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

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12978
• Author: Shahidul Hassan,Jongsoo Park,Jos C. N. Raadschelders
• Date: 01 May 2019
• Published date: 01 May 2019

Taking a Closer Look at the Empowerment-Performance Relationship: Evidence from Law Enforcement Organizations 427

Shahidul Hassan

The Ohio State University

Jongsoo Park

Korea University

Jos C. N. Raadschelders

The Ohio State University

Taking a Closer Look at the Empowerment-Performance

Relationship: Evidence from Law Enforcement Organizations

Jos C. N. Raadschelders is professor

of public administration and associate dean

in the John Glenn College of Public Affairs

at The Ohio State University. He served as

managing editor of

Public Administration

Review

from 2006 to 2011.

E-mail: raadschelders.1@osu.edu

Shahidul Hassan is associate professor

of public management and leadership in

the John Glenn College of Public Affairs

at The Ohio State University. His research

focuses on leadership practices in public

and nonprofit organizations.

E-mail: hassan.125@osu.edu

Jongsoo Park is assistant professor

in the Graduate School of Public

Administration, Korea University,

Sejong, Korea. His research interests

include diversity in the workplace and

leadership and work environment in public

organizations.

E-mail: parkj1@korea.ac.kr

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 79, Iss. 3, pp. 427–438. © 2018 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12978.

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.

Evidence for Practice

• Empowering leadership practices motivate police officers to perform their work more proficiently and

conscientiously. Empowering leadership practices also contribute positively to the effectiveness of work units

in police organizations.

• Subordinate police officers consider their managers more effective when the managers engage in empowering

leadership, whereas both subordinates and supervisors consider the managers more effective when the

managers engage in task-oriented leadership.

• Managers in law enforcement organizations should try to strike a balance between exercising empowering

and task-oriented leadership and carefully allow subordinate police officers to exercise discretion to carry out

their tasks and work activities.

Identifying ways that public managers can

improve the productivity of employees and

the performance of their organizations has

been an enduring theme in public administration

research (Behn 1991). Scholarly discussion gained

momentum with the “reinventing government”

initiative in the 1990s, which emphasized the

adoption of market-oriented reforms and innovative

management techniques (Gore 1993; Hood 1991;

Kettl 2005; Osborne and Gaebler 1992). In the

ensuing discussion and debate over the last two

decades, empowerment has emerged as a guiding

principle for improving the delivery of public services

and the performance of public employees and

organizations (Lynn 1998; Peters 1996; Petter et al.

2002; Wise 2002).

The benefits of empowerment have also been

examined in many prior studies showing that

empowering practices can improve public

employees’ job satisfaction, organizational

commitment, and intention to continue working

in their organization (Fernandez and Moldogaziev

2013a, 2015; Hassan et al. 2013; Kim and

Fernandez 2017; Peters and Savoie 1996; Petter et

al. 2002). Additionally, Langbein (2000) finds a

positive connection between employee discretion,

an indicator of empowerment, and perceptions

of organizational performance. Fernandez and

Moldogaziev (2011) show a positive relationship

between empowerment and federal employees’

perceptions of their work group’s performance. In

a subsequent study, they aggregate individual-level

survey data and confirm this relationship at the

agency level (Fernandez and Moldogaziev 2013a).

Several studies also report a positive connection

between empowerment and prosocial and

organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) among

public employees (Cho and Faerman 2010; Park and

Hassan 2018; Taylor 2013).

The aforementioned studies have provided valuable

insights. However, the majority of these studies relied

on same-source survey data to assess the relationships

between empowering managerial practices and

public employee, work group, and organizational

Research Article