The Role of Employees’ Regulatory Focus in Shaping the Effect of Empowering Leadership

Abstract

Building on regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997) and self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1985; Ryan & Deci, 2000, 2002), the current research hypothesize that empowering leadership may trigger different motivational processes (i.e., intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation) for employees with different regulatory focus, and thus result in different perceived stressors for them. Expanding the literature of empowering leadership, the current research incorporates the largely neglected regulatory focus perspective. Using a two-wave survey, the hypotheses were tested in a sample of 294 employees. Results show both significant mediation effect of intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation between empowering leadership and employee perceived stressors. And employee promotion focus would strengthen the relationship between empowering leadership and intrinsic motivation, while prevention focus would strengthen the relationship between empowering leadership and extrinsic motivation. The results make contributions to empowering leadership literature by identifying how employees with different regulatory focus react to empowering leadership, and exploring the both positive and negative motivational process of empowering leadership on employee perceived stressors.