Abstract:

Empowering leadership behavior, which includes delegating authority and encouraging participative decision making, is one of the most effective behaviors to lead to empowerment of employees, and receives widespread attentions. Beyond confirming the effect of empowering leadership behavior on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), research is relatively limited regarding the underlying mechanism and boundary condition. From the perspective of relational identification and sense of control, we developed a moderated mediation model to investigate the mediating role of subordinate’s supervisor identification and the moderating role of subordinate’s psychological ownership for organization. Data were collected from 162 supervisors and their 460 immediate subordinates. The survey was administered twice with a time lag of two weeks in order to alleviate problems of common source bias, and questionnaires were completed on-site with the help of human resource managers. Subordinates completed a survey evaluating supervisors’ empowering leadership at Wave 1, and another survey reporting their supervisor identification and psychological ownership for organization at Wave 2. Supervisors rated subordinates’ OCB at Wave 2. Multiple regressions and two different procedures recommended for testing moderated mediation were performed to test the hypotheses. The results supported our hypotheses. Evidence was found of a moderated mediation framework in which supervisor identification mediated the positive relationship between empowering leadership and subordinate’s OCB (indirect effect = .06, p < .05), and at the same time, subordinate’s psychological ownership for organization moderated the second stage of this mediation relationship. Specifically, the indirect effect of empowering leadership on OCB through supervisor identification was significant when psychological ownership for organization was medium and high (p < .01), and insignificant when psychological ownership for organization was low (p = .11). The present study enriched research about empowering leadership behavior, and highlighted the underlying mechanism and boundary condition of its effectiveness on subordinates’ OCB. Our research demonstrated that empowering leadership behavior satisfied subordinates’ need for enhancing self-esteem and obtaining psychological safety, evoked subordinate’s trust in supervisor, and thus enhanced subordinate’s supervisor identification. Empirical evidence of the importance of supervisor identification provided future research direction for relational identification. We also found that psychological ownership for organization moderated the relationship between supervisor identification and OCB, and subsequently the indirect relationship between empowering leadership behavior and OCB. For practical implications, supervisors should offer employees more autonomy and support, thus enhance their supervisor identification, and promote OCB. Also, as having subordinates who have the sense of owners of organizations enhances the effect of empowerment, it is necessary for organizations to cultivate employees’ perception of possession and relatedness with their organizations, i.e., psychological ownership for organization.

摘要：

从认同感和控制感出发，研究授权赋能领导行为对员工组织公民行为的作用机制和边界条件。通过问卷调查，搜集了162名主管及其460名直接下属的数据。研究结果表明，授权赋能领导行为对员工对主管的领导认同感有积极影响作用；领导认同感在授权赋能领导行为与员工组织公民行为之间起到中介作用；员工对组织的心理所有权对领导认同感的中介效应起到调节作用。