Taking a Closer Look at the Empowerment‐Performance Relationship: Evidence from Law Enforcement Organizations

Abstract

This article examines the influence of empowering leadership practices on police officers' job performance, perceptions of managerial effectiveness, and unit performance. These relationships are examined using multisource survey data collected from 100 law enforcement managers, 446 of their subordinates, and 98 of their direct supervisors. The analysis shows that empowering leadership contributes positively to subordinate officers' job performance and unit effectiveness. Empowering leadership is also positively associated with subordinate but not with supervisor ratings of managerial effectiveness. Task‐oriented leadership, however, is positively associated with both subordinate and supervisor ratings of managerial effectiveness. Implications of these results for managerial leadership in law enforcement organizations are discussed.

How empowering leadership reduces employee silence in public organizations

“…The empowering practices identified in the early studies are soliciting feedback from subordinates, including subordinates in decision‐making, and delegating authority to allow subordinates to make decisions about work on their own without prior approval (Kanter ; Vroom and Jago ). Recent studies have expanded the boundary of the construct and included other relation‐oriented managerial practices, such as coaching subordinates, recognizing subordinates’ performance, and providing subordinates with the information and resources necessary to carry out their job duties (Bowen and Lawler , ; Arnold et al ; Ahearne et al ; Hassan et al ; Park and Hassan ).…”

“…Specifically, we focus on the potential empowering role of supervisors, who are known to exert considerable influence on the day‐to‐day activities of frontline employees in government organizations (Lipsky ). The emerging research on empowering leadership in government organizations suggests that empowering supervisors not only share power with frontline employees, but also provide support during difficult or stressful periods and motivate them to take initiatives on their own to solve organizational problems (Miao et al ; Hassan et al ; Park and Hassan ). Empowering leadership practices have been linked empirically to an array of silence‐related behaviours—for example, improvement‐oriented voice (Park and Hassan ) and greater sense of agency (Kirkman and Rosen ; Randolph and Kemery )—but not to silence of government employees per se.…”

Organizational Citizenship Behavior in the Public Sector: A Systematic Literature Review and Future Research Agenda

“…Thus, OCB has been studied in relation to typical public sector concepts such as public service motivation (PSM) (Mostafa, Gould‐Williams, and Bottomley ; Pandey, Wright, and Moynihan ) and general citizenship behavior (Cohen and Vigoda ). Using cases of management in public organizations, OCB has also been studied in relation to more generally used management concepts such as job satisfaction (Van Scotter ) and leadership behaviors (Hassan, Park, and Raadschelders ; Ritz et al ). Through these studies, public administration scholars have begun to underscore the importance of OCB in public organizations.…”

Get Your Shades Now—The Future's Still Bright: Leveraging Human Resources for Tomorrow's Public Service

“…Hameduddin and Fernandez () demonstrate that supportive managerial practices aimed at getting employees to become more engaged with their work—such as listening to employees, treating them with respect, communicating expectations, and promoting growth and development—can lead to higher performance. Likewise, Hassan, Park, and Raadschelders () show that an empowering leadership style is a motivational tool for improving proficiency and conscientiousness among police officers, thus positively affecting work units in public organizations. Public employees with high levels of public service motivation and civic engagement are also more likely to perform environmentally friendly behaviors in both workplace and nonworkplace settings, a positive spillover from a soft skill approach (Azhar and Yang ).…”