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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.

The aim of this study is to look into the associations, both direct and indirect, between a leader empowering behavior and employee turnover intention. Additionally, this study examines the mediating effects of work–family conflict (WFC) and work–family spillover (WFS) in the association between a leader empowering behavior and employee turnover intention. This study also explored how perceived peer support (PPS) may have a moderating effect on these associations.

A time-lag approach was used in this study to collect data from the 228 participants that made up the sample. Both front-desk employees and their immediate supervisors were included in this sample, which came from diverse tourism enterprises in central China. The research design included two independent time waves that were separated by two months, making it easier to examine the way the variables of interest changed throughout that time.

The results showed that there is a significant impact of leadership behaviors on WFS, WFC and employee turnover intention. This study showed a significant mediating effect of WFS, however, the influence of WFC as a mediator was not statistically significant. Furthermore, the results suggested that PPS significantly moderated the association between leader empowering behavior and WFS. The findings revealed that the mediating effect of WFS in the association between leader empowering behavior and employee turnover intention.

This study advances knowledge of the impacts of leadership empowering behavior on employee turnover intention through the use of a moderated mediation analysis. Based on the leader member exchange, it offers a distinctive perspective on leadership empowering behaviors to maintain a work–family balance in tourism.

Leaders’ emotional intelligence (EI), personality, and empowering behavior have been heavily studied in the organizational behavior literature. To date, the majority of research on EI and personality has shown their significant influence on personal outcomes. It has also been suggested that empowerment is a fundamental psychological mechanism underlying follower outcomes. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to the effect of team leaders’ EI and personality on team outcomes and the potential mediating effect of team leaders’ empowering behavior. In this study, we developed theoretical rationale and empirically tested the effect of team leaders’ EI and personality on team climate and the mediating role that team leaders’ empowering behavior plays in this relationship. The results supported most of our hypothesized relationships, that is, the positive effects of team leaders’ EI and agreeableness on team climate were mediated by team leaders’ empowering behavior, whereas team leaders’ openness to new experience was not related to empowering behavior and team climate. Finally, theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

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.

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.

This paper aims to uncover the impact of leader’s personality traits, agreeableness conscientiousness and neuroticism, on employee’s constructive voice behavior via proposed sequential mediating impact of the empowering leadership and leader–member exchange (LMX).

The proposed model was examined by using the data collected from 262 service executives based in an Indian private sector, using the partial least square structural equation modeling method. This study uses SPSS Process macro (serial mediation model) to analyze the data collected.

Results of the study indicated the positive association of agreeableness and conscientiousness with empowering leadership, while neuroticism was found to be negatively related. The results also provided support for the mediating effect of the LMX between empowering leadership and constructive voice behavior. Further, the authors theorized and verified the sequential mediation model proposing the indirect effect between leader’s personality traits and constructive voice.

Self-reported measures were used for data collection which suffers from the limitation of socially biased responses. Lack of large sample size inhibits us from drawing widely accepted generalization.

The authors suggest that consideration of the personality traits might assist and help organizations in choosing empowering leaders. This assumes importance as notable indirect impact of empowering leadership on constructive voice (promotive voice and prohibitive voice) has been observed. The findings also suggest the nurturing quality that LMX plays an important role in facilitating constructive voice.

This study is first of its kind in understanding the mediating mechanism between empowering leadership and constructive voice. This study further explored serial mediation (i.e. empowering leadership and LMX together) between leader’s personality and constructive voice.

Drawing on power approach-inhibition theory, this study develops a conditional indirect effect model to explore how team vertical leader position and expert power indirectly impact members’ shared leadership through vertical leader’s empowering behaviors.

Multi-source data was collected using a field survey research design. The final sample includes 944 employees in 164 teams from 14 companies in China.

This study found that the interaction of team vertical leader position power and expert power was positively related to their empowering behaviors, which in turn were positively associated with shared leadership. Moreover, our post hoc-analysis revealed the moderating effect of team power distance orientation on the relationship between vertical leader empowering behaviors and shared leadership.

This study sheds light on shared leadership literature by examining vertical leader position and expert power as antecedents. We also offer new directions for exploring how power functions by discussing leadership through the lens of power approach-inhibition theory.

Extends the transactional‐transformational model of leadership by deductively developing four theoretical behavioral types of leadership based on a historical analysis of leadership literature. Then, in an exploratory empirical phase, uses two data sets to inductively develop alternative models of leadership types. Finally, with a third data set, tests several theoretically plausible typologies using second‐order confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The results of the CFA generally support the existence of four leadership types: directive leadership, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, and empowering leadership.

The purpose of this study was to measure the relationship between followers’ perceptions of the servant leadership of their immediate supervisor and followers’ sense of empowerment in the context of small businesses. A quantitative survey was completed by 116 employees of small businesses, including measures of supervisors’ servant leadership behaviors and followers’ self- perceived empowerment. Followers’ perceptions of being empowered were found to correlate positively with their ratings of the servant leadership behaviors of immediate supervisors. The findings support the researchers’ assertions that followers’ perceptions of being empowered will increase as supervisors’ servant leadership behaviors increase.

The power of servant leadership lies in the leader’s ability to unleash the potential and thus the power in those around them. Greenleaf (1977) ascribed greatness to the leader’s attention to followers, “When it is genuine, the interest in and affection for one’s followers that a leader has is a mark of true greatness” (p. 34). In the foreword to the Anniversary edition of Greenleaf’s Servant Leadership, Covey (2002) related empowerment to servant leadership. He acclaimed the importance of empowerment to the sustainable success of organizations in the 21st century. Organizations structured to support and encourage the empowerment of their employees will thrive as market leaders (Covey, 2002). While other leadership styles have been found to empower followers, it is agreed across current literature, that the focus on developing and empowering the follower as their primary concern is specific to servant leaders (Greenleaf, 1977; Parolini, Patterson, & Winston, 2009; Parris & Peachey, 2012; Stone, Russell, & Patterson, 2004; van Dierendonck, 2011).

The context chosen for the study was small business because of the crucial role it plays regarding job growth in the United States (Howard, 2006) and in “enriching the lives of men and women of the whole world” (Kayemuddin, 2012, p. 27). Servant leadership enables small business leaders to fully discover, develop, and employ follower potential through empowering behaviors.

This study sought to contribute to the empirical research of servant leadership by measuring the relationship between supervisors’ servant leadership behaviors and followers’ perceptions of empowerment within the context of small business.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the possible curvilinear relationship between empowering leadership and individual in-role and extra-role work performance and the potential moderating role of individual goal orientations.

Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted based on data from 655 certified accountants. Leaders' empowering behavior was measured using Ahearne et al.'s scale. Mastery and performance goal orientations were measured using items from VandeWalle. In-role work performance was measured via a ten-item scale developed and used by Kuvaas and Dysvik. Organizational citizenship behavior was measured using items validated by Van Dyne and LePine.

Too little empowerment might have a negative or limited impact – or none at all – on individual in-role and extra-role work performance. In addition, individual mastery orientation positively moderates these curvilinear relationships.

Empowering leadership-employee performance relationships are not necessarily linear. The present study provides an alternative explanation to the somewhat inconsistent findings in the current literature.

Due to the curvilinear nature of empowering leadership, leaders should not just casually adopt this leadership style but ensure that they implement it at high levels with clear clarification of the goals and work roles.

Even though empowering leadership is important to individual performance, scant research has explored whether and when empowering leadership could be detrimental. This study provides an additional view to empowerment research by examining the potential curvilinear influence of empowering leadership.