Why and When Empowering Leadership Has Different Effects on Employee Work Performance: The Pivotal Roles of Passion for Work and Role Breadth Self-Efficacy

Abstract

Drawing on the dualistic model of passion, the present study examines why and when empowering leadership has different effects on employee work performance including both task performance and creative performance. Field survey data from 69 teams and 266 employees revealed that empowering leadership had a positive indirect relationship with employee work performance via harmonious passion for work and a negative indirect relationship with employee work performance via obsessive passion for work. Moreover, individual role breadth self-efficacy was found to moderate the relationships of empowering leadership with employees’ two types of passion for work, thereby affecting the relationship between empowering leadership and employee work performance. Moderation analyses revealed that empowering leadership was more likely to increase employee work performance when employees have high rather than low levels of role breadth self-efficacy. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings were discussed.

Keywords

empowering leadership harmonious passion obsessive passion task performance creative performance role breadth self-efficacy

With the increasing prevalence of team-based work in organizations (Kozlowski & Bell, 2013; Mathieu, Maynard, Rapp, & Gilson, 2008), managers have to delegate power to their employees and encourage them to be more autonomous, responsive, and proactive at work. As a result, empowering leadership, which is defined as “sharing power with a view toward enhancing employees’ motivation and investment in their work” (Zhang & Bartol, 2010, p. 107), has received burgeoning scholarly attention in the leadership literature. Whereas prior studies focusing on the consequences of empowering leadership have demonstrated the positive effect of empowering leadership on employee work performance, including not only routine task performance (Ahearne, Mathieu, & Rapp, 2005; Amundsen & Martinsen, 2014; Harris, Li, Boswell, Zhang, & Xie, 2014; Vecchio, Justin, & Pearce, 2010) but also creative performance (Amundsen & Martinsen, 2015; Harris et al., 2014; Zhang & Bartol, 2010; Zhang & Zhou, 2014), which emphasizes the generation of novel and useful ideas regarding products, practices, services, or procedures in the workplace (Amabile, 1988), some recent research has not observed this effect (Cheong, Spain, Yammarino, & Yun, 2016; Humborstad, Nerstad, & Dysvik, 2014; Lee, Cheong, Kim, & Yun, 2017). Given these controversial empirical findings, it is theoretically important to examine the question of why and when empowering leadership increases employee work performance.

Although the extant research has provided multiple theoretical perspectives to account for the effect of empowering leadership on employee work performance, such as the self-efficacy explanation (e.g., Ahearne et al., 2005; Biemann, Kearney, & Marggraf, 2015; Li, He, Yam, & Long, 2015; Zhang & Zhou, 2014), the psychological empowerment explanation (e.g., Amundsen & Martinsen, 2015; Li, Chiaburu, & Kirkman, 2017; Raub & Robert, 2010; Zhang & Bartol, 2010), and the stress explanation (Cheong et al., 2016), and has identified a variety of individual (e.g., uncertainty avoidance; Zhang & Bartol, 2010) and contextual (e.g., organizational support climate; Li et al., 2017) factors moderating empowering leadership’s influence on employee work performance, these two streams of research (i.e., studies focusing on why and those focusing on when empowering leadership facilitates employee work performance) are quite independent. In other words, little research has adopted an integrative view to systematically examine why empowering leadership facilitates employee work performance in this particular context but not in other contexts. This is problematic because examining both mediation and moderation is a critical component of theory building that helps scholars identify why a process occurs under what circumstances (Colquitt & Zapata-Phelan, 2007).

Drawing on the dualistic model of passion (Vallerand et al., 2003), the present study develops a theoretical model, which suggests that the effect of empowering leadership on employee work performance will be differentially meditated by different types of passion for work. Specifically, we argue that empowering leadership has a positive indirect relationship with employee work performance via employees’ harmonious passion for work, a motivational state reflecting one’s internal, autonomous internalization of work (Chen, Liu, & He, 2015). In contrast, we argue that empowering leadership has a negative relationship with employee work performance via employees’ obsessive passion for work, a motivational state reflecting one’s external, controlled internalization of work (Chen et al., 2015). Furthermore, we suggest that individual beliefs regarding one’s capabilities in successfully accomplishing goals in various, broader work roles (i.e., role breadth self-efficacy [RBSE]; Parker, 1998) will determine the effect of empowering leadership on employee work performance by affecting the generation of two types of passion for work associated with empowering leadership. We argue that the relationship between empowering leadership and employee work performance is more likely positive among employees with high rather than low levels of RBSE, because high RBSE facilitates the generation of harmonious passion but not obsessive passion.

The overall conceptual model is depicted in Figure 1. In this research, we focus on both task performance and creative performance as the outcomes of empowering leadership because they are recognized as the two most vital outputs of employees that are required by organizations in today’s business world (He, Fehr, Yam, Long, & Hao, 2017) and because they have been widely studied in the empowering leadership literature (Sharma & Kirkman, 2015). In total, our study makes several theoretical contributions. First, we contribute to empowering leadership literature by revealing why (i.e., different passions for work) empowering leadership exerts differential influences on employee work performance. Second, we identify individual RBSE as a vital personal attribute that can determine the effect of empowering leadership on employees’ harmonious passion and obsessive passion, which in turn affects the direction of the relationship between empowering leadership and employee work performance. Third, in response to the call for research extending the dualistic model of passion to organizational management literature (Chen et al., 2015), we theorize and demonstrate that empowering leadership is a significant contextual determinant of individual passion for work, and provide empirical evidence showing that harmonious passion and obsessive passion have different effects on employee work performance, including both task performance and creative performance.

Figure 1.

Theoretical model.

Theory and Hypotheses

An Overview of Empowering Leadership and Employee Work Performance

Empowering leadership was primarily proposed by Manz and Sims (1989, 1991, 2001), who emphasized that leaders are encouraged to lead employees to lead themselves; this is called superleadership. Later studies on empowering leadership have utilized two different theoretical perspectives to examine its effectiveness (Maynard, Gilson, & Mathieu, 2012; Srivastava, Bartol, & Locke, 2006; Wallace, Johnson, Mathe, & Paul, 2011). Specifically, the structural empowerment perspective focuses on leaders sharing power and delegating responsibilities to employees (Conger & Kanungo, 1988; Leach, Wall, & Jackson, 2003), whereas the motivational perspective emphasizes employee perceptions of empowerment (i.e., psychological empowerment), self-determination, and self-efficacy (Conger & Kanungo, 1988; Spreitzer, 1995).

Integrating these two perspectives, Zhang and Bartol (2010) conceptualized empowering leadership as a process in which leaders delegate power to employees in an attempt to enhance employees’ work motivation. Typical behaviors of empowering leadership, according to this broadened conceptualization, include enhancing the meaningfulness of work, fostering participation in decision making, expressing confidence in high performance, and providing autonomy from bureaucratic constraints (Arnold, Arad, Rhoades, & Drasgow, 2000; Zhang & Bartol, 2010). Following this operationalization, recent empirical studies have identified the positive effects of empowering leadership on employee work performance through a variety of psychological mechanisms. For instance, research demonstrates that empowering leadership increases employee work performance by enhancing one’s job self-efficacy (Ahearne et al., 2005; Cheong et al., 2016), creative self-efficacy (Zhang & Zhou, 2014), career self-efficacy (Biemann et al., 2015), and RBSE (Li et al., 2015). The psychological empowerment mechanism linking empowering leadership with employee work performance has also been widely demonstrated (Amundsen & Martinsen, 2015; Li et al., 2015; Raub & Robert, 2010; Zhang & Bartol, 2010).

Even though empirical results regarding the positive effects of empowering leadership are promising, some researchers have observed negative or nonsignificant relationships between empowering leadership and employee work performance, drawing on different theoretical perspectives. For instance, the stress perspective suggests that leaders who delegate power to employees would increase their work burden and role ambiguity (Cheong et al., 2016; Humborstad & Kuvaas, 2013), which in turn would undermine employee work performance. Indeed, recent empirical studies have observed that empowering leadership had an inverted U-shaped effect on employee work performance (Humborstad et al., 2014; Lee et al., 2017), suggesting that either a high or low level of empowering leadership was associated with a low level of employee work performance. Likewise, Cheong et al. (2016) observed that empowering leadership harmed employee work performance by triggering job-induced tension. In the following sections, we draw from a new theoretical perspective (i.e., passion for work) to examine the different effects of empowering leadership on employee work performance.

The Relationship Between Empowering Leadership and Employee Passion for Work

Passion is a motivational state that involves the hybrid of affective, cognitive, and behavioral elements (Chen et al., 2015). It is defined as “a strong inclination toward activity that people like, that they find important, and in which they invest time and energy” (Vallerand et al., 2003, p. 757). With the focus on whether the passionate activity is internalized in one’s core identity, Vallerand et al. (2003) proposed the dualistic model of passion and conceptualized two types of passion, differentiating harmonious passion from obsessive passion. Specifically, harmonious passion reflects an autonomous internalization of an activity—individuals choose to engage in the activity due to the activity itself (e.g., the interestingness and challenge of the activity); obsessive passion, on the other hand, represents a controlled internalization of an activity in one’s identity—individuals engage in the activity they like because of some external regulations (e.g., social persuasion and certain returns attached to the activity; Vallerand et al., 2003). In a nutshell, harmonious passion occurs when an individual feels they want to do the activity, and obsessive passion occurs when an individual feels they have to do the activity.

Then, researchers introduced the concept of passion into an organizational context and defined passion for work as employees’ strong inclination toward his or her work, positive and consistent state of well-being (Ho, Wong, & Lee, 2011; Liu, Chen, & Yao, 2011; Zigarmi, Nimon, Houson, Witt, & Diehl, 2009). Similarly, passion for work can be further differentiated between harmonious passion for work and obsessive passion for work. Whereas harmonious passion for work represents a motivational state reflecting one’s internal, autonomous internalization of work, and obsessive passion for work represents a motivational state reflecting one’s external, controlled internalization of work (Chen et al., 2015). Given this definition, it is worth highlighting the conceptual differences between harmonious passion for work and two similar constructs that are widely studied in the organizational behavior literature—intrinsic motivation and work engagement.

Intrinsic motivation is most similar to harmonious passions for work because it also occurs when individuals engage in their work driven by their sincere interest in the work itself (Ryan & Deci, 2000). However, intrinsic motivation only captures the cognitive element of motivation, whereas harmonious passion for work involves not only the cognitive element of motivation (I want to) but also the affective (I have positive feelings when doing the work) and behavioral (I invest time and energy to engage in the work) elements. Work engagement refers to “a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption” (Schaufeli, Salanova, González-Romá, & Bakker, 2002, p. 74). From a temporal point of view, work engagement emphasizes one’s enjoyment of work during the immediate person–task interaction at work, whereas passion for work includes one’s enjoyment of work not only during one’s direct interactions with the working task, but also in one’s everyday life beyond work hours (Vallerand & Miquelon, 2007).

Empowering Leadership and Employees’ Harmonious Passion

According to the definition of empowering leadership, typical expressions of empowering leaders include giving autonomy/self-determination to employees at work and expecting them to be proactive and take on broader responsibility at work (Ahearne et al., 2005; Li et al., 2015). We argue that high autonomy/self-determination and high expectations for proactivity associated with empowering leadership are likely to increase employee passion for work, both harmonious passion and obsessive passion.

To begin with, we suggest that empowering leadership will fuel employees’ harmonious passion, which is more likely to emerge when employees perceive an autonomous internalization of work (Vallerand et al., 2003). According to the motivational perspective of empowerment, empowering leadership strengthens employees’ autonomous motivation (Conger & Kanungo, 1988). Much empirical evidence has supported this argument by demonstrating a positive link between empowering leadership and employees’ psychological empowerment (e.g., Amundsen & Martinsen, 2015; Li et al., 2015; Raub & Robert, 2010; Zhang & Bartol, 2010), the core dimension of which is one’s self-determination or autonomy (Spreitzer, 1995). Moreover, Liu et al. (2011) found that both autonomous support from the team and the organization increased employees’ harmonious passion. Hence, we propose that empowering leadership can strengthen employees’ harmonious passion by enhancing one’s autonomous motivation, and thus we propose the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1: Empowering leadership is positively related to employees’ harmonious passion.

Empowering Leadership and Employees’ Obsessive Passion

According to the dualistic model of passion, obsessive passion is more likely to emerge when employees perceive an enforced internalization of work (Vallerand et al., 2003). We thus propose that empowering leadership will increase employee obsessive passion by triggering external motivation for one’s internalization of work. Specifically, empowering leadership emphasizes “leading employees to lead themselves” (Manz & Sims, 2001). Therefore, in the context of empowering leadership, employees are expected and encouraged to complete their work independently, using power and other resources delegated by empowering leaders (Vecchio et al., 2010). With such strong expectations from leaders, employees are compelled to work for the sake of feeling worthy, getting promoted, and boosting their self-esteem (deCharms, 1968; Ryan, 1982), thereby leading to high obsessive passion for work.

The extant empirical studies have provided indirect support for our theoretical argument. For example, researchers found that when leaders’ empowerment expectations overweigh employees’ empowerment expectations, employees treated leaders’ empowering behaviors as burdens in such a less prescribed situation because they were passively granted the power of authority by their leaders, thus leading to low intrinsic motivation and high role stress (Humborstad & Giessner, 2016; Humborstad et al., 2014; Humborstad & Kuvaas, 2013). In a similar vein, researchers have also demonstrated that leaders’ high empowering behaviors may bring about work-induced tension for employees (Cheong et al., 2016) and work resistance (Maynard, Mathieu, Marsh, & Ruddy, 2007), which are all beneficial for employees’ obsessive passion. Taken together, we propose the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2: Empowering leadership is positively related to employees’ obsessive passion.

Implications for Employee Work Performance

Drawing and extending on prior studies that examine the direct relationship between empowering leadership and employee work performance (e.g., Amundsen & Martinsen, 2014; Harris et al., 2014; Vecchio et al., 2010), we seek to examine the indirect relationship between empowering leadership and employee work performance through passion for work. As explained, we focus on both task performance and creative performance in the present study. Drawing on the dualistic model of passion (Vallerand et al., 2003), which posits that harmonious passion and obsessive passion may generate different individual outcomes, we theorize that the indirect relationship between empowering leadership and employee work performance via harmonious passion is different from the indirect relationship via obsessive passion.

On the one hand, we propose a positive indirect relationship between empowering leadership and employee work performance via harmonious passion, because harmonious passion is likely to have a positive effect on employee work performance. By definition, harmonious passion refers to the hybrid of autonomous motivation for work (i.e., cognitive element) and enjoyment of work (i.e., affective element), both of which are significant predictors of work performance. Specifically, research has demonstrated that autonomous motivation toward work significantly increases not only task performance (Gagné & Deci, 2005) but also creative performance (Liu et al., 2011). In addition, research suggests that when employees have positive emotions at work, their minds will be broadened (Fredrickson, 2001), leading to better task performance (George, 1991) and creative performance (Isen, Daubman, & Nowicki, 1987). Hence, we argue that harmonious passion is positively related to employee work performance.

Integrating the positive link between harmonious passion and employee work performance with the positive link between empowering leadership and employees’ harmonious passion we discussed earlier, we suggest a positive indirect relationship between empowering leadership and employee work performance via harmonious passion. Similar to this hypothesized relationship, Liu et al. (2011) theorized and demonstrated the mediation relationship between team and organization autonomy support and employees’ creative performance via harmonious passion. Thus, we propose the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 3: Empowering leadership is indirect positively related to employee (a) task performance and (b) creative performance via harmonious passion.

On the other hand, we speculate that obsessive passion is negatively related to employee work performance, leading to a negative indirect relationship between empowering leadership and employee work performance via obsessive passion. Vallerand et al. (2003) proposed that obsessive passion was associated with controlled motivation, which was harmful to employee work performance. Controlled motivation represents the extent to which an employee feels forced by external regulations or by their introjected counterparts (Gagné & Deci, 2005), and prior research has shown that controlled motivation is likely to decrease individual task performance (Benware & Deci, 1984) and creative performance (Amabile & Grossman, 1986). Specifically, external regulations or controlled motivation associated with empowering leadership, such as high expectations or performance requirements (Mageau et al., 2009), and high role stresses (Humborstad & Kuvaas, 2013), could lead to employees having negative emotions (e.g., strains, burnout; Mageau, Vallerand, Rousseau, Ratelle, & Provencher, 2005; Ratelle, Vallerand, Mageau, Rousseau, & Provencher, 2004), which in turn would narrow individual minds (Fredrickson, 2001), and decrease individual task performance (Wright & Cropanzano, 1998) and creative performance (Isen et al., 1987), accordingly. In addition, in the context of high empowering leadership, employees’ high obsessive passion may motivate them to obtain some introjected counterparts (e.g., rewards, acceptance, or high self-esteem) in their team or organization, drawing their attention and energy away from their work. In support of this argument, Astakhova (2014) suggested that obsessive passion induced by these instrumental means would deplete one’s psychological resources, leading to poor work performance.

In summary, when employees have obsessive passion, their work performance will deteriorate owing to their controlled motivation, external pressures, and unpleasant feelings. Integrating this negative link between obsessive passion and employee work performance with the positive link between empowering leadership and employee obsessive passion, we propose the following indirect relationships:

Hypothesis 4: Empowering leadership is indirect negatively related to employee (a) task performance and (b) creative performance via obsessive passion.

The Moderating Role of RBSE

It can be inferred from the above discussion that the direction of the relationship between empowering leadership and employee work performance depends on which type of passion for work is more likely generated in association with empowering leadership. The relationship between empowering leadership and employee work performance is more likely to be positive if the effect of empowering leadership on harmonious passion outweighs the effect of empowering leadership on obsessive passion. We suggest that RBSE, which refers to the extent to which individuals view themselves as capable of carrying out broader work roles including traditional and prescribed technical requirements (Parker, 1998), can alter the direction of the relationship between empowering leadership and employee work performance by affecting the effects of empowering leadership on employees’ harmonious passion and obsessive passion.

We focus on RBSE as a key moderator in our study for two reasons. First, the main difference between harmonious passion and obsessive passion is the extent of one’s self-control over one’s work, and prior research suggests that individual perceived ability or competence (e.g., RBSE) is a significant predicator of one’s self-control over work (Vallerand, 2008, 1997). Second, prior research suggests that empowering leaders create a less prescribed team context in which employees are encouraged to be proactive (Den Hartog & Belschak, 2012; Li et al., 2015). Thus, RBSE is an ideal proxy for individual competence affecting the effectiveness of empowering leadership because it emphasizes one’s belief regarding the ability to successfully work in a broader array of areas (Parker, 1998). We argue that high RBSE should magnify the effect of empowering leadership on harmonious passion but mitigate empowering leadership’s effect on obsessive passion.

We first explicate how RBSE moderates the influence of empowering leadership on employee passion for work. Based on the dualistic model of passion (Vallerand et al., 2003), empowering leadership increases harmonious passion by emphasizing one’s autonomous motivation for work, whereas it increases obsessive passion by emphasizing one’s controlled motivation for work. Self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Gagné & Deci, 2005) posits that individual motivation for work can be differentiated between autonomous motivation and controlled motivation, depending on whether the individual has perceived competence at work. Reflecting one’s beliefs on competence regarding the accomplishment of a variety of work tasks above and beyond the prescribed work requirements, RBSE is likely to magnify one’s autonomous motivation and mitigate one’s controlled motivation associated with empowering leadership. Accordingly, we suggest that high RBSE tends to strengthen the relationship between empowering leadership and harmonious passion, whereas it weakens the relationship between empowering leadership and obsessive passion.

According to Weick (1995), competence is a vital individual attribute affecting one’s enactment of contextual information. The more competent one perceives oneself to be, the more likely the contextual factor will be enacted as informational rather than controlling. Thus, when employees have high RBSE, they will feel competent to undertake work in a less prescribed situation created by empowering leadership (Den Hartog & Belschak, 2012; Parker, 1998). In turn, the context of empowering leadership will be enacted as informational, supportive, and autonomous by employees with high RBSE, and their harmonious passion is likely to be strengthened accordingly. In support of this argument, Vallerand (2008) suggested that employees who have high perceived competence are more likely to increase, or at least maintain their passion for the activity. Zhu, Avolio, and Walumbwa (2009) provided indirect empirical evidence for this argument, demonstrating that high self-efficacy strengthened the positive relationship between transformational leadership and employee work engagement, a construct similar to harmonious passion as we discussed earlier. In short, we suggest that high RBSE tends to strengthen the positive relationship between empowering leadership and employees’ harmonious passion for work.

Hypothesis 5: RBSE moderates the relationship between empowering leadership and employee harmonious passion in such a way that empowering leadership is more positively related to employee harmonious passion when his or her RBSE is high rather than low.

In contrast, we argue that high RBSE tends to weaken the relationship between empowering leadership and employee obsessive passion for the following reasons. First, high RBSE can weaken employees’ controlled motivation for work resulting from empowering leadership. Specifically, employees with high RBSE enact the context of empowering leadership as informational, supportive, and autonomous, thereby alleviating their controlled feelings associated with empowering leadership. Second, high RBSE can reduce employees’ external pressures associated with empowering leadership. Specifically, employees with high RBSE have sufficient cognitive resources to undertake the responsibilities delegated by empowering leaders. Indeed, Elangovan and Xie (1999) revealed that the experience of supervisor power was less positively associated with feelings of stress among individuals who had higher levels of self-esteem (i.e., individual evaluation of self-worth and one’s competence). On the contrary, research has demonstrated that among employees whose abilities and competence are relatively low, delegated power and responsibilities may be seen as inappropriate (Humborstad & Giessner, 2016), thereby decreasing intrinsic motivation and increasing role ambiguity (Humborstad & Kuvaas, 2013). Therefore, if employees have low RBSE, they are more likely to generate high obsessive passion for work associated with empowering leadership. We thus propose the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 6: RBSE moderates the relationship between empowering leadership and employee obsessive passion in such a way that empowering leadership is more positively related to employee obsessive passion when his or her RBSE is low rather than when it is high.

Finally, given that RBSE strengthens the relationship between empowering leadership and harmonious passion which has a positive effect on employee work performance, and that it weakens the relationship between empowering leadership and obsessive passion, which has a negative effect on employee work performance, we theorize that RBSE will have a moderating effect on the direct relationship between empowering leadership and employee work performance. Specifically, we suggest that this relationship is more likely to be positive among employees with high rather than low RBSE. Indeed, the facilitating role of RBSE in leadership effectiveness has received empirical evidence in prior leadership research. For instance, Den Hartog and Belschak (2012) found that in highly autonomous work conditions, transformational leadership was more positively related to employee proactive behaviors when employee RBSE was high than when it was low. Similarly, Griffin, Parker, and Mason (2010) demonstrated that leaders’ vision had a greater influence on employee proactivity among those with high rather than low levels of RBSE. Taking the above rationales and empirical findings together, we propose the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 7: RBSE moderates the relationship between empowering leadership and employee (a) task performance and (b) creative performance in such a way that empowering leadership is more positively related to employee (a) task performance and (b) creative performance when his or her RBSE is high rather than low.

Research Method

Sample and Procedure

Participants were full-time employees of 17 firms including those in the pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and finance industries, located in the center and south of the People’s Republic of China. Specifically, with the permission of top management from each organization, we asked the human resources managers to randomly select workgroups with three to five employees from each workgroup and schedule a time for us to deliver the surveys to them; each employee had a random ID. We gathered all the selected employees in a large conference room and asked them to complete a pencil-and-paper-based questionnaire. To ensure quality, participants were told the objective of our survey (i.e., for academic research only) and that they would receive a reward of 20 Chinese yuan (about $3.27) for participating in this survey.

Team members completed the measures for empowering leadership, harmonious passion, obsessive passion, RBSE, and demographic variables. Each team leader completed the measures for employee task performance and creative performance. Of the 266 employees, 57.9% were male, the average age was 30.67 years (SD = 6.37), the average organization tenure was 6.32 years (SD = 7.04), and 69.92% had a bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degree. Of the 69 team leaders, 71% were male, the average age was 37.19 years (SD = 6.82), and 72.46% had a bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degree.

Measures

We used the back-translation process for all items to guarantee the content validity of the Western scales in the Chinese context (Brislin, 1986). Except for harmonious passion, obsessive passion, and RBSE, all other measures were rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree).

Empowering Leadership

Empowering leadership was measured with a 12-item scale developed by Ahearne et al. (2005). A sample item of the fostering participation in decision making was “My leader makes many decisions together with me”; a sample item of the enhancing the meaningfulness of work was “My leader helps me understand how my objectives and goals relate to those of the company”; a sample of the expressing confidence in high performance was “My leader believes that I can handle demanding tasks”; a sample item of the providing autonomy from bureaucratic constraint was “My leader allows me to do my job my way.” The Cronbach’s alpha for this variable in our article was .91. Aggregation indexes (r_wg = .97; intraclass correlation coefficient, ICC [1] = .10; ICC [2] = .30) supported the treatment of empowering leadership as a team-level construct by averaging team members’ individual scores on empowering leadership.¹

Passion for Work

Harmonious passion and obsessive passion were measured with a 14-item scale developed by Vallerand et al. (2003). A sample item of harmonious passion was, “My job allows me to live a variety of experiences,” and a sample item of obsessive passion was, “I have a tough time controlling my need to do my job.” The Cronbach’s alpha for these two variables in our article were .90 and .91, respectively.

Task Performance

Individual performance was measured with a three-item scale developed by Farh, Hackett, and Liang (2007). A sample item was “This team member always completes his or her work on time.” The Cronbach’s alpha for this variable in our article was .86.

Creative Performance

Creative performance was measured with a four-item scale used by Baer and Oldham (2006), which was developed by Zhou and George (2001). A sample item was “This team member often comes up with creative solutions to problems at work.” The Cronbach’s alpha for this variable in our article was .91.

Role Breadth Self-Efficacy

RBSE was measured with the seven highest loading items from Parker’s (1998) measure as followed by Parker, Williams, and Turner (2006). A sample item was “I have confidence in designing new procedures for my work area.” The Cronbach’s alpha for this variable in our article was .90.

Control Variables

We controlled team members’ demographic variables including gender, age, organizational tenure, and education at the individual level.

Analysis Strategies

We first conducted a set of confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) to ensure that the six latent variables had satisfactory discriminant validity. Next, to partition the variance at the individual and group level in hypothesis testing, hierarchical linear modeling (HLM; Raudenbush & Bryk, 2001) using the restricted maximum likelihood estimation method was applied to test our hypotheses. In the next regression analysis, all the explanatory variables (except gender) were standardized, and the individual-level variables were grand-mean centered before being entered into the regressions. This grand-mean centering cannot only reduce the potential collinearity between the group-level intercept and the slope terms, but can also generate more robust results in analyzing the cross-level mediational models (Aguinis, Gottfredson, & Culpepper, 2013; Hofmann & Gavin, 1998), such as our “dualistic passion path.”

Results

Preliminary Analyses

The means, standard deviations, reliabilities, and correlations are presented in Table 1. At the individual level, harmonious passion (r = .28, p < .01) and obsessive passion (r = .19, p < .01) were both positively related to employees’ creative performance. Harmonious passion (r = .29, p < .01) was also positively related to task performance. These correlation relationships provided initial support for our hypotheses.

Table 1.

Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations of the Focal Variables.

Variables	M	SD	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
Level-1 variables^a
1. Gender	1.42	0.50	—
2. Age	30.67	6.37	.05	—
3. Education	2.79	0.83	−.16**	−.42**	—
4. Tenure	6.32	7.04	.15*	.80**	−.52**	—
5. Role breadth self-efficacy	5.20	0.89	−.05	.12	−.05	.09	(.90)
6. Harmonious passion	5.03	0.97	.11	.07	−.09	.05	.49**	(.90)
7. Obsessive passion	3.88	1.25	.07	.08	−.09	.08	.46**	.45**	(.91)
8. Task performance	3.82	0.63	−.06	−.02	.02	−.05	.13*	.29**	.06	(.86)
9. Employee creativity	3.45	0.70	−.03	.17**	.00	.11	.19**	.28**	.19**	.44**	(.91)
Level-2 variable^b
10. Empowering leadership	3.75	0.33	(.91)

Note. For gender: 1 = male, 0 = female. For education: 1 = high school, 2 = vocational college, 3 = bachelor’s degree, 4 = master’s degree, 5 = doctoral degree.

n = 266. ^bn = 69.

p < .05. **p < .01.

We conducted a set of CFAs to discern the discriminant validity among the six latent variables measured at the individual level (i.e., empowering leadership, harmonious passion, obsessive passion, RBSE, task performance, and creative performance). Following prior research of empowering leadership (e.g., Li et al., 2015; Zhang & Bartol, 2010), we categorized the 12-item scale of empowering leadership into four indices representing four distinct subdimensions (i.e., fostering participation in decision making, enhancing the meaningfulness of work, expressing confidence in high performance, and providing autonomy from bureaucratic constraint) before running the CFAs. Results showed that our hypothesized six-factor model was an acceptable fit for the data, χ²(449) = 813.94; root mean square error of approximation = .06; comparative fit index = .93; Tucker–Lewis index = .92). In addition, Chi-square difference tests suggested that the six-factor model was superior to (a) the five-factor model (harmonious passion and obsessive passion were combined), Δχ²Δ(5) = 645.40, p < .001; (b) the four-factor model (harmonious passion, obsessive passion, and RBSE were combined), Δχ²Δ(4) = 506.90, p < .001; (c) the three-factor model (harmonious passion, obsessive passion, RBSE, and creative performance were combined), Δχ²Δ(3) = 693.81, p < .001; (d) the two-factor model (harmonious passion, obsessive passion, RBSE, creative performance, and task performance were combined), Δχ²Δ(2) = 359.92, p < .001; (e) and the one-factor model, Δχ²Δ(1) = 296.34, p < .001.

Prior to testing our hypotheses, we conducted a variance partition to test the assumption that there was a meaningful between-team variation for our individual-level dependent variables. Specifically, we ran null models in HLM for harmonious passion, obsessive passion, task performance, and creativity. Results showed significance of between-team variances for harmonious passion, χ²₍₆₈₎ = 129.91, p < .01; ICC (1) = .19, obsessive passion, χ²₍₆₈₎ = 100.03, p < .01; ICC (1) = .11, task performance, χ²₍₆₈₎ = 114.62, p < .01; ICC (1) = .15, and creative performance, χ²₍₆₈₎ = 139.87, p < .001; ICC (1) = .21. These results justified our usage of HLM to test the multilevel predictions.

The Mediating Effects of Passion for Work

Table 2 presents the HLM results of the indirect effect of empowering leadership on employee task performance and creative performance via harmonious passion and obsessive passion. Empowering leadership was both positively related to harmonious passion (γ = .41, p < .001, M2) and obsessive passion (γ = .33, p < .001, M4), respectively. Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 2 were supported.

Table 2.

Hierarchical Linear Modeling Results: The Mediating Roles of Passions for Work between Empowering Leadership and Employee Work Performance.

	Harmonious Passion		Obsessive Passion		Task Performance			Creative Performance
	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4	Model 5	Model 6	Model 7	Model 8	Model 9	Model 10
Intercept	5.04***	5.03***	3.88***	3.88***	3.82***	3.82***	3.82***	3.45***	3.45***	3.45***
Control variables
Gender	.21	.26*	.11	.15	−.06	−.03	−.06	−.07	−.06	−.10
Age	.12	.10	.10	.09	.03	.02	.01	.17**	.17**	.15*
Education	−.06	−.05	−.08	−.07	.01	.01	.01	.06	.06	.07
Tenure	−.11	−.07	−.04	−.01	−.04	−.03	−.02	−.04	−.04	−.02
Independent variables
Empowering Leadership		.41***		.33***		.24***	.20***		.13*	.05
Obsessive Passion							−.07*			.01
Harmonious Passion							.15**			.18**
Within-group variance (σ²)	.76	.75	1.40	1.39	.34	.34	.33	.37	.37	.35
Between-group variance (τ00)	.17	.03	.16	.09	.06	.01	.00	.11	.09	.09
R²_within-group	.00	.02	.00	.01	.00	.00	.02	.03	.00	.06
R²_{between-group}	.04	.81	.05	.47	.00	.88	.84	.00	.12	.02

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Empowering leadership was also positively related to task performance (γ = .24, p < .001, M6) and creative performance (γ = .13, p < .05, M9) when harmonious passion and obsessive passion were not controlled. After controlling for these two mediating variables, harmonious passion was positively related to task performance (γ = .15, p < .01, M7) and creative performance (γ = .18, p < .01, M10), obsessive passion was significantly negatively related to task performance (γ = −.07, p < .05, M7), while it had no significant effect on creative performance (γ = .01, p > .05, M10), and the effect of empowering leadership on task performance became weaker (γ = .20, p < .001, M7), while on creative performance, it became nonsignificant (γ = .05, p > .05, M10).

In order to examine the positive and indirect effect of empowering leadership on employee task performance and creative performance via harmonious passion, and the negative and indirect effect of empowering leadership on employee task performance via obsessive passion, we followed Bauer, Preacher, and Gil’s (2006) suggestion and estimated the indirect effect and conducted a Monte Carlo simulation with 20,000 replications to obtain a confidence interval for the indirect effect of empowering leadership on task performance and creative performance via harmonious passion. The results indicated a significant positive and indirect effect of harmonious passion on the relationship between empowering leadership and employee work performance, whereby the 95% bias corrected confidence interval (CI) did not include zero (indirect effect = .06, CI [.02, .12]; indirect effect = .07, CI [.03, .12]) for task performance and creative performance, respectively. Thus, Hypotheses 3a and 3b were supported. The results indicated a significant negative and indirect effect of obsessive passion, whereby the 95% bias corrected CI did not include zero (indirect effect = −.02, CI [−.05, −.01]) for task performance. Thus, Hypothesis 4a was supported.

The Moderating Effect of RBSE

Table 3 presents the HLM results of the moderating effect of RBSE on the relationships between empowering leadership, passion for work, and employee work performance. The relationship between empowering leadership and employee harmonious passion was marginal and significantly moderated by their RBSE (γ = .16, p < .10, M3); thus, Hypothesis 5 was partially supported. Because an asymptotic variance/covariance matrix of regression coefficient was produced by HLM, we used this matrix to test further the significance of the simple slopes following the procedures suggested by Preacher, Curran, and Bauer (2006). The simple slope of empowering leadership regressed on harmonious passion was largely positive and significant for those with high RBSE (1 SD above the mean; γ = .45, p < .001), while it was not significant for those with low RBSE (1 SD below the mean; γ = .13, n.s.). Thus, Hypothesis 5 was supported and the interactive pattern is graphed in Figure 2.

Table 3.

Hierarchical Linear Modeling Results: Main and Interactive Effects of Empowering Leadership and Role Breadth Self-Efficacy (RBSE) on Employee Passion for Work and Work Performance.

	Harmonious Passion			Obsessive Passion			Task Performance			Creative Performance
	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4	Model 5	Model 6	Model 7	Model 8	Model 9	Model 10	Model 11	Model 12
Intercept	5.04***	5.04***	4.99***	3.88***	3.88***	3.86***	3.82***	3.82***	3.79***	3.45***	3.45***	3.40***
Control variables
Gender	.26*	.29**	.30**	.19	.21	.21	−.05	−.03	−.03	−.05	−.05	−.03
Age	.05	.05	.04	.02	.02	.02	.02	.02	.01	.15**	.15**	.14**
Education	−.05	−.05	−.04	−.08	−.07	−.07	.01	.01	.01	.06	.06	.07
Tenure	−.10	−.07	−.06	−.03	−.01	−.01	−.04	−.03	−.01	−.04	−.03	−.02
Independent variables
Empowering leadership		.28***	.29***		.17*	.17*		.24***	.24***		.10	.10*
RBSE	.48***	.42***	.42***	.57***	.53***	.53***	.06	.02	.02	.11*	.10	.10*
Interaction
Empowering leadership × RBSE			.16^†			.06			.12**			.16***
Within-group variance (σ²)	.57	.57	.56	1.21	1.20	1.20	.34	.34	.33	.37	.37	.34
Between-group variance (τ00)	.13	.06	.05	.02	.02	.02	.05	.01	.01	.10	.09	.09
R²_within-group	.25	.00	.03	.13	.01	.00	.00	.00	.04	.04	.00	.07
R²_{between-group}	.26	.52	.23	.85	.21	.18	.10	.87	.00	.06	.06	.04

†

p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Figure 2.

Interactive effects of empowering leadership and role breadth self-efficacy (RBSE) on employee harmonious passion.

While the relationship between empowering leadership and obsessive passion was not significantly moderated by RBSE (γ = .06, p > .05, M6), thus Hypothesis 6 was not supported.

The relationship between empowering leadership and employee task performance was significantly moderated by their RBSE (γ = .12, p < .01, M9). The results of simple slope test revealed that empowering leadership was more positively related to employee task performance when their RBSE was high (1 SD above the mean; γ = .36, p < .001) and low (1 SD below the mean) (γ = .13, p < .01), thereby partially supporting Hypothesis 7a, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3.

Interactive effects of empowering leadership and role breadth self-efficacy (RBSE) on employee task performance.

In addition, the relationship between empowering leadership and employees’ creative performance was significantly moderated by their RBSE (γ = .16, p < .001, M12). The results of the simple slope test revealed that empowering leadership was more positively related to employee creativity when their RBSE was high (γ = .26, p < .001), while empowering leadership was not significantly related to employees’ creative performance when their RBSE was low (γ = −.06, n.s.), thereby supporting Hypothesis 7b, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4.

Interactive effects of empowering leadership and role breadth self-efficacy (RBSE) on employee creative performance.

Discussion

The extant research has revealed conflicting results regarding the relationship between empowering leadership and employee work performance, and leadership scholars have called for more attention to be given to examining why and when empowering leadership has different effects on employee work performance (Sharma & Kirkman, 2015). In response to this call, we drew on the dualistic model of passion and theorized that different types of passion for work can account for the differential effects of empowering leadership on employee work performance. Field survey data collected from 266 employees working in 69 workgroups demonstrated our research model, which showed that empowering leadership has positive indirect relationships with employee task performance and creative performance via harmonious passion, whereas it has a negative indirect relationship with employee task performance via obsessive passion. Moreover, the direct relationship between empowering leadership and employee work performance was found to be contingent on individual RBSE. A positive relationship was more likely to be observed among employees with higher levels of RBSE. These findings provide several noteworthy theoretical and practical implications.

Theoretical Implications

Our findings contribute to empowering leadership literature in several ways. First, we identify different types of passion for work as the underlying mechanisms that can explain why empowering leadership exhibits differential effects on employee work performance. Although conflicting findings regarding the effect of empowering leadership on employee work performance are accumulating, very few studies have sought to examine the underlying mechanisms. One notable exception was Cheong et al.’s (2016) study, which demonstrated self-efficacy and job-induced tension as two competing mechanisms accounting for the positive and negative relationships between empowering leadership and employee work performance, respectively. Our findings suggest that the double-edged sword effect of empowering leadership may not necessarily be attributable to two competing theoretical mechanisms; it can be explained by two different manifestations of the same theoretical mechanism (i.e., harmonious vs. obsessive passion for work).

Specifically, our results showed that empowering leadership had an indirect positive effect on employee task performance and creative performance via harmonious passion. This finding is consistent with Liu et al.’s (2011) work, which observed a positive effect of team autonomy support on employees’ harmonious passion, and it also provided empirical evidence for the positive effect of harmonious passion on individual performance in the organizational context. On the other hand, our findings revealed that empowering leadership increased not only harmonious passion but also obsessive passion, which exhibited a corrosive effect on employee task performance. This finding is consistent with previous research which illustrated the negative effects of obsessive passion on employee mental health (Forest, Mageau, Sarrazin, & Morin, 2011) and cognitive engagement (Ho et al., 2011). Contrary to our prediction, obsessive passion was not negatively related to employees’ creative performance.

This intriguing finding can be explained by the controlled motivation associated with obsessive passion. Specifically, controlled motivation involved in obsessive passion is partially derived from the possible outcomes attached to the activity (i.e., rewards, acceptance, or self-esteem; Vallerand et al., 2003). The effect of extrinsic motivation on individual creativity is more complex than expected, with findings suggesting a positive, a negative, and even insignificant effect (Eisenberger & Rhoades, 2001). Thus, the insignificant effect of obsessive passion on employee creativity is explicable by the complex influence of extrinsic motivation. Nonetheless, the boundary conditions behind the link between obsessive passion and individual creativity warrant further investigations in future research.

Our second contribution to empowering leadership literature is the demonstration of passion for work as a new intervening mechanism underlying the effect of empowering leadership on employees’ work performance. The extant research has exclusively focused on the cognitive mechanisms underlying the motivational effects of empowering leadership, revealing the mediating roles of a variety of individual cognitions such as the self-efficacy constructs (Ahearne et al., 2005; Zhang & Zhou, 2014), and psychological empowerment (Amundsen & Martinsen, 2015; Li et al., 2014; Raub & Robert, 2010; Zhang & Bartol, 2010). Although some researchers have argued that individual affect plays a vital role in transforming leader behaviors into employee outcomes (Gooty, Connelly, Griffith, & Gupta, 2010; Kaplan, Cortina, Ruark, LaPort, & Nicolaides, 2014), no study to date has examined the affective explanations for the effectiveness of empowering leadership. While passion for work is a hybrid motivational state involving both cognitive and affective elements, its mediating effect as we have demonstrated provides the first piece of empirical evidence highlighting the importance of an affective explanation for the effectiveness of empowering leadership.

Third, we demonstrate that individual RBSE is a significant individual attribute that can reconcile the conflicting findings regarding the relationship between empowering leadership and employee work performance. Our findings showed that the positive relationship between empowering leadership and employee harmonious passion was magnified by high RBSE, which leads to a more positive relationship between empowering leadership and employee work performance. These findings are not only consistent with prior observations that empowering leadership was more effective among employees with high empowerment role identity (Zhang & Bartol, 2010) and high empowerment readiness (Ahearne et al., 2005) but also extend the dualistic model of passion by showing that autonomy (gained from empowering leadership) and competence (i.e., RBSE) have joint effects on the development of passion (deCharms, 1968). Together, it is suggested that leaders should not take “a piece-meal empowerment approach” or “one-size-fits-all empowerment approach” when empowering (Forrester, 2000; Randolph & Sashkin, 2002). Instead, leaders should pay attention to individual differences (e.g., RBSE) to maximize the effectiveness of empowerment, thus, supporting the necessity of adopting a contingency approach in the empowering leadership research as suggested by some researchers (Sharma & Kirkman, 2015; Zhang & Bartol, 2010).

Finally, we contribute to the dualistic model of passion by extending it to the literature related to empowering leadership. Drawing on and extending Liu et al.’s (2011) finding that autonomy fuels employees’ harmonious passion for work, we found that empowering leadership—one vital manifestation is autonomy support—was positively related to both harmonious passion and obsessive passion of employees. These two types of passion for work in turn exhibited different effects on employee work performance. More important, our finding responds to Chen et al.’s (2015) call in their recent review of passion, which emphasizes that future researchers should promote the antecedents of passion, and that a leadership approach which delegates and empowers individuals can also cultivate employees’ harmonious passion.

Practical Implications

The present study has several practical implications for leadership development and employee motivation to achieve better work performance. Whereas empowering leadership has been proven to have differential effects on employee work performance, and thus, when organizations implement empowering leadership with employees, managers should take care of its conditions for implementation. First, we find that employees’ RBSE strengthens the positive associations between empowering leadership and employee work performance; hence, managers can enhance employees’ self-efficacy in broader work roles by enlarging their jobs and providing coaching and training (e.g., Parker, 1998). Second, we suggest that empowering leadership has a positive and indirect influence on employee work performance via harmonious passion and a negative and indirect effect on employee work performance via obsessive passion. Managers can increase employees’ harmonious passion and decrease their obsessive passion to solidify the positive effect of empowering leadership. As that passion not only comprises employees’ enjoyment of their jobs but also includes the internalization of work into their identity, managers can provide more support from leaders or teams (e.g., Liu et al., 2011) and performance feedback for them, and broaden their cognitions through training and work shifts (Ho et al., 2011; Vallerand & Houlfort, 2003).

Limitations and Future Directions

Despite the present study making several contributions, there are still some limitations that are worthy of discussion. First, the cross-sectional research design may bring about the causality between empowering leadership, passions for work, and employee work performance. For instance, the effect of harmonious passion and obsessive passion on employee work performance may be influenced by the scope of time (Vallerand, 2008; Vallerand & Houlfort, 2003). Future studies can retest these indirect mediating hypotheses with longitudinal data. Second, in addition to harmonious passion and obsessive passion, there may exist other affective mechanisms between empowering leadership and employee work performance which deserve consideration, such as positive affect and negative affect, work engagement, and disengagement.

Third, as we have only examined the moderating effect of RBSE on the relationship between empowering leadership and employee work performance, future researchers can examine other individual characteristics and contextual factors. Furthermore, we also neglected the cultural context, which manifests that different cultures need different ways to empower (Randolph & Sashkin, 2002; Robert, Probst, Martocchio, Drasgow, & Lawler, 2000; Zhang & Zhou, 2014). Cultural context is characterized by high power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and low individualism in China. Future researchers can examine the moderating effects of these cultural values on the effectiveness of empowering leadership.

Fourth, we neglect the complex relationship between passions for work and employee work performance, especially obsessive passion. Due to that, obsessive passion not only results from external regulations but also from some introjected counterparts (i.e., rewards, reputation). Thus, future studies can refine the construct of obsessive passion by clarifying its antecedents and further dividing it into different context-based obsessive passion. In addition, researchers can also explore the boundary conditions of the relationship between passions for work and employee work performance. For example, because both forms of passion are primarily person-specific (i.e., causally precedent), and that leadership style (i.e., empowering leadership) allows individuals’ passions to express themselves, empowering leadership may moderate the respective impacts of harmonious and obsessive passion on work performance. In future, researchers can examine the moderating effect of empowering leadership on the relationship between passions for work and employee work performance.

Fifth, we discussed the inconsistent effect of empowering leadership on employee work performance from the perspective of employees’ passions for work, neglecting the influence of the individual empowering leader. In future studies, researchers can explore the antecedents of empowering leadership to further distinguish the effects of different forms of empowering leadership on employee work performance, such as psychological empowering leadership and structural empowering leadership (Conger & Kanungo, 1988; Wallace et al., 2011). More important, it is also worthwhile to explore empowering leadership differentiation (Biemann et al., 2015; Li et al., 2015) to further explain the inconsistent effect of empowering leadership.

Conclusion

The present study discusses why and when empowering leadership has different effects on employee work performance, including task performance and creative performance. The findings reveal that empowering leadership has positive indirect effects on employee task performance and creative performance via harmonious passion, and a negative indirect influence on employee task performance via obsessive passion. Moreover, individual RBSE was found to moderate the relationships between empowering leadership and employees’ passion for work, thereby affecting the direct relationship between empowering leadership and employee work performance. The association between empowering leadership and employee work performance is more positive when employees’ RBSE is higher rather than lower.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation of China (71232001; 71402061; 71401135).

Notes

Author Biographies

Po Hao is a lecturer in the Department of Business Administration at the School of Economics and Management at the Northwest University. She received her PhD from Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Her research interests focus on leadership behavior, shared leadership, and employee proactive behavior. Email: phaosem@nwu.edu.cn

Wei He is an assistant professor in the Department of Business Administration at the School of Management at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, where he also received his PhD. His research interests include pay structure, leadership, and employee proactive and deviance behaviors. Email: whe@hust.edu.cn

Li-Rong Long is a professor in the Department of Business Administration at the School of Management at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology. His research interests include organizational behavior (e.g., justice, leadership in the Chinese context, and trust), micro-HRM (e.g., employment relationship, the effect of pay-for-performance on creativity), and career management. Email: lrlong@mail.hust.edu.cn

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