Antecedents and consequences of empowering leadership: Leader power distance, leader perception of team capability, and team innovation

• Author: Bingjie Yu,Daan Knippenberg,Yang Chen,Guiyao Tang
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2449
• Date: 01 July 2020
• Published date: 01 July 2020

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Antecedents and consequences of empowering leadership:

Leader power distance, leader perception of team capability,

and team innovation

Guiyao Tang

1

| Yang Chen

2

| Daan van Knippenberg

3

| Bingjie Yu

4

1

School of Business, Shandong University,

Jinan, China

2

School of Business Administration,

Southwestern University of Finance and

Economics, Chengdu, China

3

Bennett S LeBow College of Business, Drexel

University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

4

School of Business, Hong Kong Baptist

University, Hong Kong

Correspondence

Yang Chen, School of Business Administration,

Southwestern University of Finance and

Economics, No. 555, Liutai Road, Wenjiang

District, Chengdu, Sichuan 611130, China.

Email: chenyang@swufe.edu.cn; francisnju@

gmail.com

Funding information

National Natural Science Foundation of China,

Grant/Award Numbers: 71502142, 71725001,

71872102

Summary

The evidence that empowering leadership is an effective form of team leadership

brings the question on what the antecedents of empowering leadership are into

focus. We propose that empowering leadership is driven by considerations of the

normative and situational appropriateness of empowering leadership that are associ-

ated with leader power distance value and leader perception of team capability. We

propose that leader power distance and perceived team capability interact such that

the influence of leader power distance on empowering leadership is stronger with

higher perceived team capability. We extend our model to show that by affecting

empowering leadership, the interaction of leader power distance and perceived team

capability indirectly influences team innovation, an important team outcome associ-

ated with empowered teamwork. We tested our model in two multisource surveys in

China: Study 1 of 84 technical teams and Study 2 of 83 financial service teams. We

discuss how our study contributes to empowering leadership theory by providing a

theoretical perspective that lends itself well to identifying other trait and situational

antecedents of empowering leadership.

KEYWORDS

empowering leadership, power distance, team capability, team innovation

1|INTRODUCTION

As organizations increasingly moved to team-based work, research

on team process and performance has grown (Mathieu, Hollenbeck,

van Knippenberg, & Ilgen, 2017). This focus on teams invites the

consideration of what is effective team leadership (Day, Gronn, &

Salas, 2004). Research puts a strong emphasis on empowering

leadership in this respect (Sharma & Kirkman, 2015). Empowering

leadership, defined as leader behavior to stimulate team self-

direction through a combination of actions intended to give the

team autonomy and to encourage and coach the team in using

that autonomy (Kirkman & Rosen, 1999), is a strong fit with the

reasons for the team-based organization of work that recognize

the potential for greater synergy in self-directed teams (Sharma &

Kirkman, 2015). With the growing evidence for the effectiveness

of empowering leadership (Burke et al., 2006; Stewart, 2006; van

Knippenberg, 2017a), it is increasingly clear that an important

question is what motivates leaders to engage in empowering lead-

ership. This is the question we set out to address.

Despite the strong interest in empowering leadership, there has

been surprisingly little work on the antecedents of empowering lead-

ership. Ou et al. (2014) showed that leader humility is positively

related to empowering leadership (presumably because low humility

reflects leader's desire to be the center of attention and thus to be in

control), Srivastava and Vyas (2015) found that organizational culture

predicted empowering leadership (presumably because organizational

culture can reflect expectations for empowerment), and Hakimi, van

Knippenberg, and Giessner (2010) showed that the prior performance

of subordinates predicted empowering leadership in a hypothetical

scenario (presumably because better prior performance reduces the

Received: 6 October 2018 Revised: 11 April 2020 Accepted: 23 April 2020

DOI: 10.1002/job.2449

J Organ Behav. 2020;41:551–566. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 551

perceived risk of empowerment) and more so when participants imag-

ining to be in the leadership role could be expected to more carefully

consider their empowerment decision. These findings are consistent

with the general notion that leader behavior is driven by both leader

traits and situational influences (van Knippenberg, 2012).

In the present study, we complement this earlier work through an

integration of insights from empowering leadership theory and

research on beliefs about leadership that influence leadership percep-

tions (Eden & Leviatan, 1975; Lord & Maher, 1991) and leader actions

(Conger, 1989; Rus, van Knippenberg, & Wisse, 2010; van Gils, van

Quaquebeke, & van Knippenberg, 2010; cf. McGregor, 1960). We

propose that we can identify personal and situational influences on

empowering leadership by determining how such influences reflect

two core considerations in leaders' decision to empower their subor-

dinates: the extent to which empowering leadership is perceived to

be normatively appropriate (i.e., is this what good leadership should

do?) and the extent to which empowering leadership is perceived to

be situationally appropriate (i.e., is this a situation in which

empowering leadership would be effective?). We argue that these

considerations have an interactive influence such that leaders engage

in empowering leadership to the extent that empowering leadership is

seen as both normatively and situationally appropriate.

Drawing on empowering leadership theory, we can capture the

core of empowering leadership as focusing on stimulating team self-

directed as opposed to leader-directed work (e.g., Kirkman &

Rosen, 1999; Sharma & Kirkman, 2015). On the basis of this, we iden-

tify leader power distance value as reflecting a trait influence on the

perceived normative appropriateness of empowering leadership.

Power distance is a value reflecting the perceived appropriateness of

hierarchy and power differences within social systems. It is a value in

which not only national and organizational cultures differ,but individ-

uals within cultures also differ (Kirkman & Shapiro, 2001; Maznevski,

Gomez, DiStefano, Noorderhaven, & Wu, 2002). Power distance value

thus can be considered an individual trait. We argue that leaders

higher in power distance (i.e., who see hierarchy and power differ-

ences as more appropriate) see empowering leadership as less norma-

tively appropriate and thus conversely that leaders lower in power

distance are more open to engaging in empowering leadership. The

extent to which they actually do so, however, is contingent on the

extent that they perceive empowering leadership to be situationally

appropriate.

We capture the consideration of the situational appropriateness

of empowering leadership through leader perceptions of team capabil-

ity (i.e., understood to reflect both technical competencies and

teamwork competencies). We argue that empowering leadership is

perceived to be situationally appropriate to the extent that the team

is expected to function effectively when empowered—with greater

team capability. Accordingly, we propose that to the extent that

leaders see empowering leadership as normatively appropriate

(i.e., with lower power distance), leaders will engage more in

empowering leadership with greater perceived team capability. That

is, we argue that leader power distance and perceived team capability

have an interactive influence on empowering leadership such that the

influence of power distance is stronger with greater perceived team

capability.

The primary focus of our study is on the antecedents of

empowering leadership. To further substantiate the value of study-

ing the antecedents of empowering leadership, however, we see

added value in showing that through empowering leadership, these

antecedents affect valued outcomes. Drawing on empowering lead-

ership theory, we argue that the value of empowering leadership

should be visible first and foremost in outcomes that can be

expected to be driven by team self-direction. We focus on team

innovation as a prototypical example of such an outcome. Innova-

tion, the generation and implementation of novel and useful out-

comes, is key to organizations' sustainable competitive advantage,

and team-based work is an important source of innovation (van

Knippenberg, 2017b; West & Farr, 1990). Team innovation is an

outcome that is clearly implied by the rationale to empower teams

(i.e., to benefit from the synergy created by team self-direction;

cf. West, 1990) but an outcome rarely investigated in empowering

leadership research (Burpitt & Bigoness, 1997). Our research model

is summarized in Figure 1.

The contribution of our study lies in the development of a per-

spective on the antecedents of empowering leadership that can also

be used to identify other trait and situational antecedents of

empowering leadership through the consideration of whether such

variables are related to the perceived normative appropriateness or

perceived situational appropriateness of empowering leadership. That

is, even though our primary focus is on the power distance xteam

capability interaction, and these are the only antecedents we can

speak to empirically, we argue that the underlying theory that allows

us to predict this particular interaction can be extended to identify

other trait and situational antecedents of empowering leadership

(i.e., other trait or situational influences that are associated with per-

ceptions of the normative or situational appropriateness of

empowering leadership). We believe this is also important in helping

to determine how to develop empowering leadership.

FIGURE 1 Research model

552 TANG ET AL.