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Relationship building in empowering leadership processes: A test of mediation and moderationa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2015

Won Jun Kwak  and
Christine L Jackson
Won Jun Kwak*
Affiliation:
College of Business Administration, Soongsil University, Seoul, South Korea
Christine L Jackson
Affiliation:
Krannert School of Management, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
*
Corresponding author: kwak@ssu.ac.kr
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Abstract

The direct positive relationship between empowering leadership and subordinate empowerment is well established. However, leader–member exchange (LMX) research, which concerns a leader’s relationship-building with subordinates in a work unit, suggests that the direct leader empowering–subordinate empowerment association may be more complex than understood in the current literature. Accordingly, this study examined LMX theory-based mediation and moderation processes occurring between empowering leadership and subordinate empowerment. In a field study employing 132 administrative workers in 26 work groups, as expected, an individual subordinate’s perceived LMX mediated the positive effects of empowering leadership on the subordinate’s psychological empowerment. In addition, LMX differentiation cross-level moderated the linkage between empowering leadership and perceived LMX. Together, study findings suggest that subordinates’ perceived LMX in a dyadic relationship with a leader and in a work group needs to be carefully considered in empowering leadership processes.

Keywords

empowering leadershipleader–member exchange (LMX)psychological empowermentLMX differentiation
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Management & Organization , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , July 2015 , pp. 369 - 387
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management 2015 

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Footnotes

a

Please note that this manuscript represents original research, not previously published and not under review at any other journal.

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