Empowerment and initiative: the mediating role of obligation

Wikhamn, Wajda; Selart, Marcus
Journal article, Peer reviewed
Accepted version
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URI
https://hdl.handle.net/11250/2644019
Date
2019
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Original version
Employee Relations. 2019, 41 (4), 662-677.   10.1108/ER-11-2017-0273
Abstract
Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which psychological empowerment and felt obligation can explain variations in personal initiative.

Design/methodology/approach

Employees from a Swedish organization participated in a web-based survey.

Findings

Psychological empowerment is important for enhancing proactive behavior at work, but its dimensions relate differently to personal initiative. Felt obligation mediates the relationship between psychological empowerment and personal initiative, but only for two dimensions of empowerment (meaningfulness and competence).

Originality/value

The paper contributes to our understanding of how employees’ feeling of obligation explains one form of proactive behavior. It also highlights the overlooked distinctiveness of psychological empowerment dimensions in predicting personal initiative at work.
Publisher
Emerald
Journal
Employee Relations
Copyright
Copyright policy of Emerald Publishing Group, the publisher of this journal: As soon as we've published an article, the version of the article that has been accepted for publication, the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) can be used for a variety of non-commercial scholarly purposes, subject to full attribution. An author may deposit and use their AAM (aka post-print)