Empowering leadership: employee-related antecedents and consequences

We develop a theoretical model of empowering leadership that integrates role-based views of followership and social information processing theory and adds a reciprocal component to research on empowering leadership. Our theoretical model proposes that employee task performance and the quality of the supervisor-employee relationship serve as cues that shape supervisor empowerment behaviors, which, in turn, serve as cues that influence employee voice through employee state promotion focus. Data from 223 supervisor-employee dyads supported our hypotheses and showed that supervisors engage in more empowerment behaviors with employees who perform well and with whom they have a good relationship. Supervisors’ empowerment behaviors elicit a state promotion focus in employees, which stimulates these employees to express their concerns, ideas, and opinions in order to improve the functioning of the employee, the team, or the organization.