Linking structural empowerment and distributive justice to employee's behavioral and attitudinal consequences: Testing the mediating role of psychological empowerment

Abstract

Psychological empowerment plays a vital role in affecting the individual and organizational consequences. However, there is scant research on the antecedents and consequences of psychological empowerment despite being an essential variable in organizational studies. This study aims to fill this gap by examining the impact of structural empowerment and distributive justice on employee's commitment and citizenship behavior through psychological empowerment. A cross-section research designed was used to collect the data from 389 nurses employed in public and private hospitals operating in Punjab, India. Out of these, 224 respondents were working in public hospitals, while 165 were of private hospitals. To test the proposed hypothesized relationships, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was applied. The findings of the study depicted that structural empowerment significantly impacts the affective commitment and organizational citizenship behavior through psychological empowerment. Findings of the multi-group moderation analysis depicted that the majority of the hypothesized relationships showed no significant results. The results of the study proposed that rather than changing the individual characteristics, a leader should improve the structure of the organization and should provide access to structural empowerment, which ultimately leads to positive behavioral and attitudinal organizational consequences. This study examines the effect of structural empowerment and distributive justice on OCB and affective commitment, which is being mediated through the psychological empowerment of nursing professionals in healthcare settings of India.