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

Abstract

Although there has been much recent attention to empowerment in public sector research, most of this research focuses on structural empowerment, rather than psychological empowerment, and thus focuses on management practices, rather than on employees’ motivational states. This article examines the processes through which transformational leadership and transactional leadership affect employees’ feelings of psychological empowerment, focusing specifically on the role of goal specificity as a mediating variable. Using data collected from state government employees, the structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses found support for hypotheses that goal specificity mediates the relationships between both transformational and transactional leadership and psychological empowerment. These results contribute to the discussion of transformational and transactional leadership approaches with regard to goal setting in the public sector and provide practical implications that public managers’ leadership behaviors can help employees develop positive attitudes toward goal specificity, which can then lead to feelings of psychological empowerment.

Joint effects of shared and transformational leadership on performance in street‐level bureaucracies: Evidence from the educational sector

“…Finally, the study advances our understanding of antecedents and consequences of team psychological empowerment, which has been studied considerably less in public settings than structural empowerment (e.g., Fernandez & Moldogaziev, 2013) and, to our knowledge, never on the team level. Specifically, we complement prior research showing the effect of transformational leadership on team psychological empowerment (Jong & Faerman, 2020), by identifying shared leadership as a new antecedent of collective psychological empowerment in public organizations. Further, we extend previous findings on the mediating role of psychological empowerment and demonstrate that teams can be simultaneously empowered by internal (horizontal) and external (vertical) leadership influence, which then translates into improved service delivery.…”

“…Transformational leadership seems particularly well‐suited to secure followers' support and engagement in pursuing organizational objectives due to its influence on information interpretation through goal clarification and commitment toward common goals (Jong & Faerman, 2020; Moynihan et al, 2011). As such, transformational leaders can help teams with multiple informal leaders to avoid process losses inherent to shared leadership structures and strengthen positive motivational states within teams.…”

Goal Setting Theory: The Effect of Incentive Moderation on Individual Performance

“…The purposes stated quantitatively are more comfortable for individuals to understand so that individual cognitive processes will occur to think about what to do to achieve these goals. Some research supports the explanation that goal specificity affects the achievement of goals (Kleingled and Heleen, 2011;Wallace et al, 2017), psychological empowerment (Jong and Sue, 2020). Latham and Locke (1991) explain goal difficulty as ease of achieving goals, namely easy, medium, and impossible to achieve.…”

Navigating political terrain: a comprehensive review of leadership theories in political science

“…Leadership style is the focus of most scholarly articles on leadership aspects in the study of political science. (Pike & Diamond, 2021;Craig, 2021;Cwalina & Drzewiecka, 2019;Ofosu-Anim, 2022;Kalpokaite & Radivojevic, 2020;LaRocca & Groves, 2022;Islam et al, 2022;Barrigüete et al, 2022;Jong & Faerman, 2021;Changar & Atan, 2021;Corpuz et al, 2020;Brimhall & Palinkas, 2020;Hannah et al, 2020;Müller & Van Esch, 2020;Keulemans & Groeneveld, 2020;Kesgin, 2020;Groves, 2020;Nxumalo, 2019;Cho et al, 2019;Fourie & Höhne, 2019;Lin & Sun, 2018; Context and Focus Issue Hansbrough & Schyns, 2018;Muralidharan & Pathak, 2018;Changar & Atan, 2021;Smirles et al, 2020;Young et al, 2021;Bilal et al, 2020;Haque et al, 2020;Samanta & Lamprakis, 2018;Itzkovich et al, 2020;Pérezts et al, 2020;Nahavandi & Corbett, 2018;Mantzouranis, 2018;Fabac et al, 2022;Alvesson & Einola, 2019;Suppiah et al, 2018;Ford et al, 2021).…”