Empowering Leadership: Its Link to Work Engagement Through Perceived Competence Mobilization, Organizational Cynicism and Motivational Climate

Abstract

Empowering leadership has long been proven to have several positive effects on employee outcomes such as work engagement. However, researchers have stressed that previous studies on empowering leadership lack consistency. The need for a more balanced investigation to understand when and why empowering leadership leads to work engagement or sometimes disengagement has therefore been requested. Thus, the present study investigates empowering leadership’s link to work engagement through the mediators perceived competence mobilization and organizational cynicism. Further, motivational climate was included as moderator between empowering leadership and the mediators to investigate its possible contextual influence. We employed a cross-lagged design containing responses from 110 employees among 19 industries. The results of our analysis give support for organizational cynicism as a mediator between empowering leadership and work engagement. Thus, the findings suggest that empowering leaders can help to reduce employees’ cynical attitudes and thereby reduce their work engagement. Further, the study found support for a moderated mediation effect in low to moderate levels of performance climates in the relationship between empowering leadership and organizational cynicism on work engagement. However, there was no support for perceived competence mobilization as a mediator between empowering leadership and work engagement. Further, no support was found for mastery climate as moderated mediation effect. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, as well as limitations and directions for future research. Keywords: empowering leadership, organizational cynicism, perceived competence mobilization, mastery climate, performance climate, work engagement