Do Empowered Front‐Line Employees Perform Better? A Non‐linear Approach and the Role of Service Complexity

Abstract

This study re‐examines the influence of front‐line service employee empowerment on their performance, following a non‐linear approach and integrating the role of service complexity. For that purpose, data were collected through a quantitative survey on 240 front‐line employees in two major UK cities (London, Leeds). The study's results indicate that empowerment has a significant impact on their performance and that this impact is non‐linear (quadratic). Specifically, the relationship between empowerment and performance is negative for low‐level empowerment and positive for high‐level empowerment. In addition, the study's results show that the nature of this relationship is different for different levels of service complexity. Specifically, for low‐complexity services, the relationship between empowerment and performance was found quadratic, whereas for high‐complexity services the relationship was found positive and linear. Based on the study's main conclusions important implications for both academics and practitioners are presented.