Longitudinal psychological empowerment profiles, their determinants, and some health-related outcomes

Abstract

This research relies on bifactor models to help improve our understanding of the dimensionality of the psychological empowerment construct. We also examined the configurations, or profiles, taken by psychological empowerment dimensions, and documented their stability over time as well as the associations between these profiles and theoretically-relevant predictors (workload, supervisor support, overall organizational justice, and role clarity) and outcomes (alcohol consumption, sleeping difficulties, and depressive symptoms). A sample of 750 healthcare workers completed a questionnaire twice over a one-year period. First, our results showed that employees' psychological empowerment ratings simultaneously reflected a global overarching construct co-existing with four specific dimensions (competence, impact, meaning, and self-determination). Then, five profiles were identified and found to be highly stable over time: Low Empowerment, Moderately High Empowerment and Impact, Normative, High Empowerment, and Moderately High Empowerment and High Meaning.Role clarity was also associated with a higher likelihood of membership into the High Empowerment profile and a lower likelihood of membership into the Low Empowerment one relative to the other profiles. Finally, employees' depressive symptoms were the highest in the Low Empowerment profile.

A longitudinal investigation of structural empowerment profiles among healthcare employees

“…These profiles displayed a Low Empowerment (Profile 1), High Information (Profile 2), Normative (Profile 3), High Empowerment (Profile 4) and Moderately High Empowerment (Profile 5) configuration. These profiles were generally consistent with our expectations, matching findings from previous person‐centered studies of employees' perceptions of slightly different work characteristics (e.g., Caesens et al., 2020, 2021; Chénard‐Poirier et al., 2017, 2022; Gillet et al., 2022, 2023). Although the size of these profiles changed over time, their number, structure, and dispersion (within‐profile variability) was found to generalize over time.…”

“…This study was approved by the Nantes University Hospital Ethics Committee (#GNEDS02122018), was conducted according to the guidelines from the Declaration of Helsinki, and is registered on ClinicalTrials.gov (#NCT04010773). This specific protocol (#NCT04010773) covers two distinct data collections, one involving a 1‐year follow up (published in Gillet et al., 2023), and the other one involving the 2‐year follow up published in the current study.…”

“…Recently, Gillet et al. (2023) identified five profiles of psychological empowerment among a sample of French healthcare workers: (1) a Low Psychological Empowerment profile, (2) a Normative profile, (3) a Moderately High Psychological Empowerment and Impact profile, (4) a Moderately High Psychological Empowerment and High Meaning profile, and (5) a High Psychological Empowerment profile. Interestingly, all five profiles were found to be very stable over a 1‐year period.…”