Psychological Empowerment: Antecedents From Goal Orientation and Consequences in Public Sector Employees

Abstract

Recent research has encouraged the study of psychological empowerment in public organizations owing to its benefits for optimum service delivery and performance improvement in the public context. This study analyzes how learning goal orientation, prove-performance goal orientation, and avoid-performance goal orientation are related to psychological empowerment and how such empowerment influences well-being outcomes within the context of public employees. Analyses of data from 553 public-sector employees showed that only learning goal orientation strongly and positively influences psychological empowerment. Furthermore, the results support the positive and significant relationship between psychological empowerment and both job satisfaction and affective commitment and the negative link with job anxiety levels. Theoretical and practical implications, as well as future directions for the psychological empowerment issue, are discussed.

The Influence Mechanism of Supervisor Developmental Feedback on the Enactment of Employees’ Creative Ideas: A Moderated Chain Mediation Model Based on Psychological Empowerment

“…Psychological empowerment makes employees feel more "empowered" and motivates them to change their inner beliefs and attitudes (Spreitzer, 1995) provides a creativity-supportive context that enables individuals to generate better creative solutions, which is in line with the characteristics of highly empowered employees, that is, they value organizational goals and implement positive behaviors. When employees' psychological empowerment is high, employees have sufficient centripetal force and competitiveness to increase positive emotions at work, implement independent actions, and overcome psychological barriers to expertise seeking (Hong and Gajendran, 2018;Garcia-Juan et al, 2020). As a result, such employees perceive weaker positive emotions from supervisor developmental feedback.…”

“…Specifically, psychological empowerment consists of four core cognitions of work: competence, meaning, self-determination, and impact ( Spreitzer, 1995 ; Matsuo, 2021 ). Previous research has generally linked psychological empowerment to significant employee outcomes in the team ( Hartmann et al, 2018 ; Garcia-Juan et al, 2020 ). Schermuly and Meyer (2016) proposed that there was a negative correlation between psychological empowerment and feelings of depression.…”

An Empirical Model: Jewish and Muslim Women Students in Israel Gaining Empowerment Through Higher Education

“…The first is the level of significance assigned to education, meaning the value or importance attributed by students to their academic studies (Gilat, 2015). The second is the extent of perceived control, meaning the development of a sense of autonomy, expressing an individual's freedom to initiate and direct his or her actions (Garcia-Juan, Escrig-Tena, & Roca-puig, 2018;Menon, 1999;Spreitzer, 1996). These indicators refer to the degree of control gained in the process of dealing with educational challenges, such as writing demanding papers or theses; the ability to put theories into practice; and developing the skills required for various academic accomplishments.…”

The Role of Goal Specificity in the Relationship Between Leadership and Empowerment

“…Although most research in the public sector has focused on structural empowerment (e.g., Fernandez & Moldogaziev, 2011, 2013; Pitts, 2005)—where empowerment practices are seen as central features of New Public Management and government reform initiatives (García-Juan et al, 2019, 2020)—Seibert et al (2011), in their meta-analysis examining both antecedents and consequences of psychological empowerment, found that most current research views organizational and management practices such as structural empowerment as “antecedents of psychological empowerment, rather than as empowerment itself” (p. 982). With respect to the consequences of psychological empowerment, Seibert et al (2011) found statistically significant relationships between psychological empowerment and such important outcome variables as task performance, organizational citizenship behavior, and organizational commitment.…”

“…Taken together, this meta-analysis suggests that psychological empowerment may be a mediator variable in the relationship between structural empowerment and key outcome variables. In addition, psychological empowerment has been found to be associated with increased employee engagement (Macsinga et al, 2015) and organizational performance (García-Juan et al, 2020). As Menon (2001) notes, however, “the expected benefits of empowerment will be realised only if the employees actually experience empowerment (i.e., they are in the psychological state of empowerment)” (p. 158, emphasis added).…”