The power of empowering leadership: allowing and encouraging followers to take charge of their own jobs

Based on resources theories, the present study examines a serial mediation model, in which empowering leadership predicts employee job crafting through psychological capital (PsyCap) and trust in leader, and job crafting subsequently predicts three different work behaviors: psychological withdrawal, physical withdrawal, and positive work behavior. Data were collected from US employees at four separate points with one-month intervals. Structural equation modeling including testing alternative models was utilized to assess the mediation model. The results generally supported the hypothesized model, suggesting that empowering leadership elicited greater personal and job resources in the form of PsyCap and leader trust, which in turn, led to job crafting behaviors. Subsequently, job crafting made employees engage in more positive work behaviors, as well as fewer psychological and physical withdrawal behaviors. Significant direct effects of empowering leadership and PsyCap on one outcome, psychological withdrawal, were found in some analyses, however. Overall, the findings of the present study underline the importance of personal and job resources for favorable work behaviors by testing the mediating processes.