Influence of Congruence of Leader Empowerment Behaviors and Subordinates Empowerment Expectations on Subordinates’ Work Performance

Abstract:

Most studies have discussed the impact of empowerment leadership on subordinates behaviors， but ignored the impact of subordinates' expectations. So this paper based on implicit leadership theory and expectation theory， discussed the impact of the congruence of “leader empowerment behavior” and “follower empowerment expectation” on followers’ work performance from a dual perspective. Constructed a theoretical mode of work engagement mediates between the congruence of leadership empowerment behavior and followers’ empowerment expectation and work performance， in order to make up for the deficiency of ignoring the role of subordinates. Through polynomial regression and response surface analysis on a survey of 168 pairs of leaders and followers from 6 enterprises in 4 cities， the findings are as follows： ① there are four matching situations between “leader empowerment behavior” and “follower empowerment expectation”. The congruence of leadership empowerment behavior and followers’ empowerment expectation has more positive impact on followers’ work performance than mismatching. ② when the match is consistent， “leader high empowerment-follower high expectation” has more significant positive effect than “leader low empowerment-follower low expectation”. ③ when the matching is not consistent， “leader low empowerment-follower high expectation” has more significant positive effect than “leader high empowerment-follower low expectation” on the followers’ work performance. ④ work engagement mediates between the congruence of leadership empowerment behavior and followers’ empowerment expectation and work performance.