How Does Employee Empowerment Contribute to Higher Individual and Workgroup Performance? An Empirical Assessment of a Trickle-down Model in Law Enforcement Agencies in Ohio

Recent studies on empowerment in public administration have shown many benefits of employee empowerment, including higher job satisfaction, organizational commitment, innovative behavior, and perception of workgroup performance (Fernandez & Moldogaziev, 2011, 2013a, 2013b). However, empowerment’s potential contributions to individual and organizational performance remain largely unexplored. The few studies that have examined the connection between employee empowerment and performance outcomes relied on self-reported measures, which are unreliable and inaccurate (Meier & O'Toole, 2013). Moreover, these studies do not provide much insight about the underlying processes through which empowerment from the top of an organization may trickle down to the bottom of the organization.The present study fills these gaps by examining the direct and indirect effects of empowering managerial practices on attitudes, behaviors, and performance of employees at both the individual and workgroup levels. The main research question of this study is: does empowerment lead to higher employee and organization performance in public agencies? To address this question, the study develops a cascading or “trickle-down” model of empowering leadership, in which senior managers’ empowering managerial practices are expected to influence junior managers’ empowerment practices, which, in turn, are expected to affect frontline employees’ work behaviors. More specifically, this study first examines how senior managers’ empowering leadership practices affects junior managers’ feelings of being empowered and their use of empowering practices toward their direct reports. Second, this study examines the association of junior managers’ empowering leadership practices with performance outcomes at different levels. These effects are evaluated in relation to employee effectiveness (i.e., task performance, conscientiousness, and voice), workgroup effectiveness (unit-level task performance, conscientiousness, and voice as well as overall work-unit effectiveness), and managerial effectiveness. Finally, assuming a distinction in the leadership influence between upper and lower levels (Yang, Zhang, & Tsui, 2010), this study examines whether the influence of senior managers’ empowering leadership practices can be achieved through full or partial mediation (i.e., the cascading effect) by junior managers’ psychological empowerment and their empowering leadership practices.These linkages are assessed with data collected from 507 manager-supervisor-subordinate triads in law enforcement agencies in Ohio. The problem of common method bias is addressed by employing three separate surveys and three sources of data: frontline employees, line supervisors (i.e., junior police officers), and senior team leaders (i.e., senior police officers). The analysis shows a positive relationship between senior (upper-level) and junior police officers (lower-level)’ empowering leadership and this relationship is mediated by junior police officers’ perceived psychological empowerment. It also reveals positive associations between junior police officers’ empowering leadership (lower-level) practices and the behaviors and performance of their direct reports and workgroups. Furthermore, the analysis suggests that the influence of senior police officers’ empowering leadership on group-level performance outcomes are mediated first by junior police officers’ perceptions of psychological empowerment and second by their use of empowering leadership. However, there is only marginal support for such three-path mediation effects on employee in-role and extra-role behaviors at the individual level. Finally, while junior police officers’ empowering leadership is positively related to subordinate ratings of managerial effectiveness, there is no such association with supervisor ratings of managerial effectiveness. The present study provides a better understanding of the influences of employee empowerment across organizational hierarchy, by demonstrating that the influences of empowering leadership occur not only directly, among immediate followers, but also indirectly, across hierarchical levels, through the cascading of senior leaders' influences on subordinate leader behaviors. Theoretical and practical implications for research on empowering leadership, psychological empowerment, individual and group-level performance outcomes, and managerial effectiveness are discussed.