Who are the Empowered Employees: Those with High Work Performance or High Ethical Behavior?

Meizhen Lin (), Xiaoyi Wu () and Xiaolu Li ()
Additional contact information
Meizhen Lin: Huaqiao University
Xiaoyi Wu: Xiamen University
Xiaolu Li: Jiangxi Environmental Engineering Vocational College

Journal of Business Ethics, 2023, vol. 186, issue 3, No 8, 615-631

Abstract: Abstract Although empowering leadership is central to employees, leaders, and organizations, few studies have examined follower behavior and its role in incentivizing leaders to engage in empowering leadership. We use an exploratory, sequential mixed methods approach to explore comprehensively the influence of employee characteristics (i.e., work performance and ethical behavior) and leader-perceived threats on empowering leadership. We conducted two studies—the first entailed in-depth interviews of 24 managers from different industries to identify (i) the primary employee factors that determine empowering leadership and (ii) the types of leader-perceived threats. The five employee factors and three leader-perceived threats identified lay the groundwork for the quantitative research in the second study. We used leader–member exchange theory and social dominance theory in analyzing data from 357 pairs of employee–supervisor questionnaires. The analysis confirmed the importance of employee ethical behavior (versus work performance) in predicting empowering leadership, and the crucial role of leader trust in connecting employee ethical behavior and work performance with empowering leadership. Leader-perceived power threats negatively influence empowering leadership and mitigate the positive impact of leader trust on empowering leadership. Thus, this study extends the literature’s perspective about empowering leadership to include ethical concerns and leader–member interaction.

Keywords: Empowering leadership; Ethical behavior; Work performance; Leader trust in employees; Leader-perceived power threat; Mixed methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-022-05232-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:186:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s10551-022-05232-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-022-05232-9

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().