Applying empowering leadership to foster employee competence for performance and career satisfaction: Testing a serial–parallel mediation model

Background Amid increasingly dynamic and skill-intensive work environments, organizations face growing pressure to enhance both employee capability and long-term career outcomes. Objective This study aims to examine how empowering leadership fosters employee career satisfaction by integrating organizational commitment, self-efficacy, and competence for performance into a coherent serial–parallel mediation model. Specifically, it investigates whether empowering leadership enhances career satisfaction directly and indirectly through attitudinal, psychological, and capability-based mechanisms. Method A quantitative cross-sectional survey design was employed. Data were collected from 123 full-time employees working in coal mining companies in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, using purposive sampling. Moreover, data were analyzed using SmartPLS 3.3.3 for partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Result The results show that empowering leadership significantly and positively influences organizational commitment and career satisfaction. Organizational commitment, in turn, positively predicts self-efficacy and competence for performance. Mediation analysis reveals that organizational commitment significantly mediates the relationships between empowering leadership and both self-efficacy and competence for performance. However, contrary to expectations, neither self-efficacy nor competence for performance significantly predicts career satisfaction, and the serial mediation pathway toward career satisfaction is not supported. These findings indicate that empowering leadership exerts a strong direct effect on career satisfaction beyond internal psychological and capability-based mechanisms.