The Role of Psychological Safety and Psychological Empowerment on Intrapreneurial Behavior towards Successful Individual Performance: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract

Though a substantial number of researches have been documented between psychological safety, psychological empowerment and individual level performance, the manner through which these relationships transpires is scarcely studied, principally as regards to individual performance of middle managers in medium enterprises. To address this shortfall and to expound further on these relationships, several researchers proposed mediating variables to better explain the relationship between these variables. Accordingly, this paper proposes intrapreneurial behavior as a mediating variable on the psychological safety, psychological empowerment and individual level performance relationships of middle managers in Nigerian medium enterprises. Psychological safety, psychological empowerment and intrapreneurial behavior relationships have been deliberated, followed by the intrapreneurial behavior and middle manager successful performance relationship and lastly the proposed mediating role of intrapreneurial behavior on the psychological safety, psychological empowerment and individual level performance relationships.

Validation of the psychological safety, psychological empowerment, intrapreneurial behaviour and individual performance measurements

“…After the content validity scrutiny of the study’s four constructs, namely, PE, PS, IB and IP, a pilot study was conducted (Mahmoud et al, 2018c) to observe the items' comprehension and clarity to respondents. Pilot studies are a crucial step prior to the actual collection of data to eliminate vague items from the questionnaire (Mahmoud et al, 2018c; Tay et al, 2020).…”

“…MEs must also understand the importance of all the study constructs in enhancing the production/operations managers' work results. For instance, MEs need to have psychologically safe and psychologically empowered managers to adopt IB, eventually resulting in the superior performance of individual managers, necessary for organizational survival (Mahmoud et al, 2018c).…”

“…Moreover, preceding works of literature recognized the importance of psychological safety (PS) and psychological empowerment (PE) in nurturing the intrapreneurial behaviour (IB; Pradhan & Nath, 2012; Mustafa, Martin, & Hughes, 2016) and IP of managers (Mahmoud, Ahmad, & Poespowidjojo, 2018c), particularly in Western cultures (Fellnhofer, Puumalainen, & Sjögrén, 2016; Frazier, Fainshmidt, Klinger, Pezeshkan, & Vracheva, 2016; van Dop, Depauw, & Driessens, 2016). On the other hand, limited studies exist on the relationship between PS, psychological empowerment, IB and IP of managers in developing countries and the context of medium enterprises (MEs) in particular.…”

The effect of transformational leadership on nonfamily international intrapreneurship behavior in family firms: the mediating role of psychological empowerment

“…Transformational leadership dimensions are positively related to innovative behavior (Afsar and Umrani, 2019; Amankwaa et al , 2019; Huynh, 2021; Sanders and Shipton, 2012; Shafi et al , 2020; Tung, 2016). Transformational leaders might promote employee creativity process engagement with the creative-self-efficacy, horizontal participation, resource availability and supportive climate (Boukamcha, 2019; Mahmood et al , 2019; Moriano et al , 2014; Rigtering and Weitzel, 2013; Yariv and Galit, 2017). Transformational leadership can motivate individuals to change and improve subordinates to think creatively, problem analysis from multiple angles and look at new solutions when solving corporate problems (Khalili, 2016).…”

“…Psychological empowerment for employees means that the organization provides resources for employees in performing positive organizational behaviors via relationship building (Farahani and Falahati, 2007; Hashemi and Nadi, 2012; Mahmoud et al , 2019; Park et al , 2014; Sengar et al , 2020). Organizational empowerment is a mechanism that not only influences the employee attitude toward the organization through creating/enhancing loyalty, value congruence and affective commitment but also leads to self-empowerment (Malik et al , 2021; Moghaddas et al , 2020).…”