al.…”