Empowering leadership in crisis: a natural experiment

Henrico van Roekel, Jost Sieweke, Carina Schott, Arnold B. Bakker and Lars Tummers

Public Management Review, 2025, vol. 27, issue 12, 3177-3207

Abstract: Existing research suggests that empowering leadership enhances employee well-being, but context-specific empirical studies in the public sector remain scarce. We investigated whether this positive impact persists during a public health crisis. To test this, we conducted a natural experiment, utilizing a longitudinal survey of healthcare employees and administrative data on geographical variance in hospitalization rates during a public health crisis. Our findings show that empowering leadership is less effective during a crisis and can even result in adverse effects. The results challenge the notion that empowering leadership universally benefits employee well-being and highlight its potential dark side.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/14719037.2025.2459162

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