Middle-managers’ innovative behavior: the roles of psychological empowerment and personal initiative

Abstract

Middle-managers are vital catalysts for organizational innovation, acting as a bridge between organizational strategy and goals set by senior-managers and the actions of lower-level employees. Their proactive motivation to engage in innovative work behavior is therefore central to organizational endeavor. However, the innovation literature is replete with studies focusing solely on organizational-level determinants of middle-managers' innovative behavior while the HRM literature focuses predominantly on the experiences of lower-level employees. Little is known about the psychological factors and processes which give rise to middle-managers innovative work behavior. Drawing on the proactive motivation model, this study examines whether middlemanagers' personal initiative mediates the relationship between the four dimensions of their psychological empowerment and their innovative work behaviors. Drawing on a sample of 110 middle-manager-supervisor dyads, our study highlights personal initiative as the mechanism through which psychological empowerment influences innovative work behaviors. Our work further informs the HR literature about how HR practices and systems may be used to foster middle manager proactivity in the workplace. In total, our study seeks to take a step towards reducing the dearth in knowledge on the psychological determinants of middle-managers' innovative work behaviors.

Empowering leadership and organizational exploration: the role of preoccupation with failure and leader gender

“…That said, empowered subordinates are more likely to adopt an active orientation toward work (Drazic et al, 2023). As a result, empowered employees are more prone to take initiative and identify opportunities (Mustafa et al, 2023). In parallel, they can raise concerns and suggest improvements regarding the organization's mistakes (Murray et al, 2022).…”

How transformational leaders get employees to take initiative and display creativity: the catalytic role of work overload

“…We propose an unexplored but also critically action-oriented behavioral mediator of the transformational leadership-creativity link: employees' personal initiative taking (Hong et al, 2016;Mustafa et al, 2022). As defined by Frese et al (1997, p. 140), personal initiative taking is "a behavior syndrome resulting in an individual's taking an active and self-starting approach to work."…”

“…We propose an unexplored but also critically action-oriented behavioral mediator of the transformational leadership–creativity link: employees' personal initiative taking (Hong et al. , 2016; Mustafa et al. , 2022).…”

Managing empowerment: adjusting organisational units' autonomy to achieve corporate agility

“…Oltra et al. (2022, p. 142) also highlight the combination of empowerment and autonomy and describe this tandem from the perspective of project members as being “allowed to take risks, learn by trial and error and […] be able to decide for themselves with lots of trust given by team leaders.” The way how empowerment of middle management research evolved was discussed in a recent study (Mustafa et al. , 2022), whilst other academics have explored the challenging role of middle managers and the meaning of their empowerment (Azambuja and Islam, 2019; Raelin and Cataldo, 2011).…”

“…be able to decide for themselves with lots of trust given by team leaders." The way how empowerment of middle management research evolved was discussed in a recent study (Mustafa et al, 2022), whilst other academics have explored the challenging role of middle managers and the meaning of their empowerment (Azambuja and Islam, 2019;Raelin and Cataldo, 2011).…”