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Previous research has mainly focused on the outcomes of empowering leadership, and empirical evidence on how to encourage leaders to display empowering behaviors has been overlooked, particularly from an interpersonal perspective.

Based on the integrative model of organizational trust, we investigate the relationship between employees' taking charge behaviors and empowering leadership considering the mediating role of leader trust in employees and the moderating role of risk propensity.

The results indicate that taking charge is positively associated with leader trust in employees, which influences the development of empowering leadership. Additionally, leaders' risk propensity moderates these relationships, that is, a higher level of risk propensity can enhance the promoting effect of leader trust on empowering behaviors.

This study explores the antecedents and mechanisms influencing empowering leadership and proposes the moderating effect of risk propensity. The findings not only clarify how and why employees' taking charge behaviors can stimulate empowering leadership but also offer a more comprehensive understanding of the antecedents of empowering leadership.

Employees' entrepreneurial behavior, innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking can contribute to business performance and success, making it important for the organization. Yet, little is known about how management can promote their employees' entrepreneurial behaviors. Based on workplace resources theories, the present study tested a serial mediation model. Empowering leadership predicts employees' resources of role breadth self-efficacy and meaningful work via demand-ability fit and need-supply fit, which subsequently lead employees to exhibit entrepreneurial behaviors.

Korean employees (n = 200) working in a variety of industries participated in a two-wave survey with a five-week time lag.

Structural equation modeling supported a serial mediation model showing how empowering leadership can promote employees' person-job fit. Increased person-job fit was related to enhanced employees' role breadth self-efficacy and meaningful work, which in turn predicted entrepreneurial behaviors. Alternative models with more direct paths did not improve model fit, highlighting the roles of the mediators. Empowering leadership is an important resource facilitating entrepreneurial activities through its influence on employees' fit perceptions and resources.

The present study contributes to entrepreneurial behavior literature by showing the importance of job and personal resources in explaining the determinants of employees' entrepreneurial behavior.

This paper aims to critically evaluate the impact of empowering leadership on safety behavior and safety climate during safety monitoring at a nuclear power plant (NPP) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Data were collected using questionnaires filled out by 500 participants from the UAE nuclear sector. The relationships among the variables were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results indicated that empowering leadership has a positive impact on safety behavior, and a positive safety climate leads to increased levels of safety behavior (compliance and participation). The results also showed that safety climate partially mediates the relationship between empowering leadership and safety behavior.

This study contributes to the existing knowledge regarding empowering leadership, safety monitoring, behavior and climate. Because limited information is available on this topic, this study extends the research on the relationship between empowering leadership and safety research at an NPP. Specifically, it outlines that safety monitoring partially mediates the relationship between empowering leadership and safety behavior. This research enables NPPs worldwide to incorporate empowering leadership to enhance safety monitoring and ensure better safety behavior and climate.

This paper aims to investigate the relationships between empowering leadership, basic psychological needs satisfaction, work-related well-being, and project citizenship behavior.

Drawing upon the self-determination theory (SDT), a conceptual model was developed and then empirically tested using a cross-sectional survey of 435 project members in Chinese construction projects.

The results fully support the research hypotheses proposed in the study, illustrating the positive impacts of empowering leadership on work-related well-being and project citizenship behavior, the mediating role of basic psychological needs satisfaction, and the positive association between work-related well-being and project citizenship behavior.

This research determines the utility of empowering leadership in the context of construction projects, especially in enhancing individual outcomes (i.e. work-related well-being and project citizenship behavior). Therefore, construction project managers can apply empowering leadership to meet the basic psychological needs of subordinates to increase project members' work-related well-being and project citizenship behavior.

To our knowledge, the present study first explores the micro-level impacts of empowering leadership in the construction context. Additionally, this study enriches the understanding of the mediating mechanism between empowering leadership and individual outcomes from a self-determination perspective.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between empowering leadership and employees’ constructive voice behavior in the present organizational dynamics. The authors propose a moderated mediation model to investigate the relationship between empowering leadership, employees’ core self-evaluation, psychological safety and constructive voice.

The authors collected survey data from a sample of 282 service executives across Indian organizations. This study uses SPSS Process macro (moderated mediation model) to analyze the data collected. Additionally, the authors have used moderation graph to elucidate the interaction effect.

The results suggest that empowering leadership positively affects employees’ constructive voice behavior. Supporting results were observed for the mediating impact of psychological safety between empowering leadership and constructive voice, and moderating role of core self-evaluation between empowering leadership and psychological safety.

The small sample size limits the study from drawing generalizations. Other potential limitations are discussed, too.

Significant impact of empowering leadership on voice behavior highlights the importance of style of leadership adopted; a 360-degree appraisal of leaders can be conducted to identify proper empowering leaders. The moderating role of core self-evaluation implies that employees who perceive themselves competent may only offer constructive suggestions even if they work in a psychologically safe environment.

This paper is the first to explore the relationship between a new form of leadership style, empowering leadership and employees’ constructive voice behavior, and is, thus, relevant for employers who expect their employees to contribute in the form of ideas, suggestions and concerns towards the growth of the company.

This study clarifies the factors that foster individual innovative behaviour in the public sector by examining the effects and roles of empowering leadership, work group cohesiveness and individual learning orientation. This study also explores the direct effect of empowering leadership on work group cohesiveness and individual learning orientation, the influence of work group cohesiveness on individual learning orientation and the mediating roles of work group cohesiveness and individual learning orientation.

Data were collected from an online survey of respondents working in a public sector organization. Partial least squares structural equation modelling and mediation analysis by the bootstrap method were used for the data analysis.

Empowering leadership and individual learning orientation had significant direct effects on individual innovative behaviour. Both empowering leadership and work group cohesiveness have significant direct effects on individual learning orientation. Empowering leadership was positively related to work group cohesiveness. The mediation analysis revealed that individual learning orientation mediates the relationships between empowering leadership and individual innovative behaviour and between work group cohesiveness and individual innovative behaviour.

The study focuses on three factors that foster individual innovative behaviour in a public sector organization.

This study offers new insights into the factors that foster individual innovative behaviour in the public sector. The findings reveal the importance of using a balanced leadership style and encourage learning in the workplace for individual innovativeness by public leaders.

By taking a social learning perspective, this study examines the trickle-down effect of empowering leadership across hierarchical levels in an organization. Specifically, this study aims to demonstrate that the empowering leadership of higher-level leaders promotes the task performance of employees through the mediation of the empowering leadership of lower-level leaders. It also seeks to confirm the role of performance pressure as a boundary condition in social learning process.

Under a moderated mediation framework, this study tests our hypotheses through a hierarchical regression analysis. The data used in the analysis is from the survey responses of 209 subordinate-supervisor dyads.

This study finds that the empowering leadership of higher-level leaders promotes the empowering leadership of lower-level leaders, which indirectly improves the task performance of employees. It also finds that performance pressure perceived by lower-level leaders moderates the relationship between the empowering leadership of higher- and lower-level leaders, thus moderating the proposed indirect effect.

This study complements the findings of previous studies by identifying the trickle-down effect of empowering leadership across different hierarchical levels in an organization and by highlighting its boundary condition. In addition, this study provides evidence for the presence of trickle-down effect of leadership in an Eastern culture.

This study suggests the necessity of leadership education and training programs within organizations by revealing the importance of social learning process for promoting empowering leadership. In addition, it also suggests that performance pressure in an organization not only dampens empowering leadership but also has a negative effect on the task performance of employees.

This study demonstrates the influence mechanism of empowering leadership through a systematic verification of its trickle-down effect, which has been lacking in previous studies. It also highlights the moderating role of performance pressure, as a contextual factor, in the social learning and influence process of empowering leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to extant literature by linking principal empowering leadership to teachers’ innovative work behavior. By doing so, the author attempts to provide a more nuanced understanding of this relationship by examining a moderated mediation model which encompasses exploration as a mediator and role conflict as a moderator.

Data were collected from 201 public teachers. In order to examine the present hypotheses bootstrapping analysis, Sobel test and SPSS macro were used.

The results demonstrated that teacher exploration mediates the relationship between empowering leadership and innovative work behavior and, further, that this indirect effect is contingent on role conflict.

Based on the present findings, in order to enhance innovation, schools need to promote both empowering leadership style and their teachers’ exploration. Moreover, principals should refrain from providing conflicting orders and expectations from their teachers because such conditions will eliminate the positive effect of their empowering behaviors on teachers’ exploration and innovative work behavior.

This is the first study that develops and tests a moderated mediation model regarding the relationship between principal empowering leadership and teacher innovative behavior.

While uncertainty during emergency response operations necessitates adaptive performance, emergency response organizations, such as the fire service, tend to constrain adaptive behaviors due to their highly formalized bureaucratic structures. Structural theories suggest that leaders can empower employees to bypass these constraints.

Using survey data from four US fire departments, this research tests whether mid-level supervisors can empower firefighters by increasing their ability to improvise during complex emergency response operations, and whether this enhances department adaptive performance. Moderated mediation is also performed to assess whether senior leaders must also be effective, empowering leaders in order to achieve heightened levels of empowerment and subsequent adaptive performance, as many senior leaders in the fire service are criticized for being overly bureaucratic, risk averse, and resistant to change.

The findings support compensatory effects and show how immediate supervisors are key to overcoming senior leader deficiencies and producing adaptive performance during conditions of high uncertainty and complexity.

The lack of response organizations’ success during complex incidents is often attributed to senior leaders who are risk averse, overly bureaucratic, and resistant to change (Wankhade and Patnaik, 2020). This study is the first to show how empowering leadership can help overcome these constraints to enhance adaptive performance under complex conditions in the fire service.

Drawing on the leader–member exchange (LMX) theory, we examine the role of empowering leadership in employee organizational commitment and the organizational citizenship behavior. Furthermore, we examine if these relationships are explained by factors such as follower trust in the leader and leader authenticity.

We draw on survey data from 153 individuals serving the hospitality industry sector. The data are analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Results show that trust in a leader positively mediates the relationship between empowering leadership and organizational citizenship behavior as well as organizational commitment. We also find a direct association between empowering leadership and the two organizational outcomes. However, we do not find evidence of the moderating role of leader authenticity in empowering leadership and trust in leader–leader relationship.

This paper brings to light the significance of empowering leadership, especially for hospitality workers who often operate in stressful and deeply hierarchical organizational environments. Our study findings provide a pathway for how supervisors should follow an empowering form of leadership annculcate trust in employees for better organizational outcomes. The findings indicate significant theoretical and practical implications and offer recommendations for future research.