Empowering Leadership: Antecedents, Moderators, and Consequences

Abstract

The purpose of this symposium is to shed light on key new directions in empowering leadership research as reflected in the following questions: Does empowering leadership interact with other leadership behaviors such as transactional leadership to impact follower performance? Can empowering leadership backfire by negatively impacting employee performance? What are important antecedents of empowering leadership? And, adopting a power motives perspective, why and how do leaders engage in the act of empowering employees? Specifically, the presentations included in the symposium address how empowering and transactional leadership interact to affect follower task performance through follower contextual performance (Kearney & Scholz), how empowering leadership, employee job autonomy, and perceived organizational support jointly affect employees’ work-role performance through employees’ efficacy beliefs (Dennerlein & Kirkman), how follower and leader learning goal orientation interact to affect leaders’ levels of empowering leadership through leaders’ perceptions of trust in followers (Hanna, Smith, Courtright, & Zhang), and how leaders decide why and how to empower their subordinates (Gallagher & Mathieu). The discussant, Gilad Chen, will summarize themes across papers, highlight future research directions, and lead an interactive discussion between presenters and audience. Interactive Effects of Empowering and Transactional Leadership on Contextual and Task Performance Presenter: Eric Kearney; U. of Potsdam Presenter: Florian Scholz; U. of Potsdam Understanding the Double-Edged Sword Effects of Empowering Leadership on Employee Performance Presenter: Tobias Dennerlein; IESE Business School Presenter: Bradley L. Kirkman; North Carolina State U. Antecedents to Empowering Leadership: An Implicit Followership Theory Perspective Presenter: Andrew A. Hanna; U. of Nebraska, Lincoln Presenter: Troy Smith; U. of Nebraska, Lincoln Presenter: Stephen Hyrum Courtright; Texas A&M U. Presenter: Pengcheng Zhang; Huazhong U. of Science and Technology Motives and Sources for Sharing Power Presenter: Peter Gallagher; Uconn Business School Presenter: John Mathieu; U. of Connecticut