Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-4-2019

Journal / Book Title

European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology

Abstract

Major reviews of psychological empowerment (PE) suggest four broad sources to becoming empowered: organizational, leadership, job, and dispositional. This study examines the redundancy, uniqueness, and relative importance within and across these situational and dispositional domains using commonality and dominance analyses. Across multiple samples, we find (a) within socio-structural domains, empowering leadership, knowledge sharing, and task significance are the most unique organizational sources of PE, (b) dispositional predictors augment situational features in explaining PE, and, perhaps most importantly, (c) job characteristics (JC) along with core self-evaluation (CSE) occupy the most dominant role on PE. In study 1 (N = 229), rank and CSE accounted for 64% of the variance in PE after accounting for information distribution, leadership, and the Big Five. Controlling for expanded Big Five inventory, leadership constructs, and socio-structurally features, study 2 (N = 171) finds general dominance of task significance (14%), empowering leadership (19%), and reduced, albeit incremental, effect of CSE (10%). Finally, study 3 (N = 386) replicates the large (30%) and moderately (10%) dominant effects of multiple JC dimensions and CSE. Implications call for a micro-level approach to PE emphasizing expanded roles, broadened self-concept, and personal impact on society rather than inspiring managers or organizational practices.

DOI

10.1080/1359432X.2019.1624532

Published Citation

Simonet, D. V., Miller, K. E., Luu, S., Askew, K. L., Narayan, A., Cunningham, S., ... & Kobezak, H. M. (2019). Who is empowered? Relative importance of dispositional and situational sources to psychological empowerment. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 28(4), 536-554.

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