"Organizational Empowerment Climate, Leadership, and Job Performance: A Cascading, Contingency Model"

Abstract

Drawing upon the theory of contextual influences on organizational behavior (Johns, 2006) and interactionist perspective (Chatman, 1989), we propose that organizational empowerment climate cultivates team leaders’ empowering leadership, which is more pronounced when team leaders’ organizational identification is high and less pronounced when their need for power and narcissism are high. We further propose that the empowering leadership induced by the organizational empowerment climate in turn enhances team members’ job performance, which is more pronounced when team members are high in leader identification, need for power, and narcissism. Analyses of data from 834 team members and 189 teams in 46 organizations reveal that organizational empowerment climate was positively related to team leaders’ empowering leadership particularly when they were high in organizational identification and low in need for power and narcissism. Empowering leadership was found to significantly relate to team members’ job perfo...