Acta Psychologica Sinica

Abstract

Empowering leadership refers to behaviors that enable and motivate subordinates to achieve high level of performance by creating a sense of psychological empowerment. Researchers have found that empowering practices such as delegating authority and incorporating employees into decision making serve as an important drive of effectiveness at individual, group, and organizational levels. Different dimensions of empowering leadership behaviors were identified, including leading by example, participative decision making, coaching, informing, and showing concern in the western literature. The purpose of the current research is to investigate the domain of empowering leadership behavior and develop an indigenous measure in the Chinese organizations.

Three studies consisted of the research. In the first study, the critical behavior incidents of empowering leadership behavior were collected using open-ended questionnaire. 877 items were generated by 56 part-time MBA students. Nine categories were summarized based on a solid inductive method. In the second study, 201 part-time MBA students consisted of the sample and exploratory factory analysis was employed to identify the construct of the Chinese measure of empowering leadership behavior. In the third study, confirmatory factor analysis and regression model were used to test the validity of the measure with a sample of 420 employees from two companies.

A Chinese measure of empowering leadership behavior with six dimensions, including support for individual development, process control, delegation of authority, outcome control, participation in decision-making, and coaching for work, was developed through the three studies. The measure had acceptable reliability and validity. In addition, the results showed that the empowering leadership behavior of the Chinese leaders had significantly positive effects on psychological empowerment, job satisfaction, and affective commitment of employees.

The measure developed in the research provides a starting point for future studies on the Chinese empowering leadership behaviors. We call for more researchers who are interested in the leadership behavior to work together to investigate the topic. The relevant research will not only be helpful to understand the phenomenon of leadership in the Chinese context, but also provide practical implications for managers. In order to initiate a high level of intrinsic motivation of subordinates in the workplace, empowering behavior such as support for individual development and coaching for work are the critical practices of leaders.

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