Leadership Styles and Psychological Empowerment: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Psychological empowerment has become a popular construct in organizational research and practice. Leadership ranks high among the best predictors of employees’ psychological empowerment, yet little is known about which leadership styles prove more effective than others. This meta-analysis investigates the effects of four leadership styles on psychological empowerment. More specifically, we test whether empowering leadership evokes more psychological empowerment than transformational leadership, servant leadership, or transactional leadership. We found that empowering, transformational and servant leadership contribute almost equally to psychological empowerment. No relationship was found with transactional leadership. In an explorative manner, we tested the effects on the different dimensions of psychological empowerment. We found that the leadership styles had a weaker influence on the competence dimension of psychological empowerment. We also investigated the effects of several moderators on the relationships with psychological empowerment: country culture (power balanced freedom (PBF)), study design (cross-sectional vs. multi-wave studies) and publication status (published vs. unpublished). We found no moderating effects of culture, which indicates the universally empowering effects of the leadership styles. The relationships between leadership and empowerment were somewhat weaker when data were collected at different measurement points, and publication bias does not seem to be an issue in this research field.

Keywords

leadership styles psychological empowerment power balanced freedom meta-analysis

Psychological empowerment is an important topic for organizational research and practice because “in dynamic working environments, employee empowerment could give organizations advantages in acquiring and sustaining competitive positions in their markets” (Kim et al., 2018, p. 257). The majority of US companies have conducted some sort of empowerment initiative for their employees (Seibert et al., 2011), and the World Bank has published a seminal source book on empowerment to help reduce poverty worldwide (Narayan, 2002).

In 1995, the construct of psychological empowerment was conceptualized as consisting of four facets (Spreitzer, 1995). Additionally, a reliable and valid questionnaire which allowed for the economic measurement of psychological empowerment was developed (Spreitzer, 1995). This stimulated research on psychological empowerment, leading to the first meta-analytic review by Seibert and colleagues in 2011 (Seibert et al., 2011). The concept of psychological empowerment seemed so interesting for practice and research because its consequences are not only beneficial for organizations, but also for their employees (Schermuly, 2016). This is why the topic has continued to attract attention since Seibert's first meta-analysis on psychological empowerment (Seibert et al., 2011). The popularity of the empowerment construct has helped subsequent generations of research, which are considered in this meta-analytic review.

Spreitzer (1995) based her concept of psychological empowerment on the work of Conger and Kanungo (1988) and Thomas and Velthouse (1990). The former saw empowerment as a motivational construct expressed by the feeling of self-efficacy (Conger & Kanungo, 1988), while the latter expanded this approach and argued for an empowerment concept consisting of four facets (Thomas & Velthouse, 1990). Spreitzer (1995) further developed these approaches and saw the “gestalt” of psychological empowerment as made up of four work-related cognitions: competence, meaning, self-determination, and impact (Spreitzer, 1995). The competence facet constitutes the work-related self-efficacy of an employee (Bandura, 1997). Employees who feel competent believe in their work-related skills and are convinced that they can perform well in their jobs (Spreitzer, 2008). Employees with high meaning perceptions identify with the goals of their job, meaning their ideals and standards match the values necessary to execute the job (Spreitzer, 1995; Steger et al., 2012). Self-determination refers to the perceived level of choice in initiating and regulating one's own actions at work (Spreitzer, 1995, p. 2008). Employees with a strong feeling of self-determination feel free to decide, for example, when they should start and stop working on a task or which tools they should use (Schermuly, 2016). Impact is the belief of having the power to influence administrative, strategic, and operative goals at work (Spreitzer, 2008). Combined, these four facets compromise the construct of psychological empowerment, which ultimately leads to a proactive and motivated orientation towards work (Spreitzer, 1995).

In a previous meta-analysis on psychological empowerment, Seibert et al. (2011) differentiated between contextual and individual antecedents of psychological empowerment. Both contextual and individual antecedents seem to impact psychological empowerment. Contextual antecedents involve perceptions of the organization or the work environment, whereas individual antecedents are directly connected with the person (Seibert et al., 2011). Among individual antecedents, positive self-evaluation traits had the strongest impact on psychological empowerment. Among contextual antecedents, a positive leadership style was the best predictor of psychological empowerment. Seibert et al. (2011) thus showed that leadership has a substantial impact on employees’ psychological empowerment. However, their meta-analysis did not distinguish between different leadership styles. Instead, they merged various leadership styles, such as transformational leadership and empowering leadership, into a single construct. The question therefore remains: Which leadership style should be preferred to improve psychological empowerment and under which circumstance can a leadership style better stimulate psychological empowerment? Providing an answer to these questions would lead to the best way of empowering employees and training leaders more effectively.

Our meta-analysis has four goals. First, almost a decade after the meta-analysis by Seibert et al. (2011), we will test whether the relationship between positive leadership styles and psychological empowerment remains robust in a more extensive dataset. Second, we will use this larger dataset to differentiate between and analyze separately four different leadership styles: Empowering leadership, transformational leadership, servant leadership, and transactional leadership. We will theorize and test whether a specific leadership style (such as empowering leadership) has a stronger impact on psychological empowerment than a broader leadership style (such as transformational leadership). We will also hypothesize that a more controlling leadership style, such as transactional leadership, influences psychological empowerment less. Third, we will conduct various moderator analyses which have yet to be tested. Psychological empowerment has become an international construct which is explored in many cultures. The distribution of power and freedom in a society is especially important for leadership processes (Dickson et al., 2003). The way power is exercised in a society might influence the psychological effects of different leadership styles. That is why we will test if the degree of power and freedom between cultures moderates the relationship between leadership styles and psychological empowerment. Additionally, we will test methodologically-oriented moderators. More precisely, we will compare the magnitude of correlations from cross-sectional designs to those from longitudinal designs, because cross-sectional designs are susceptible to common-method bias (Podsakoff et al., 2012). We will then test whether published articles yielded higher correlations than unpublished manuscripts, in order to gain a more realistic picture of the size of the relationships because, for example, manuscripts with null findings may be less likely to be published (Shadish & Sweeney, 1991). Finally, we want to analyze in an explorative manner how the leadership styles influence the four dimensions of psychological empowerment. To date, there is no systematic understanding of whether leadership has differential effects on the dimensions of self-determination, impact, meaning, and competence. An answer to this is not only important for research and further theorizing, but it can also help leadership styles be used in organizations in a more directed way.

Theory

In this section, we explore how different leadership styles may affect psychological empowerment. After this, we will discuss how the relationship between leadership and empowerment might be moderated. Our research model is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1.
Research model for the meta-analysis.

The Relationship between Leadership Styles and Psychological Empowerment

There are numerous leadership styles that can potentially impact psychological empowerment, and we therefore focused on the most important of them. To identify the most important leadership styles we used three criteria. First and foremost, there should be sufficient theoretical arguments that connect the leadership style, positively or negatively, with psychological empowerment. Second, and specific to meta-analyses, there must be a sufficient quantity of studies to be included. Third, to compare the strengths of different leadership styles in terms of psychological empowerment, we focused on leadership styles which focus, to varying degrees, at aiming to increase psychological empowerment. We assumed that a broad leadership style has less impact on psychological empowerment than a more targeted one. Generally speaking, this is because matching criteria and predictors should result in higher correlations than non-matching criteria (e.g., the matching principles in health research: De Jonge and Dormann, 2006). We divided the styles into high, medium and low matches.

As will be explained in more detail below, our selection procedure led to the inclusion of four leadership styles: empowering leadership, transformational leadership, servant leadership, and transactional leadership. Empowering leadership was selected because there are many theoretical arguments and a great deal of studies for the relationship with psychological empowerment, and it represents a style with a very specific match. Transformational leadership and servant leadership also fulfilled the first two criteria, and represent a medium match with psychological empowerment. Some of the dimensions of these styles target psychological empowerment, but not all. A lot of other leadership styles belong to this category (theoretical arguments exist, along with medium matches). We excluded, for example, authentic, ethical and respectful leadership because there were fewer studies available than for transformational and servant leadership. Finally, we included transactional leadership to represent a low match. It was difficult to find a leadership style in this category, because a low match goes along with less quantitative data and less theoretical arguments for a connection with psychological empowerment. In the following, we will provide more detailed descriptions of the four leadership styles and their relationship to psychological empowerment.

Empowering Leadership

According to Van Dierendonck and Dijkstra (2012), empowering leadership has its roots in a variety of theory approaches (such as social cognitive theory and participative goal setting). It describes a leadership style “that shifts information, resources, and control to employees (i.e., delegation of authority and resources)” (Auh et al., 2014, p. 561). The idea of power sharing is at the core of empowering leadership (Joo et al., 2016), for example, in the forms of participating employees and delegation of authority (Arnold et al., 2000 or Konczak et al., 2000). According to empowering leadership models, employees are encouraged to voice their opinions even when their ideas and opinions are inconsistent with those of the leader (Arnold et al., 2000). Empowering leaders thus create a work environment in which employees make their own decisions and are free to begin working, without tight supervision or interventions by the leaders (Zhang & Bartol, 2010). Strict bureaucratic restrictions from the organization and the leaders are removed; empowering leadership is therefore “the process of leading others to lead themselves” (Van Dierendonck & Dijkstra, 2012, p. 4). This result in work situations characterized by more autonomy and less control, which should stimulate the self-determination and impact dimensions of psychological empowerment.

Of course, empowering leadership goes beyond participative leadership practices (Kim et al., 2018). Two further dimensions can be found in the empowering leadership models postulated by Arnold et al. (2000) and Konczak et al. (2000): Informing (Konczak et al., 2000: Information sharing) and coaching (Konczak et al., 2000: Skill development). Empowering leaders provide their employees with the information needed to execute their tasks (Konczak et al., 2000). Leaders thus explain the goals and decision-making processes of the organization and how the employees’ work contributes to them (Arnold et al., 2000). Employees therefore gain a better understanding of their job and their position in the organization as a whole. As a consequence, empowering leadership should foster the employees’ identification with their tasks. This is the meaning dimension of psychological empowerment. Receiving information may also help boosting competence and impact. For example, information is one of the six power bases in French and Raven's social power model (1959).

Empowering leaders also coach their employees and develop their skills (Arnold et al., 2000; Konczak et al., 2000). They help employees to identify areas where they need more training (Arnold et al., 2000) and provide opportunities for developing new skills (Konczak et al., 2000). Empowering leaders make suggestions on how to improve work performance, teach employees how to solve problems on their own and provide help for employees when they ask for it (Arnold et al., 2000). They also display trust and confidence in their employees, ensuring that they have an adequate skill set and knowledge to perform well and fulfill their job roles (Schermuly, 2019). All these behaviors should directly lead to an increased feeling of competence among employees.

Because of the behaviors described in different models for empowering leadership, we postulate that the relationship between empowering leadership and psychological empowerment is positive.
H₁: Empowering leadership and psychological empowerment are positively correlated.

Transformational Leadership

Since at least the 1980s, organizational research on transformational leadership has been very popular (Bass, 1999), and transformational leadership has received a lot of attention in research on empowerment.

Transformational leadership consists of four dimensions: inspirational motivation, idealized influence, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration (Bass, 1999). Inspirational motivation refers to a leader envisioning a desirable future and showing followers ways to realize this future (Bass, 1999). Idealized influence of leaders is “the capability of exerting influence by serving as a role model, demonstrating high performance as well as moral standards” (Felfe et al., 2004, p. 267). Intellectual stimulation refers to supervisors challenging the assumptions of their followers and allowing followers to see problems from a new perspective (Piccolo & Colquitt, 2006; Yukl, 2002). Individualized consideration describes leaders coaching or mentoring their followers and paying attention to their individual needs (Bass, 1999; Felfe et al., 2004; Piccolo & Colquitt, 2006). In short, transformational leaders see their employees as unique (Felfe et al., 2004).

However, transformational leadership as a construct has recently become subject to heavy criticism (Van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013). Questions have been raised about the theoretical model behind transformational leadership (especially the selection of its facets), and mediating mechanisms seem to lack theoretical foundation (Van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013). Furthermore, the model has several psychometric flaws, for example with regard to the four-factorial model, which many studies have failed to replicate (Van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013).

Nonetheless, we have decided to integrate transformational leadership into our meta-analysis. This is because meta-analyses should be a summary of the existing research, and transformational leadership represents one of the most prominent leadership styles in past empowerment research. Ignoring transformational leadership would thus not reflect an adequate picture of the state of the research. Second, as we describe below using the process model formulated by Shamir et al. (1993), there are theoretical arguments for the relationship between transformational leadership and psychological empowerment. Finally, an integration of transformational leadership might contribute to a critical—and productive—discussion of the construct. If transformational leadership fails to predict psychological empowerment better than leadership styles with less theoretical and psychometrical flaws, then transformational leadership may be dismissed from future research on empowerment.

To explain how transformational leaders influence their followers, Shamir et al. (1993) developed a self-concept based motivational theory (see also Dust et al., 2014). A self-concept can be defined as the cognitions a person has about themselves (Wang & Howell, 2012). According to this theory, transformational leaders shape these self-related cognitions via five processes: increasing the intrinsic valence of effort, increasing the intrinsic valence of goal accomplishment, increasing effort-accomplishment expectancies, instilling faith in a better future, and creating personal commitment (Shamir et al., 1993). Through their inspirational behaviors, transformational leaders increase the intrinsic valence of the effort of their followers. Work goals become more consistent with the self-concept of the followers. In this way, the actions exerted to reach work goals become more meaningful to the followers (Shamir et al., 1993). However, the meaning dimension of psychological empowerment should not be the only area stimulated by transformational leadership. Through transformational behaviors the effort-accomplishment expectancies of the employees are transformed as well. Transformational leaders express confidence in their employees’ competences in reaching their goals (Shamir et al., 1993), which should again stimulate the feeling of competence among the followers. Intellectual stimulation may also help followers to feel more competent (Bass, 1999) because followers develop new perspectives on how to execute their tasks. Finally, personal commitment can, at its best, foster psychological empowerment by providing a transcendent goal (Shamir et al., 1993). Followers who are personally committed to goals are intrinsically motivated and thus need not be externally monitored when performing their tasks. Implementing personal goals thus leads to more self-determination and impact. This leads to the second hypothesis:
H₂: Transformational leadership and psychological empowerment are positively correlated.

Servant Leadership

Servant leaders possess a strong desire to serve the needs of their followers (Anderson & Sun, 2017). While transformational leaders focus on organizational goals, servant leadership broadens the scope of organizational stakeholders and emphasizes the development of the employees (Ehrhart, 2004). Servant leadership is different to transformational leadership because of its inherent moral foundation (Ehrhart, 2004, p. 69). Servant leaders want to improve their employees “for their own good, and view the development of the follower as end in and of itself, not merely a means to reach the leader's or organization's goals” (Ehrhart, 2004, p. 69).

Employee needs are treated as even more important than the leader's own (Liden et al., 2008), and servant leaders therefore show a high degree of humility towards their employees (Sousa & van Dierendonck, 2017). Servant leaders thus neither aim at pursuing selfish goals nor use their employees as a means of achieving other goals (Newman et al., 2017). Instead they treat their employees with respect (Newman et al., 2017) and direct attention towards their employees and the fulfilling of their needs. This prioritization of the concerns and perspectives of the employees (Ehrhart, 2004) should stimulate the meaning facet of psychological empowerment.

Servant leaders also appreciate employees’ unique competences and support the development of individual potential (Liden et al., 2008). Walumbwa et al. (2010) explain that servant leaders “are attentive to their followers’ personal development through understanding their existing skills, knowledge, needs, goals, and abilities. Servant leaders also provide opportunities for followers to develop new skills and assist them in attaining their career goals” (p. 519). Ehrhart (2004) has developed a questionnaire to measure servant leadership. Helping subordinates grow and succeed is one of the seven dimensions in Ehrhart's global measure of servant leadership (Ehrhart, 2004). The developing and improving of skills, abilities, and knowledge should foster the competence facet of psychological empowerment (Walumbwa et al., 2010).

Liden's conceptualization and instrument is the most widespread approach to measuring servant leadership (Anderson & Sun, 2017). One dimension of this instrument is empowering. A conceptually similar facet (empowering subordinates) is part of the global measure of servant leadership (Ehrhart, 2004), as well as the servant organizational leadership instrument (Laub, 1999). Thus, empowering subordinates is an overreaching facet—a “key factor”—in the operationalization of servant leadership (Newman et al., 2017). Erkutlu and Chafra (2015, p. 32) emphasize how empowerment is “one of the most significant characteristics of servant leadership”. Servant leaders offer their employees opportunities to participate in decision-making processes (Newman et al., 2017) and delegate authority (Erkutlu & Chafra, 2015). They practice and allow shared leadership (Newman et al., 2017), which is is “a simultaneous, ongoing, mutual influence process within a team that is characterized by ‘serial emergence’ of official as well as unofficial leaders” (Pearce, 2004, p. 48). According to Pearce (2004, p. 48), sharing leadership is a clear “manifestation of fully developed empowerment in teams”. Empowering through participation, delegation and shared leadership should therefore especially stimulate the impact and self-determination dimensions of psychological empowerment. In summary, serving leader behaviors should foster all the cognitions of psychological empowerment. Because of this, we hypothesize that:
H₃: Servant leadership and psychological empowerment are positively correlated.

Transactional Leadership

From a theoretical point of view, transformational leadership is a positive addition to transactional leadership (Pieterse et al., 2010). Whereas transformational leadership reflects values associated with change and transformation, transactional leadership is more common in highly structured and stable organizations (Bass, 1985). Transactional leadership is a higher order construct (Pieterse et al., 2010) and consists of three dimensions which often have been theoretically contrasted to the dimensions of transformational leadership: Active management of exception (MBE-A), passive management of exception (MBE-P) and contingent reward (Bass, 1999). This broad conceptualization of three different leadership behaviors complicates the derivation of a clear hypothesis and makes an additional theoretical consideration necessary, which we introduce below (see H6).

Arguments associated with the dimension contingent reward speak for a relationship with psychological empowerment. Transactional leadership represents a more “traditional” leadership style based on exchange relationships between leaders and followers—instead of sharing an inspiring vision, transactional leaders motivate with rewards (Van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013): “Transactional contingent reward leadership clarifies expectations and offers recognition when goals are achieved” (Bass et al., 2003, p. 208). The clarification might help followers to better understand their tasks and to clarify their role in the organization, ultimately helping employees to identify with their work (Hall, 2008; Spreitzer, 1996) and experience more meaning. In line with this argument, research has shown a positive relationship between role clarity and psychological empowerment (Carless, 2004; Hall, 2008; Spreitzer, 1996). Followers who understand their tasks and know their goals tend to better understand their impact within the organization (Zhu et al., 2012). Recognizing the achievement of goals might stimulate feelings of pride and therefore help employees to feel competent and develop a sense of impact. When leaders reward goals they honor the positive impact of the employee in their work field. Because of the arguments for contingent reward, we hypothesize that:
H₄: Transactional leadership and psychological empowerment are positively correlated.

Different Effects for the Leadership Styles

Although all four leadership styles are hypothesized to influence psychological empowerment, we nonetheless expect differences in their magnitudes. This idea is reflected in the matching principle (see, for example, the matching principles in health research, De Jonge & Dormann, 2006). The matching principle states that the more predictors and criteria belong to qualitatively similar dimensions, the stronger their relationship should be (De Jonge & Dormann, 2006).

Empowering leadership seems to be more tightly matched to psychological empowerment than the other styles, because the aim and core of empowering leadership is to empower employees. Therefore, a high degree of matching between predictor and criteria is expected. However, only one of the seven dimensions of servant leadership shows such a direct match (see above; as well as Liden et al., 2008). As argued above, many theoretical arguments speak for a correlation between transformational leadership and empowerment, but “unlike broader concepts such as transformational leadership, empowering leadership is more clearly focused on empowerment, so that the association with empowerment is likely to be stronger” (Fong & Snape, 2015, p. 128). Unlike empowering leaders, transformational leaders confer less power to their employees and do not allow their employees to participate in developing their transformational vision (Kim et al., 2018). At its core, transformational leadership assigns more passive roles to followers than empowering leadership. Because the matching principle best fits empowering leadership, we hypothesize that:
H₅: Compared to transformational, servant, and transactional leadership, empowering leadership has the strongest relationship with psychological empowerment.

As outlined above, there are several arguments speaking for a relationship between transactional leadership and psychological empowerment; especially when focusing on the dimension contingent reward.

However, there is also reason to expect a lower positive relationship between both constructs than between psychological empowerment and empowering, transformational and servant leadership styles. Transactional leadership seems to restrain the two dimensions of self-determination and impact of psychological empowerment in particular: “In a team under the charge of a transactional leader, subordinates’ freedoms are constrained so that there is little opportunity for self-determination or creativity” (Wei et al., p. 34). The MBE-A and MBE-P facets of transactional leadership include a strong controlling orientation, atypical for the other leadership styles. MBE-A means that followers are continuously controlled if there are any deviations from the plan or mistakes (Bass & Avolio, 1995). Leaders with a MBE-P orientation also intervene in work processes in order to “correct” them—but only if problems arise (Judge & Piccolo, 2004). While we believe that there is a general positive relationship between transactional leadership and psychological empowerment because of the contingent reward dimension (see hypothesis H 4), we postulate that this association is lower because MBE-A and MBE-P have a lower match with the self-determination and impact dimension. This is why we hypothesize that:
H₆: Compared to empowering, transformational, and servant leadership, transactional leadership has the weakest relationship with psychological empowerment.

Moderator Analyses

We aim to analyze three moderators for the relationships proposed. The first moderator is theory driven (culture), while the other two moderators refer to methodical questions in the research practices on psychological empowerment: study design (cross-sectional vs. longitudinal) and publication status (published vs. unpublished).

Leadership and Culture

Research to clarify the effects of leadership in different cultural settings has long been called for (House et al., 2002). This is because culture may shape which goals leaders pursue and how they behave in doing so—especially towards their employees. Culture may also affect how employees perceive and react to various leadership practices. Therefore, culturally endorsed implicit leadership theories have been proposed as an explanation for this phenomenon (House et al., 2002). Implicit leadership theories propose that the perception of a leaders’ behavior and performance is dependent on the prototypes that people possess about the nature of leadership (Offermann et al., 1994). Prototypes are defined “as a collection of attributes or traits characteristic of an object or a person” (Brodbeck et al., 2000, p. 3). These prototypes are shaped by the interactions and experiences of the employees, and lead to situations where employees favor leader behavior that is consistent with their expectations (Karriker, 2005). Interactions and experiences thus always take place in a specific cultural environment. However, “the way in which the social environment is interpreted is strongly influenced by the cultural background of the perceiver” (Den Hartog, 1999, p. 227).

When focusing on the relationship between empowerment and leadership, it seems desirable to focus on the cultural values associated with power, because “the way in which power and status are divided in society is obviously relevant to the leadership role” (Dickson et al., 2003, p. 737). Hofstede's power distance (Hofstede, 1980) is arguably the most prominent quantitative measure of cultural views on power, but it has received severe psychometric criticism. That is, the data base is relatively old, internal consistencies are poor, and its factor structure fails to be replicable (Gerlach & Eriksson, 2021; Spector et al., 2001). Another problem stems from the formulation of the items. At least two items represent a participative management style, leading to a conceptual overlap with some of our leadership styles. Because of this criticism, Scholl and Schermuly (2020) developed an improved instrument of cultural views on power which combines Hofstede's power distance and individualism scores (which are highly correlated) with the dimensions from Van de Vliert’s (2013) Freedom Index and the GLOBE project (House et al., 2002). The resulting combined Power Balanced Freedom Index (PBF) has a broader orientation than the instrument proposed by Hofstede, and “highlights the cultural connection between the power distribution and the freedom situation within societies” (Scholl & Schermuly, 2020, p. 180). The reliability of this construct is satisfactory and predicts, for example, corruption across countries (Scholl & Schermuly, 2020).

Combining culturally endorsed implicit leadership theory with the PBF Index results in the hypothesis that, in cultures with a high PBF, other leader prototypes should be more widespread than in cultures with a low PBF, and that this influences the leadership-empowerment relationship. In cultures with a higher PBF (e.g., Scandinavian societies), leadership prototypes should be more strongly associated with sharing power, granting freedom during work, and more participation among employees. Yukl (2002), for example, summarized results from the GLOBE project and argued that a participative style is more successful in cultures with a low power distance. In countries with lower freedom and high power differences, such as the Middle East or Eastern Europe, participative leadership is less likely to be endorsed (Dickson et al., 2003). People in such societies tend to be “socialized to work under benevolent autocratic leadership, where decisions and task guidelines are provided from above and overall the work environment is fairly structured and formal” (Eylon & Au, 1999, p. 382). These regular interactions and leadership experiences should produce leadership prototypes that are more associated with “strong” leaders who make decisions without first consulting their employees.

“Followers who categorize a manager as a prototypical leader are likely to allow him/her to exert leadership influence on them” (Brodbeck et al., 2000, p. 2), leading to positive consequences for the leader-employee relationship. Different studies (e. g. Epitropaki & Martin, 2004; Schyns & Hansbrough, 2008) show that a match between the prototypes and the leaders’ behaviors result in a high LMX (Verlage et al., 2012). We believe that the same is true for psychological empowerment. If leadership prototypes in a society in relation to PBF fit the leadership that is actually practiced, more psychological empowerment should follow. For example, Dorfman et al. (1997) found that participative behaviors result in more positive responses in power balanced cultures, such as the USA and South Korea. The authors attribute the missing positive consequences of participation in Taiwan and Mexico “to their military histories emphasizing strong central leadership” (Dorfman & Tate, 1997, p. 265).

From this, we can conclude that participative and empowering elements of leadership are more accepted in societies with more balanced power and more freedom, due to the prevailing implicit leadership prototypes. This fit between the leadership style and culture endorsed prototypes should facilitate the empowerment process. Because participative and empowering elements are directly or indirectly present in empowering, servant, and transformational leadership styles (as argued above), we propose that:
H₇: The positive relationship between empowering leadership and psychological empowerment is stronger in cultures with high PBF compared with cultures with low PBF.

H₈: The positive relationship between servant leadership and psychological empowerment is stronger in cultures with high PBF compared with cultures with low PBF.

H₉: The positive relationship between transformational leadership and psychological empowerment is stronger in cultures with high PBF compared with cultures with low PBF.

Because of the low number of correlations (see results sections) for the relationship between transactional leadership and psychological empowerment, we shall abstain from deriving a moderator hypothesis for this relationship.

Study Design

The meta-analysis by Seibert et al. (2011) relied almost exclusively on cross-sectional data. The authors therefore “suggest[ed] that more longitudinal research [should] be done on empowerment in order to better determine the causal direction of relationships inherent in empowerment theory” (Seibert et al., 2011, p. 996). Cross-sectional data is vulnerable to common-method bias and therefore leads to an over-assessment of simultaneously measured relationships (Podsakoff et al., 2012). In cross-sectional studies, the observed covariation may be due to the constructs which share the same measurement methods (Podsakoff et al., 2012). Collecting data at two measurement points thus lowers common-method bias and paints a more realistic picture of the magnitude of a relationship between two variables. This is why we hypothesize that:
H₁₀: The relationships between leadership styles and psychological empowerment are lower in longitudinal than in cross-sectional data.

Publication Status

We see the publication status as yet another source for an overestimation of the magnitude of the correlations. The reward system of the scientific community exerts high pressure to publish in peer-reviewed journals (Honig & Bedi, 2012). However, reviewers are reluctant to accept articles with null findings (Shadish & Sweeney, 1991). It is therefore plausible to expect more studies with null findings to fail to pass the review process. Shadish and Sweeney (1991), for example, claim that dissertation theses report less selected study results and thus suffer from a smaller “file drawer problem” (Shadish & Sweeney, 1991, p. 890) than peer reviewed journal articles. This is why we will compare effect sizes from published sources (i.e., peer reviewed articles) with effect sizes from unpublished sources (e.g., dissertation theses) to test the following hypothesis:
H₁₁: The relationships between leadership styles and psychological empowerment are higher in published than unpublished sources.

Method

Search

To retrieve relevant studies, we searched the ISI Web of Knowledge (webofknowledge.com) and PsycINFO (apa.org/pubs/databases/psycinfo/index.aspx) databases. We used the keyword “psychological empowerment” combined with “leader[ship]” (see Appendix A for the exact search queries). We searched journal articles, book chapters, working papers, discussion papers, and scientific theses to minimize potential publication bias. Additionally, we integrated the scientific manuscripts that were mentioned in a seminal investigation by Seibert et al. (2011).

Figure 2 provides an overview of the selection process and the number of articles identified per step. We excluded 20 articles from the 492 unique articles because they were inaccessible. Nine articles were written in a language other than English. We then screened in four steps. (1) Fifty-eight articles were excluded because they did not contain quantitative data (e.g., review articles, commentaries). (2) We excluded another 83 articles because they did not meet our theoretical definition of psychological empowerment (e.g., a focus on structural empowerment or empowerment outside the work domain). (3) Thirteen articles were excluded because they assessed psychological empowerment on a group or organizational level (i.e., not on an individual level). (4) Another 22 articles were excluded because their measurement scale did not meet our definition of psychological empowerment. We excluded articles if they used only one sub-scale of the psychological empowerment construct, or if they employed scales that used fundamentally different sub-scales to the Spreitzer questionnaire (see, for example, feelings of competence and feelings of authority in Chiles & Zorn, 1995, or personal control of work environment, work orientation, and work relationships in Leslie et al., 1998). For all the scales employed, we accepted translations into other languages. All the eligible articles then had to measure at least one relevant leadership measure as described in the next section. As a consequence, 189 articles were excluded. Moreover, articles were only considered eligible if they reported the correlation between the leadership with an empowerment scale. If the article did not report such a correlation, we contacted the authors to request their primary data and/or the correlation coefficients. Twelve articles were excluded from the analysis because of missing correlation coefficients. Finally, we ignored three articles with data sets that had already been integrated through other articles. In such cases we always integrated data from the first publication.

Figure 2.
PRISMA (preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses) flow diagram describing the article search and selection process. Notes. All articles produced or published by August 2017, with K = number of identified articles; k = number of identified correlations. The abbreviations stand for PE = psychological empowerment; EL = empowering leadership; TFL = transformational leadership; SL = servant leadership; TAL = transactional leadership.

Altogether, our inclusion criteria resulted in a pool of K = 83 manuscripts (with 11 unpublished sources and a total of N = 33,256 observations) covering k = 97 correlations (of which 13 stemmed from unpublished sources, incl. doctoral theses). There were k = 43 correlations for empowering leadership (n = 12,665), 41 for transformational leadership (n = 15,277), k = 6 for servant leadership (n = 2,888), and k = 7 for transactional leadership (n = 2,426). The data set is provided in the Supplementary Material.

Coding

All the studies were coded twice, and all the authors were involved in the coding process. In addition, one research assistant coded the moderators after an extensive introduction. Inter-coder reliability was calculated for all coded measures, and is reported below. In cases with a lack of consensus, the researcher and the research assistant reconciled any disagreements. Information on the coding of the scales can be found in Appendix A.

Analytical Procedure

To combine correlations, we used random-effects models analogous to a bare-bone meta-analytic synthesis developed by Hunter and Schmidt (1990) with restricted maximum-likelihood estimators (Viechtbauer, 2005). Because our sample contained effect sizes that were possibly based on the same sample (e.g., one article reported multiple studies), we checked for potential dependency by using multilevel models. To quantify variations in the distributions of correlations we provided both the I² statistic, which is the between-study variance independent of the number of studies, and the τ² statistic, which is the estimated variance of underlying effects across studies (Huedo-Medina et al., 2006). If studies with greater standard errors yield stronger correlations, a file drawer problem seems likely. To detect such publication bias, several suggestions have been made (e.g., Egger et al., 1997). However, and as we explain below, heterogeneity between correlations was relatively large and the number of identified correlations was relatively small. Therefore, common “correction” methods for file drawer problems do not apply here (e.g., trim and fill, Duval & Tweedie, 2000; or Vevea & Hedges’s, 1995 weighting function). To detect publication bias nonetheless, we used meta-regressions with the standard error as an independent variable (Sterne et al., 2000). For further visual inspections of potential publication bias we have provided funnel plots. For all the analyses, we used the statistical software R (R Development Core Team, 2008) and the default sensitivity parameters of the meta (Schwarzer, 2007) and metafor (Viechtbauer, 2010) packages.

The analyses for H₁–H₆ and all moderator tests were limited to cross-sectional correlations (i.e., whose measures were obtained on the same day) so that all the data points were collected at the same point in time. The meta-regression could control for the potential moderating effect of longitudinal designs and thus included all studies, regardless of whether data was collected at the same point in time or with delay.

Results

H₁–H₆: The Relationship between Leadership Styles and Psychological Empowerment

As depicted in Figure 3, empowering leadership, transformational leadership and servant leadership were, on average, moderately correlated with empowerment (H₁, H₂, and H₃). However, the average correlation with transactional leadership was weak and not significant (H₄). More precisely, the correlations between psychological empowerment and empowering leadership, transformational leadership, servant leadership, and transactional leadership were r = 0.45, r = 0.40, r = 0.35, and r = 0.08 respectively (intercoder reliability: κ = 0.95). Heterogeneity between correlations (in terms of I² and τ²) of each leadership style was relatively large.

Figure 3.
Violin plots showing the distribution of correlations by leadership style. Notes. Each dot represents a correlation. The dot size indicates the number of observations. All dots are horizontally jittered for the sake of visualization. The thick, solid bars indicate the estimated grand means (random effects models). The bars above the plots summarize the results of tests for subgroup differences. The table below the figure presents the summary statistics of the random effects models: r is the grand mean of the correlations [with 95% CI = confidence interval]; k is the number of correlations; n is the total number of observations; I² is the study variance independent of the number of studies; and τ² is the between-study variance. The analysis were limited to cross-sectional correlations (i.e., whose measures were obtained on the same day) so that all data points were collected at the same point in time.

As shown in Figure 3, tests for subgroup differences failed to find significant differences between the grand means of empowering, transformational and servant leadership (H₅). The grand mean of transactional leadership, however, was significantly smaller than those of the other leadership styles (H₆). In a meta-regression that controlled for all moderators, the differences between empowering leadership and transactional leadership remained significant (Table 1), suggesting that a link with psychological empowerment was stronger for empowering leadership than for transactional leadership.

Table 1.
Moderators of the Correlations Between all Leadership Styles and Psychological Empowerment.

Independent variable B SE z p

Intercept 0.56 0.05 10.61 <.001

Leadership styles

Transformational leadership (dummy) −0.07 0.04 −1.79 .007

Servant leadership (dummy) −0.09 0.07 −1.21 .226

Transactional leadership (dummy) −0.44 0.07 −6.24 <.001

Cross-sectional study (dummy) 0.10 0.06 1.65 .100

Power Balanced Freedom −0.01 0.02 −0.59 .555

Unpublished source (dummy) −0.04 0.05 −0.75 .455

Standard error of correlation −1.80 0.94 −1.92 .005

Note. Linear meta-regression predicting correlations with empowerment. Random effects at study level. The model was limited to studies with participants from a single country only. This was necessary for assigning an unambiguous Power Balanced Freedom Score. Therefore, the number of observations was limited to: k = 88 and n = 30,621 observations. Residual heterogeneity: I² = 92%, τ² = 0.02; Heterogeneity accounted for: R² = 27%.

H₇–H₉ Moderator Analysis: Power Balanced Freedom

We next tested whether PBF moderated the relationship between leadership styles and psychological empowerment. For each study we coded the country in which the study was conducted (intercoder reliability: κ = 0.95; excluding studies with participants from more than one country and studies that did not mention the location). We then linked all countries (k = 79) to their PBF score (taken from: Scholl & Schermuly, 2020). Finally, we ran a series of moderator tests with the correlations between leadership style and psychological empowerment as the outcome variables. The results suggest no moderating effect of PBF (EL: QM(1) = 0.00, p = .947; TFL: QM(1) = 2.12, p = .146; SL: QM(1) = 0.63, p = .428). In line with these results, the meta-regressions in Table 1 suggest no moderating effect of PBF on the correlation between leadership styles and psychological empowerment either. Hypotheses H₇, H₈ and H₉ were thus rejected.

H₁₀ Moderator Analysis: Cross Sectional versus Longitudinal Designs

The majority (k = 88) of the studies were cross-sectional, measuring leadership styles and psychological empowerment at the same time. However, some studies (k = 9) let time elapse between measuring leadership (t₁) and measuring psychological empowerment (t₂; intercoder reliability: ICC = 0.95). In partial support of H₁₀, tests for subgroup differences suggested that cross sectional correlations yielded (marginally) significant stronger correlations than longitudinal studies (intercoder reliability: κ = 0.85; EL: Q(1) = 3.28, p = .070; TFL: Q(1) = 4.44, p = .035; for SL and TAL there were no longitudinal studies). However, the effects were not robust as suggested in the meta-regression (Table 1). The meta-regression model controlled for additional, independent variables that might have distorted the effects of the subgroup tests. That is, the results in the subgroup tests may have been driven by other factors, such as publication type.

H₁₁ Moderator Analysis: Publication Type

The majority of the correlations stemmed from published articles (k = 76). Few correlations were taken from dissertations and other unpublished sources (k = 12; intercoder reliability: κ = 0.97). We tested whether published sources were associated with systematically smaller correlations. Generally, the results suggested no such trend for empowering leadership (Q(1) = 0.03, p = .873); a marginal significant effect for transformational leadership in the opposite direction, however, suggested that unpublished dissertations yielded stronger results than published articles (Q(1) = 3.50, p = .061). For servant leadership a significant trend, again opposite to H₁₁, was found. That is, the unpublished dissertation (k = 1, r = 0.55, 95%-CI [0.48, 0.62]) yielded stronger results than the grand mean of the published articles (k = 5, r = 0.31, 95%-CI [0.17, 0.45]; Q(1) = 9.22, p = .002). For transactional leadership there were no unpublished manuscripts. However, the meta-regression suggests that the effects were far from robust (Table 1).

As a further measure to detect publication bias we tested if the standard error moderated the correlations between leadership styles and psychological empowerment. Publication bias would predict that studies with greater standard errors yielded smaller correlations. We again found partial evidence for this claim, however, in the opposite direction (see Figure 4). That is, studies with greater standard errors yielded significantly smaller correlations for empowering leadership (QM(1) = 13.18, p > .001) and marginally significant smaller correlations for transformational leadership (QM(1) = 3.16, p = .076). No significant effects were found for either servant leadership (QM(1) = 0.24, p = .626) or transactional leadership (QM(1) = 0.1.53, p = .216). In line with this finding, the meta-regression of all leadership styles combined suggested a highly significantly negative link between the standard error and the correlations (Table 1). Overall, it thus seems that the literature underestimated the effect of leadership on psychological empowerment.

Figure 4.
Funnel plots. Notes. Depicted are correlations between psychological empowerment and leadership for each study as a function of the standard error.

Explorative Analysis of the Effects on the Dimension of Psychological Empowerment

Psychological empowerment consists of four dimensions. As explained in the theory section, leadership styles might influence meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact. Even if general effects of the leadership styles on psychological empowerment were theoretically expected and could be empirically confirmed (with the exception for transactional leadership), it is possible that leadership styles had a stronger effect on some of the dimensions (e.g., on meaning but not on impact). This is something we will analyze in an explorative manner.

Unfortunately, only a minority of studies report results for the four dimensions of psychological empowerment (k = 14 cross sectional studies; i.e. 16%). Only one study reported such differential results for transactional leadership (Silver, 2000). Solitary impact was significantly increased by transactional leadership (r = 0.16 p < .01).

For the other leadership styles the results are presented in Table 2. For empowering leadership, six correlations were available (transformational leadership = 5; servant leadership = 2). As can be seen in Table 2, the effects on the competence facet were the lowest for all leadership styles. We aggregated the data of the three leadership styles (see the final column in Table 2) to have a more reliable data basis. The combined leadership effects were r = .26 (meaning), r = 0.27 (self-determination) and r = 0.32 (impact). The correlation for competence was only about half as large (r = 0.16) and significantly lower than those for self-determination (Q(1) = 5.00, p = .025) and impact (Q(1) = 7.58, p = .006), as well as marginally lower than meaning (Q(1) = 3.70, p = .055). For the other dimensions there were no significant differences (Q(1) < 1.19, p < .276). The combined leadership styles had a similar effect on self-determination, impact and meaning.

Table 2.
Correlation of the Four Dimensions of Psychological Empowerment with Leadership Styles.

Leadership Style

EL TFL SL Combined correlations

Competence r = 0.21* r = 0.16 r = 0.03^ns r = 0.16*

Meaning r = 0.29* r = 0.26*** r = 0.15* r = 0.26*

Self-Determination r = 0.33* r = 0.21* r = 0.29* r = 0.27*

Impact r = 0.35* r = 0.35* r = 0.17* r = 0.32***

Number of studies k = 6 k = 5 k = 2 k = 13

Number of participants n = 1.549 n = 3.048 n = 1.281 n = 5.878

Note. ns = not significant, <.05, <.01, <.001.

Discussion

Summary of Results

Relationships between psychological empowerment and empowering, transformational, and servant leadership were, on average, moderately positive and significant (H_1–3). The average relationship between psychological empowerment and transactional leadership was not significant, however (H₄). We found no significant differences in the magnitudes of the relationships between psychological empowerment and empowering, transformational and servant leadership styles. In line with our hypothesis (H₆), the correlation between empowering leadership and psychological empowerment seemed stronger than the correlation between transactional leadership and psychological empowerment. PBF moderated none of the correlations (H_7–9). Correlations between leadership styles and psychological empowerment were somewhat smaller when data was collected at different measurement points (H₁₀), although the evidence was far from clear. Whether or not a correlation came from an (un)published source had an ambiguous moderating effect (H₁₁). If anything, the literature seems to underestimate the effect of leadership on psychological empowerment. This was especially true for the correlation between empowering leadership and psychological empowerment (Figure 4). Our explorative analyses revealed that not all dimensions profit equally from empowering, transformational and servant leadership. The leadership styles stimulate significantly less competence than meaning, self-determination and impact feelings.

Theoretical Implications

Psychological empowerment has a variety of positive effects for employers and employees (Seibert et al., 2011). This explains why researchers and practitioners alike are interested in understanding how psychological empowerment in organizations can be stimulated. Our results reveal that all the positive leadership styles that we tested had a fairly equally moderate effect on psychological empowerment. The empowering leadership style, which specifically fosters employees’ psychological empowerment, proved just as good as transformational and servant leadership in stimulating psychological empowerment among employees.

An explanation is that shared pan-theoretical factors cause similar results in different leadership styles. In psychotherapy research, this is known as the dodo bird verdict (Rosenzweig, 1936). Such pan-theoretical factors “overshadow any perceived or presumed differences among approaches” (Duncan, 2002, p. 34). The most prominent and potent factor is the therapeutic alliance, especially if it is evaluated by the clients (Duncan, 2002). A recent meta-analysis has shown that this might also be true for coaching (Graßmann et al., 2020). Similarly to psychotherapy and coaching, the alliance between leader and follower may be a suitable focus for a pan-theoretical factor in leadership. A related pan-theoretical factor is offered by Martinko et al. (2018), who argue that follower's attitudes toward their leader, explain the shared variance between different leadership styles. Their results suggest that the strength of the relationships between leadership styles such as transformational leadership and different variables (e.g. organizational commitment, leader-member-exchange) is significantly reduced when controlling for the affects towards the leader (measured with the leader affect questionnaire; Martinko et al., 2018). Interestingly, Martinko et al. (2018) found such effects for transformational but not transactional leadership. This is line with our results, which show that, unlike the other leadership styles, transactional leadership has no effect on psychological empowerment.

Since this explanation is speculative, more research seems necessary. To accurately test if there is a dodo bird verdict in leadership research, future research should simultaneously include and compare the effects of empowering, transformational and servant leadership on psychological empowerment. Then, factor analyses should test whether a one-factor model, a four-factor model or a four-factor model with a g-factor fits the data best. Additionally, the leader affect questionnaire should be used as a control variable, and then the predictive value and incremental value of all leadership styles for psychological empowerment should be tested.

A potential pantheoretical factor could also have consequences for leadership theory. Anderson and Sun (2017) have criticized the chaos in leadership research caused by an excess of new leadership styles that have recently been introduced into the literature. Their solution is a new, integrated full-range model of leadership that “encompasses and distills what is unique about these various styles” (Anderson & Sun, 2017, p. 76). Our results offer another theoretical direction. Instead of focusing on the uniqueness of each leadership style, it seems reasonable to analyze what they have in common. We believe that a pantheoretical factor necessitates a pantheoretical theory, which would provide information about the number and types of pantheoretical factors and clarify the processes of how these factors influence central variables such as empowerment, health, and performance. The theory should help to clarify the circumstances under which pantheoretical factors are particularly strong. Ultimately, it could also foster insights into the distinctness of different leadership styles. In a pantheoretical theory, these would be the elements of a style that are not shared with other styles and that therefore have unique consequences.

But in the discussion on pan-theoretical factors and similar effects of different leadership styles, it must be borne in mind that not all leadership constructs in our analysis had a significant effect on psychological empowerment. There is no significant correlation between transactional leadership and psychological empowerment, and there are even negative correlations for this relationship in the data set (see Figure 3). Transactional leadership is a diverse construct (Pieterse et al., 2010). It is conceivable that the MBE-A and MBE-P dimensions of transactional leadership have a rather negative impact on psychological empowerment because of its controlling character, while contingent reward has a positive impact, leading to a null correlation for the general construct. Future research should not only concentrate on leadership styles which clearly foster psychological empowerment but also analyze such styles which are used in practice but might have ambivalent effects.

Future empowerment research should also reflect on the application of transformational leadership on psychological empowerment. As we have argued above, there is substantial criticism of the theoretical and psychometrical substance of the construct (Van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013). Because transformational leadership does not serve as a better predictor for psychological empowerment than other leadership styles, it might be suitable for future studies to employ alternative leadership styles with fewer flaws

Interestingly, the PBF did not moderate the relation between leadership styles and psychological empowerment. This was especially surprising for empowering and servant leadership, because both styles have strong and direct participatory elements. Regardless of the power culture, all leadership styles seem to stimulate psychological empowerment to an equal degree. Three explanations are possible for this. The first is that implicit leadership prototypes do not have an effect because they do not exist. However, this is highly unlikely because past research has consistently proven their existence (see for example Gerstner & Day, 1994, or the results of the GLOBE studies). For example, non autocratic and participative leadership behaviors show a higher leadership prototypicality in north and west European countries such as Great Britain, Sweden, France, or Germany than in south and east Europe (Italy, Poland, or Russia) (Brodbeck et al., 2000). The second explanation is methodical. Missing effects for PBF as moderator could be the result of its measurement. However, with the PBF index we have used an instrument which shows higher reliability and validity results than past measures (Scholl & Schermuly, 2020). The last explanation is that a match between leadership prototypes and positive leader behaviors is not necessary for the empowerment process. This speaks against the assumptions of a culturally-endorsed implicit leadership hypothesis for empowerment. If the implicit leadership prototypes in a culture do not correspond to the leadership behavior, this does not influence the empowerment process stimulated by the leaders. In other words, there are cultural, universally empowering effects of the leadership styles. For transformational leadership, this is in line with the results of Dorfman et al. (1997) and Den Hartog et al. (1999). Future research should test if this universalism also holds true for other cultural values, such as collectivism.

Most of the methodical moderators showed no clear picture. The relationships between leadership styles and psychological empowerment were somewhat smaller when data was collected at different measurement points but we failed to replicate these results in the regression analysis. With regard to the publication bias, it seems that the literature somewhat underestimated the effects of the leadership styles on psychological empowerment. This was especially true for empowering leadership, and it is a surprising result as it seems that stronger correlations were ‘left’ in the file drawer. If anything, the opposite trend would have been expected. It is unclear why this trend was observed in the first place. However, if such a trend had biased our data, we underestimated the effect of empowering leadership and psychological empowerment (H1). It is even possible that empowering leadership would have yielded greater correlation with psychological empowerment than the other leadership styles (H5).

Finally, the results on the dimensional level have to be discussed. Why is the competence dimension more poorly related to the three positive leadership styles? As we have explained above, empowering leaders delegate responsibility and power to their employees. Decisions that would otherwise have been made by a leader must now be made by the employee. This might increase the arousal of an employee but also lead to situations with lower performance. Employees with more responsibility have more opportunities to fail. Arousal and performance outcomes are core sources for competence feelings in Bandura's social-cognitive theory (Bandura, 1999). This might also explain the weaker relationships for servant leadership, because there is also an empowering dimension in this construct. For transformational leadership, the intellectual stimulation dimension might offer an explanation. Intellectual stimulation might create knowledge, but it also uncovers knowledge gaps. Finally, a higher stability for the competence dimension might explain the lower effects. Research shows that perceived competence is quite stable over time and across situations (Fernandez-Castro et al., 2009). A more stable variable can be altered less by leadership behaviors than an unsettled variable, leading to lower correlations.

However, Table 2 reveals other interesting findings. For example, transformational leadership (r = 0.21) has a lower relationship with self-determination compared to empowering leadership (r = 0.33) and servant leadership (r = 0.29). This result might be associated with the subfacets of the leadership styles. In the common conceptualizations of empowering leadership and servant leadership (see above), the subfacets for participative decision-making or even behaviors for shared leadership are included. In contrast, there is no such account for participation in transformational leadership theory. Past research has shown that participative leadership can have a strong impact on self-determination (Schermuly, 2011). This lower emphasis on participatory elements in the transformational leadership construct could explain the weaker correlation with self-determination.

As shown in Table 2, servant leadership is not only uncorrelated with the competence dimension, but it also exhibits only a weak relationship with the impact dimension (r = 0.17) compared with the other leadership styles (TFL and EL both = 0.35; see Table 2). The question arises as to why servant leaders stimulate less of a feeling of influence and power. Quinn and Spreitzer (1997, p. 48) have argued, “empowered people are empowering people.” In a recent study, Grützmacher and Schermuly (2021) have confirmed this statement and shown a trickle-down effect of the perceived empowerment of leaders and the empowerment of their subordinates. This social learning process might impede the stimulation of impact for servant leaders. Servant leaders serve their employees and thus represent a weaker power role model which might degrade their influence on the impact dimension. Because all of these explications are highly speculative, more research is necessary to explore the relationship between leadership and the different dimensions of psychological empowerment.

Practical Implications

The practical implications of this study are momentary because most of our results lead to new research questions. Nonetheless, some practical implications are worth mentioning. First, it seems there is no single “right” positive leadership style to stimulate psychological empowerment. Supervisors seem free to choose between servant, transformational, and empowering leadership if they want to boost competence, meaning, self-determination, and impact among their employees. However, supervisors should avoid fostering transactional leadership. Because of the cultural universalism of the effects, supervisors may stimulate psychological empowerment with such leadership styles in contexts as diverse as, say, the USA and China.

A further practical implication affects leadership training. Because empowering, serving, and transformational leadership seem to have similarly strong effects, trainers should develop their participants in the leadership style which best fits their personality, competencies, and organizations. If this alignment exists, leaders might experience even greater self-efficacy and more motivation to engage in the training. Both self-efficacy and training motivation have been identified as important predictors of training transfer (Colquitt et al., 2000). To incorporate this fit, leadership trainers, however, need to develop diagnostic competencies. Thus, before the training begins, trainers should test their participants on their leadership preferences, for example, by using questionnaires. Because of the universal effects of the leadership style, the leadership styles can be the basis for training in every culture.

Limitations

There are several limitations to our analyses. First and foremost, all analyses were correlational and thus no causality can be inferred. Second, we partly failed to identify a moderating effect of study design. Potentially, this was because our database included relatively few longitudinal studies in the first place. Third, the moderating effect of the (un)published source was mixed. Potentially, this was because our search strategy was insufficient for identifying (un)published articles. Several authors neither included relevant statistical information in their articles nor responded to our queries. As a result, 12 articles had to be excluded. It is unclear whether and how the exclusion of these articles might have biased our results. A further limitation is that our analyses on the dimensional level of psychological empowerment are based on only few studies. Future research should provide correlations between relevant variables and the four dimensions of psychological empowerment more often. Another limitation is that the number of studies for servant and transactional leadership was rather low. Future research should concentrate, for example, on transactional leadership and analyze which of the three transactional types have an increasing or decreasing effect on psychological empowerment.

Besides these limitations, our study has shown that different leadership styles are associated with psychological empowerment. Moreover, our meta-analyses raise several new questions about why different leadership styles have similar effects on psychological empowerment.

Author’s Note

Carolin Graßmann, VICTORIA International University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany.

Independent variable	B	SE	z	p
Intercept	0.56	0.05	10.61	<.001
Leadership styles
Transformational leadership (dummy)	−0.07	0.04	−1.79	.007
Servant leadership (dummy)	−0.09	0.07	−1.21	.226
Transactional leadership (dummy)	−0.44	0.07	−6.24	<.001
Cross-sectional study (dummy)	0.10	0.06	1.65	.100
Power Balanced Freedom	−0.01	0.02	−0.59	.555
Unpublished source (dummy)	−0.04	0.05	−0.75	.455
Standard error of correlation	−1.80	0.94	−1.92	.005

	Leadership Style
Competence	r = 0.21***	r = 0.16**	r = 0.03^ns	r = 0.16***
Meaning	r = 0.29***	r = 0.26***	r = 0.15*	r = 0.26***
Self-Determination	r = 0.33***	r = 0.21***	r = 0.29***	r = 0.27***
Impact	r = 0.35***	r = 0.35***	r = 0.17***	r = 0.32***
Number of studies	k = 6	k = 5	k = 2	k = 13
Number of participants	n = 1.549	n = 3.048	n = 1.281	n = 5.878

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) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Carsten C. Schermuly

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Carsten C. Schermuly is a professor for business psychology at SRH Berlin University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany. His main research focuses on psychological empowerment, interaction processes, and diversity in teams, and the efficacy of coaching.

Laura E. Creon has an MSc in work and organizational psychology and is currently a research associate at SRH Berlin University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany. Her research interests include team diversity, human resource development, organizational socialization, and psychological empowerment.

Philipp Gerlach is a professor for experimental and social psychology at Fresenius University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg, Germany. His primary research interests are moral decision-making, framing effects, and meta-analyses.

Carolin Graßmann is a professor of business psychology with focus on organization development and business coaching at VICTORIA International University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany. Her main research focuses on the effects of coaching and training, and the factors that determine them.

Jan Koch has an MSc in social, organizational, and business psychology and is currently a research associate at SRH Berlin University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany. His research focuses on working in agile teams, occupational health, and the psychological empowerment of employees in modern workplaces.

Appendix A

Appendix B

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	Leadership Style
	EL	TFL	SL	Combined correlations
Competence	r = 0.21***	r = 0.16**	r = 0.03^ns	r = 0.16***
Meaning	r = 0.29***	r = 0.26***	r = 0.15*	r = 0.26***
Self-Determination	r = 0.33***	r = 0.21***	r = 0.29***	r = 0.27***
Impact	r = 0.35***	r = 0.35***	r = 0.17***	r = 0.32***
Number of studies	k = 6	k = 5	k = 2	k = 13
Number of participants	n = 1.549	n = 3.048	n = 1.281	n = 5.878

Leadership Styles and Psychological Empowerment: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Keywords

Theory

The Relationship between Leadership Styles and Psychological Empowerment

Empowering Leadership

Transformational Leadership

Servant Leadership

Transactional Leadership

Different Effects for the Leadership Styles

Moderator Analyses

Leadership and Culture

Study Design

Publication Status

Method

Search

Coding

Analytical Procedure

Results

H1–H6: The Relationship between Leadership Styles and Psychological Empowerment

H7–H9 Moderator Analysis: Power Balanced Freedom

H10 Moderator Analysis: Cross Sectional versus Longitudinal Designs

H11 Moderator Analysis: Publication Type

Explorative Analysis of the Effects on the Dimension of Psychological Empowerment

Discussion

Summary of Results

Theoretical Implications

Practical Implications

Limitations

Author’s Note

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Supplemental Material

Appendix A

Appendix B

References

Supplementary Material

H₁–H₆: The Relationship between Leadership Styles and Psychological Empowerment

H₇–H₉ Moderator Analysis: Power Balanced Freedom

H₁₀ Moderator Analysis: Cross Sectional versus Longitudinal Designs

H₁₁ Moderator Analysis: Publication Type