关键词: 需求的授权型领导, 接受的授权型领导, 供给-需求补偿性匹配, 情绪耗竭

Abstract:

Recent research has paid increasing attention to the consequences of empowering leadership. The majority of them has devoted considerable efforts in identifying the bright side of empowering leadership, arguing that it enables followers to develop their self-management capacity and can be effective in driving positive job-related outcomes. According to the double-edge-sword effect perspective, empowering leadership may have a negative side, and this has attracted growing research interest, thus making the question of when empowering leadership hinders its proposed effect on followers a particularly important one. Leadership is widely understood as a relational process and its effectiveness depends not only on the behaviors of actors (i.e., leaders themselves) but also on the perceptions of receivers (i.e., their followers). Accordingly, this study takes both leaders and followers into consideration with an expectation of providing a deeper insight into the influence of empowering leadership. Drawing on the theory of person-environment fit, we examine the impact of leaders’ empowering behaviors that are needed and received by followers on their job-related outcomes. Specifically, the misfit between empowering leadership needed and received by followers can be appraised as a stressor for them, as such a misfit represents the discrepancy between followers’preferred states(i.e., needed) andactual states(i.e., received). Based on the transactional model of stress, we proposed that perceived misfit between empowering leadership needed and received (as a stressor) is likely to induce emotional exhaustion (as a strain) which will in turns have ramifications for followers’ job-related outcomes, including lower satisfaction toward leaders, less organizational citizenship behaviors, and poorer job performance. We also hypothesized that followers’ emotional exhaustion will be higher when they experience excessive empowerment compared with the situation when they face deficient empowerment.
We tested our proposed model in two multi-wave, multi-source surveys. In Study 1, we invited 150 leader-follower dyads from 12 companies in China to participate in our study. In this study, data were collected in two waves to minimize common method bias. At wave 1, all followers were invited to assess their empowering leadership that they needed and received, emotional exhaustion, satisfaction toward their leaders, as well as demographics. Half a month later, at wave 2, all leaders were invited to provide their demographics and assess their follower’s organizational citizenship behavior and job performance. All the participants provided valid responses and the final sample thus includes 150 unique leader-follower dyads. In Study 2, we collected data from 253 followers and 50 leaders from 38 companies in China to replicate the results analyzed in Study 1 in terms of two-wave data collection. At wave 1, all followers were invited to assess their empowering leadership needed and received, psychological stress, psychological empowerment, and demographics. Half a month later, at wave 2, all the followers were invited to evaluate their emotional exhaustion and satisfaction towards leaders, their 50 leaders were invited to provide their demographics and assess their organizational citizenship behavior and job performance. 243 followers provided valid responses and thus the final sample includes 243 leader-follower dyads.
Given that the data structure in these two studies were non-independent, we conducted multilevel polynomial regression and response surface modeling using the software of Mplus 8.2. We also employed the block variable approach to calculate the indirect effects. Besides, we tested the significance of the indirect effects with theMonte Carlo simulation procedure inRStudio. The results of data analyses showed that: (a) the misfit between needed and received empowering leadership was positively and significantly related to followers’ emotional exhaustion; (b) compared with deficient empowerment, followers’ emotional exhaustion was higher when they received excessive empowerment; and (c) followers’ emotional exhaustion mediated the misfit of needed and received empowering leadership on followers’ satisfaction with their leaders, organizational citizenship behavior, and job performance.
Our study provides several theoretical and practical implications. First, we employed a relational perspective and took both leaders and followers into consideration to investigate the impacts of empowering leadership on followers’ job-related outcomes. This helps paint a more complete picture of the consequences of empowering leadership. Second, by drawing on the theory of person-environment fit together with the transactional model of stress, we investigated the effects of the empowering leadership needed and received on followers’ job-related outcomes and its underlying mechanisms. Third, the asymmetry effects of excessive versus deficient empowerment on followers’ emotional exhaustion revealed that in line with the “too much of a good thing” effect, empowering leadership is not a panacea. Overall, we shed valuable insights into the literature on empowerment by demonstrating that there is no optimal amount of empowerment. The consequences associated with a certain amount of empowerment differ among individuals. Our findings also offer important practical insights to leaders on how to leverage the benefits of empowering leadership.

Key words: needed empowering leadership, received empowering leadership, needs-supplies fit, emotional exhaustion