授权型领导与员工创新行为: 结构正式化的调节作用 [Empowering leadership and employee innovative behavior: The moderating effect of str5uctural formalization]

Abstract

: Empowerment is a promising strategy for organizations to maintain stability and initiate change to survive． Accordingly， the effectiveness of empowering leadership has attracted enormous attention in management research and practice． Previous studies suggest that empowering leadership has significant positive impact on employee attitudes and behaviors． Nevertheless，researchers have called for moving away from a“one-size-fits-all”empowerment model，together with exploring how and when empowering leaders may be most successful in eliciting employee innovative behavior． Ｒelying on self-concept based theory and applying a cross-level design，we intend to understand whether，how and when empowering leadership is related to employee innovative behavior． Specifically，we investigated the mediating role of organizationbased self-esteem and the moderating role of structural formalization in the cross-level relationship between empowering leadership and employee innovative behavior． We adopted questionnaire survey data including 366 leader-subordinates dyads from 60 work teams as empirical sample，Spss 21． 0，HLM 7． 0 and Mplus 7． 0 were conducted to test the hypotheses． The results showed that: ①Empowering leadership was significantly and positively related to employee innovative behavior; ②Organization-based self-esteem mediated the positive relationship between empowering leadership and employee innovative behavior． ③Structural formalization moderated the relationship between empowering leadership and employee innovative behavior． The positive relationship between empowering leadership and employee innovative behavior，however，was significant only when team structural formalization was higher． ④Structural formalization moderated the indirect effect of empowering leadership on employee innovative behavior via organization-based self-esteem，that is，the indirect effect was significant under the conditions of higher structural formalization，however not under the conditions of lower structural formalization． With these findings，we make several implications to the literature and management practices． First，we clarified the mixed pattern of results for the relationships between empowering leadership and innovative behavior，showing that empowering leaders would increase employee innovative behavior． Second，we enriched the influence mechanisms of empowering leadership on employee innovative behavior，and identified organization-based-self esteem as a distinctive mechanism shaping innovative behavior． Third，this study echoed the call for further exploring the boundary conditions of the effectiveness of empowering leadership． Our research extended empowerment research by acknowledging the crucial role of structural formalization in the relationships driving employee innovative behavior． The findings suggested that the positive effect of empowering leadership on innovative behavior was realized only in the presence of higher structural formalization． Furthermore，this study presents practical implications for managers，in an effective manner，which stimulates employees innovative behavior through empowering behaviors． The managers are highly recommended to enhance team formalization in order to ameliorate uncertainties for employees while being involved in an innovative behavior．