Empowering leadership and employee work engagement: a diary study using self-determination theory

Empowering leaders delegate authority, grant autonomy, and assign responsibilities to individuals or teams. Drawing on empowerment theory and self-determination theory (SDT), the present study hypothesizes that daily empowering leadership is related to employee work engagement through (a) psychological empowerment, and (b) the satisfaction of basic psychological needs. We collected data among 86 Norwegian Navy cadets during a 30-day transatlantic voyage (response = 97%; n = 2022 observations). Consistent with hypotheses, results of multilevel mediation path analysis showed that daily leader autonomy support and development support were positively related to daily employee work engagement through psychological empowerment and satisfaction of the needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence. Moreover, leaders’ autonomy-supportive behaviour was most strongly related to psychological empowerment (not need satisfaction) and indirectly to work engagement when development support was high (vs. low). We discuss how these findings support and contribute to empowering leadership literature, as well as the practical implications.