Antecedents and Consequences of Psychological and Team Empowerment in Organizations: A Meta-Analytic...

Antecedents and Consequences of Psychological and Team Empowermentin Organizations: A Meta-Analytic Review

Scott E. Seibert, Gang Wang, and Stephen H. CourtrightUniversity of Iowa

This paper provides meta-analytic support for an integrated model specifying the antecedents andconsequences of psychological and team empowerment. Results indicate that contextual antecedentconstructs representing perceived high-performance managerial practices, socio-political support, lead-ership, and work characteristics are each strongly related to psychological empowerment. Positiveself-evaluation traits are related to psychological empowerment and are as strongly related as thecontextual factors. Psychological empowerment is in turn positively associated with a broad range ofemployee outcomes, including job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and task and contextualperformance, and is negatively associated with employee strain and turnover intentions. Team empow-erment is positively related to team performance. Further, the magnitude of parallel antecedent andoutcome relationships at the individual and team levels is statistically indistinguishable, demonstratingthe generalizability of empowerment theory across these 2 levels of analysis. A series of analyses alsodemonstrates the validity of psychological empowerment as a unitary second-order construct. Implica-tions and future directions for empowerment research and theory are discussed.

Keywords: empowerment, teams, high-performance work systems, job satisfaction, performance

Supplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0022676.supp

The concept of employee empowerment was introduced to themanagement literature over thirty years ago by Kanter (1977).Surveys have shown that empowerment has had a major impact onmanagement practice, as more than 70% of organizations haveimplemented some form of empowerment for at least some part oftheir workforce (e.g., Lawler, Mohrman, & Benson, 2001). Theconcept of empowerment also continues to generate considerableresearch interest. Still, a number of important questions remainunanswered (Spreitzer, 2008). It is therefore important to developa fuller understanding of the nature of empowerment, the factorsthat lead to employee feelings of empowerment, and the conse-quences associated with an empowered workforce.

Two major perspectives on the empowerment phenomenon haveemerged (Liden & Arad, 1996; Spreitzer, 2008). Early, sociostruc-tural approaches regarded empowerment as a set of structures,policies, and practices designed to decentralize power and author-ity throughout the organization, enabling employees at lower lev-els in the organization to take appropriate action (Bennis & Nanus,1985; Block, 1987; Kanter, 1977, 1983). Conger and Kanungo

(1988) were the first to introduce a psychological perspective onempowerment. They argued that empowering organizational prac-tices result in greater employee initiative and motivation only tothe extent that these practices provide informational cues thatenhance the employees’ effort–performance expectancies (Lawler,1973) or feelings of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1986). Thomas andVelthouse (1990) expanded upon this work by articulating a morecomplete theoretical framework for psychological empowerment.On the basis of their synthesis of a range of cognitive motivationtheories, they identified meaning, choice, competence, and impactas the set of employee task assessments associated with intrinsictask motivation.

Spreitzer (1995b) was the first to develop a multidimensionalinstrument to assess psychological empowerment. On the basis ofthe work of Thomas and Velthouse (1990), she defined psycho-logical empowerment as intrinsic task motivation reflecting a senseof control in relation to one’s work and an active orientation toone’s work role that is manifest in four cognitions: meaning,self-determination, competence, and impact. Meaning refers to thealignment between the demands of one’s work role and one’s ownbeliefs, values, and standards (Hackman & Oldham, 1980). Self-determination is one’s sense of choice concerning the initiation orregulation of one’s actions (Deci, Connell, & Ryan, 1989). Com-petence refers to one’s belief in one’s capability to successfullyperform work activities (Bandura, 1989; Lawler, 1973). Finally,impact is one’s belief that one can influence strategic, administra-tive, or operational activities and outcomes in one’s work unit(Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978; Ashforth, 1989). Con-sistent with previous theorizing (e.g., Thomas & Velthouse, 1990),the highest levels of intrinsic task motivation were proposed toemerge only when all four cognitions are high.

This article was published Online First March 28, 2011.Scott E. Seibert, Gang Wang, and Stephen H. Courtright, Department of

Management and Organizations, Tippie College of Business, University ofIowa.

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the meeting of theAcademy of Management, Chicago, Illinois, August 2009. We thankIn-Sue Oh and Amy Colbert for advice on data analyses.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Scott E.Seibert, Department of Management and Organizations, Tippie College ofBusiness, 108 John Pappajohn Business Building, Iowa City, IA 52242-1994. E-mail: scott-seibert@uiowa.edu

Spreitzer’s (1995b) formulation has proved seminal to researchon psychological empowerment. It is therefore surprising that,over thirty years since the introduction of the empowerment con-cept and fifteen years since the emergence of a dominant psycho-logical empowerment instrument, no quantitative review of theliterature has been performed (Spreitzer, 2008). Thus, our primarypurpose in this paper is to conduct a meta-analytic review of theantecedents, correlates, and consequences of psychological em-powerment in work organizations.

This meta-analysis contributes to the literature on empowermentin at least three ways. First, we integrate a broad range of theo-retical perspectives—including sociostructural (e.g., Kanter,1977), psychological (e.g., Spreitzer, 1995b), and team-based (e.g.,Kirkman & Rosen, 1999) approaches to empowerment—that haveemerged over the last thirty years. By testing the relationshipsspecified in this model, we examine the nomological networksurrounding the empowerment construct at the individual and teamlevels of analysis. We also explicitly compare the relative contri-bution of the contextual and individual difference constructs asantecedents of psychological empowerment. Furthermore, we ex-amine the parallel relationships surrounding empowerment at theindividual and team levels to assess the extent of multilevel ho-mology demonstrated by psychological empowerment theory(Chan, 1998; Chen, Bliese, & Mathieu, 2005).

The second contribution of our paper is to examine severalpotential boundary conditions on the effectiveness of psychologi-cal empowerment. Understanding the influence of contextual vari-ables on the effectiveness of a construct such as psychologicalempowerment can greatly contribute to theory and practice (Johns,2006). On the basis of speculations and debates in the literature,we investigate the potential moderating effect of industry, occu-pation, and culturally distinct geographic region on the relationshipof psychological empowerment and key outcomes.

Finally, the third major contribution of this study is an exami-nation of the validity of psychological empowerment as a unitaryconstruct. Spreitzer (2008, p. 64) asked, “Is the potency in em-powerment in the gestalt or the individual dimensions?” and noted

that confusion regarding the structure of the psychological em-powerment construct can be an impediment to future researchprogress. We therefore investigate this issue by conducting ameta-analytic confirmatory factor analysis, examining discrimi-nant validity among the four subdimensions of psychologicalempowerment, and assessing the relative strength of the unitarypsychological empowerment construct relative to the four subdi-mensions on our key dependent variables. Together, these threecontributions will help guide future theoretical and empirical workon psychological empowerment.

Theoretical Framework

A legacy of Kanter’s (1977, 1983) original work on empower-ment is that early researchers regarded organizational structuresand practices as indicators of empowerment. Current scholars nowview these factors as contextual antecedents of psychologicalempowerment, rather than as empowerment itself (Kirkman &Rosen, 1999; Seibert, Silver, & Randolph, 2004; Spreitzer, 1996,2008). We categorize variables that capture employees’ percep-tions of the organization or work environment into one of fourcontextual antecedent categories (see Figure 1). For example,several researchers (e.g., Combs, Liu, Hall, & Ketchen, 2006;Liao, Toya, Lepak, & Hong, 2009; Patterson, West, & Wall, 2004)have suggested that high-performance management practices (e.g.,Lawler, 1986) would lead to higher levels of psychological em-powerment through both cognitive and affective mechanisms.Kanter (1977, 1983) identified social-political support as an im-portant contextual antecedent of psychological empowerment.Subsequent researchers (e.g., Kark, Shamir, & Chen, 2003; Kirk-man & Rosen, 1999; Kraimer, Seibert, & Liden, 1999; Liden,Wayne, & Sparrowe, 2000) have identified leadership and workdesign characteristics as additional contextual antecedents en-abling employee feelings of psychological empowerment. Thesame set of constructs has been identified as contextual anteced-ents to team-level empowerment as well (e.g., Chen, Kirkman,Kanfer, Allen, & Rosen, 2007; Kirkman & Rosen, 1999). Figure 1

Psychological Empowerment

Meaning

Self-Determination

Competence

Impact

TeamEmpowerment

Contextual Antecedents

High-Performance Managerial Practices

Socio-Political Support

Leadership

Work Design Characteristics

Individual Characteristics

Positive Self-Evaluation Traits

Human Capital

Gender

Attitudinal Consequences

Job Satisfaction

Organizational Commitment

Strain

Turnover Intentions

Behavioral Consequences

Task performance

Innovation

Team Performance

Figure 1. Integrated individual and team empowerment framework.

982 SEIBERT, WANG, AND COURTRIGHT

therefore depicts a set of parallel contextual antecedents at theindividual and team levels of analysis. In addition, a range ofpersonality traits and individual characteristics have been identi-fied as correlates of psychological empowerment. These relation-ships are depicted on the left side of Figure 1.

As indicated in Figure 1, a broad range of attitudinal andbehavioral outcomes has been associated with psychological em-powerment (e.g., Spreitzer, 1995b, 2008). Because psychologi-cally empowered work is likely to fulfill intrinsic needs for auton-omy and growth (e.g., Hackman & Oldham, 1980), researchershave frequently proposed job satisfaction, commitment, and reten-tion as outcomes of empowerment (e.g., Kraimer et al., 1999;Liden et al., 2000). A core proposition of the theory is thatpsychological empowerment will be related not only to workattitudes but to positive forms of work performance as well due tothe more active orientation psychologically empowered employeesare said to take toward their work (Spreitzer, 1995b, 2008). Thus,both in-role task performance and organizational citizenship be-haviors have been proposed as individual-level behavioral out-comes. Innovation behavior at work, in particular, has been seen asa key outcome because of the active, persistent, and change-oriented behaviors associated with psychological empowerment(Spreitzer, 1995b). Researchers have also linked team empower-ment to team performance, as depicted on the right side of thefigure. This framework thus integrates over thirty years of theoryand empirical research on empowerment and guides the develop-ment of the hypotheses below.

Hypotheses

Contextual Antecedents of PsychologicalEmpowerment

High-performance managerial practices. Several differentbut overlapping research streams (e.g., strategic human resourcemanagement, Delery & Shaw, 2001; high-performance work sys-tem, Huselid, 1995; high-involvement management, Lawler,Mohrman, & Ledford, 1998; competitive advantage through peo-ple, Pfeffer, 1994) have tried to identify a small set of managementand human resource best practices that organizations might use tooptimize the value they derive from their employees. The practicesthat have been consistently identified in the literature—which werefer to as high-performance managerial practices in this paper—include open information sharing, decentralization, participativedecision making, extensive training, and contingent compensation(Combs et al., 2006; Liao et al., 2009; Pfeffer, 1998; Zacharatos,Barling, & Iverson, 2005). For this meta-analysis, we analyzedstudies that included psychological empowerment and any of thesepractices (see Appendix A for details). High-performance mana-gerial practices are thought to improve performance because theyincrease the amount of information and control employees haveover their work; the level of work-related knowledge, skills, andabilities possessed by employees; and the level of motivationemployees have to achieve the goals of the organization. AsSpreitzer (1996) and others (e.g., Liao et al., 2009; Patterson et al.,2004) have suggested, high-performance managerial practices arelikely to facilitate higher levels of psychological empowermentbecause they affect all four psychological empowerment cogni-tions. Increased information and control means that employees will

see their work as personally meaningful because they understandhow their work role fits into the larger goals and strategies of theorganization. More information should also allow employees tobetter determine for themselves what actions to take, thus increas-ing feelings of self-determination. Furthermore, the enhancedknowledge, skills, and ability resulting from high-performancemanagerial practices will be reflected in employees’ feelings ofcompetence in work roles. Finally, the greater level of input andcontrol associated with high-performance managerial practicesmeans that employees will believe they have greater impact intheir work unit or organization.

Socio-political support. Socio-political support refers to theextent to which elements in the work context provide an employeewith material, social, and psychological resources (Spreitzer,1996). Many different sources of socio-political support have beenassociated with psychological empowerment by previous research-ers (e.g., Gomez & Rosen, 2001; Liden et al., 2000; Sparrowe,1994), including the supportiveness of the climate of the organi-zation, the employee’s perception that the organization values andcares about him, and the level of trust the organization has in theemployee (see Appendix A for details). Social support theorists(Hobfall, 1989; Taylor, 2007; Thoits, 1985) have suggested thatsocial support is a valuable resource that shapes people’s percep-tions and emotional reactions. Considerable research evidence hasshown that this is true within organizational settings (Chiaburu &Harrison, 2008; Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, & Ng, 2001; Ng& Sorensen, 2008; Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002). Socio-politicalsupport is thus likely to enhance perceptions of psychologicalempowerment. For example, social support from peers and theorganization will signify to the employee that she is a valued andaccepted member of the organization, thus enhancing her feelingthat her work is personally meaningful. Such support will alsoprovide the employee with feelings of self-determination becauseit is appropriate for her, as an accepted member of the organiza-tion, to determine her own work goals and strategies. Socio-political support will also enhance employees’ feelings of taskcompetence and impact because of the greater availability of thematerial resources, power, and influence needed to accomplishtasks and work-related goals.

Leadership. Spreitzer (2008) concluded, based on her narra-tive review, that a supportive, trusting relationship with one’sleader is an important contextual antecedent of psychologicalempowerment. In this meta-analysis we examine all studies thatinclude psychological empowerment and any positive form ofleadership behavior (see Appendix A for details). We expect thesepositive forms of leadership to increase employees’ perceptions ofpsychological empowerment because of the important role leadersplay in shaping the work experience of followers (Liden, Spar-rowe, & Wayne, 1997; Yukl, 2010). Leaders can supply informa-tion about strategic or operational goals that allows employees tosee the value of their work and thus to enhance meaningfulness.They may also allow their followers greater participation andautonomy that will enhance the employees’ feelings of self-determination and impact. Finally, leaders can act as role modelsand provide employees with feedback and coaching. Role model-ing and constructive feedback are important sources of self-efficacy information that enhances feelings of competence (Ban-dura, 1997). Thus, in our overall leadership category, we include

983EMPOWERMENT META-ANALYSIS

all studies that examine the relationship of positive leadershipbehaviors to psychological empowerment.

Work design characteristics. Although psychological em-powerment theory has common roots with job characteristics the-ory (Hackman & Oldham, 1980), it extends that theory in impor-tant ways (Spreitzer, 1996). For example, both theories incorporatethe cognitions or critical psychological states of meaning andself-determination as part of their models. However, psychologicalempowerment theory also incorporates cognitions not included inthe job characteristics model, such as feelings of competence andimpact. Job characteristics theory explains how core job charac-teristics (e.g., task significance, autonomy) are related to meaningand self-determination, and meta-analytic results provide supportfor these propositions (Fried & Ferris, 1987; Humphrey, Nahr-gang, & Morgeson, 2007). Core job characteristics are likely to beassociated with the other components of psychological empower-ment as well. Competence should be enhanced by work that ismore challenging (i.e., higher in skill variety or task significance),along with feedback regarding the results of one’s efforts. Thesefactors support learning and enactive attainment, key factors pro-moting higher self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997). The core job charac-teristics of autonomy and task significance should also promote thefeeling that one has impact within one’s work unit, because of theincreased opportunity one has to personally make choices regard-ing methods to accomplish tasks that are seen as important to theorganization. Thus, extending the logic of the job characteristicsmodel, we expected that all five core job characteristics would beassociated with psychological empowerment.

Hypothesis 1: Contextual factors including (a) high-perfor-mance managerial practices, (b) socio-political support, (c)positive leadership, and (d) work design characteristics willbe positively related to psychological empowerment.

Individual Characteristics Associated WithPsychological Empowerment

Positive self-evaluation traits. Thomas and Velthouse(1990) placed particular emphasis on individual differences andinterpretive schemes as a significant influence on the subjectivetask assessments that make up empowerment perceptions. Spre-itzer (e.g., 1995b, 2008) also took an explicitly interactionistperspective when she defined psychological empowerment as theway individuals see themselves in relation to their task environ-ment. According to this view, both contextual variables and indi-vidual characteristics, especially those reflecting one’s self-concept, should be considered as antecedents to perceptions ofpsychological empowerment. Thus, we predicted that the coreself-evaluation (CSE) trait identified by Judge, Locke, and Dur-ham (1997) would be an important antecedent of psychologicalempowerment. This is because CSE is thought to represent thefundamental appraisal one makes about one’s worthiness, compe-tence, and capabilities in relation to one’s environment. The sharedvariance among four lower order traits—locus of control, self-esteem, generalized self-efficacy, and emotional stability—makesup this construct. We included all of these individual differences inthe positive self-evaluation traits category for this meta-analysisand hypothesized that those with higher positive self-evaluationswould report feeling more psychologically empowered.

Three mechanisms may explain this relationship. First, CSEmay influence the situations into which individuals select them-selves (Judge & Hurst, 2007). Individuals with high CSE may seekout challenging roles and therefore select themselves into organi-zations or jobs that provide greater opportunity to experienceempowered work. Second, individuals with high CSE experiencemore positive emotions and subjective well-being (Judge, Erez,Bono, & Thoreson, 2002). These positive feelings may influencethe subjective task assessments that psychological empowermentperceptions represent (Thomas & Velthouse, 1990). Finally, pre-vious research has shown that people with high CSE are morelikely to choose self-concordant goals (Judge, Bono, Erez, &Locke, 2005). Self-concordant goals are objectives that are con-sistent with the individual’s enduring ideals, interests, and valuesand are thus associated with intrinsic motivation (Sheldon & Elliot,1999). Individuals who have high CSE are therefore more likely tofeel psychologically empowered because they are more likely tochoose intrinsically meaningful goals at work.

Hypothesis 2: Positive self-evaluation traits will be positivelyassociated with psychological empowerment.

Human capital and gender. We expected several otherindividual characteristics would have positive associations withpsychological empowerment because they reflect the level ofknowledge, skill, or experience the individual brings to her work.For example, one’s level of education, age, and work tenure aretypical human capital variables that reflects one’s productive ca-pabilities (Becker, 1964). Higher levels of individual human cap-ital should be positively associated with one’s ability to take actionand have a positive impact in the workplace, key indicators ofpsychological empowerment. Higher level jobs are also likely toreflect greater human capital on the part of the position holder.They are likely to offer more discretion and more opportunities tohave a meaningful impact at work. Finally, we included gender onan exploratory basis to see if any reliable differences exist inempowerment.

Hypothesis 3: Human capital variables including (a) educa-tion, (b) tenure, (c) age, and (d) job level will be positivelyassociated with psychological empowerment.

Relative Effects of Contextual Factors and IndividualCharacteristics

A final important theoretical issue concerning the antecedents ofpsychological empowerment is the contribution of contextual fac-tors relative to individual characteristics in the formation of psy-chological empowerment perceptions. The sociostructural ap-proach tends to treat empowerment as an objective set ofmanagement structures and practices with little room for system-atic variation in the way individual employees react. Psychologicalapproaches also assume that contextual factors will have a pow-erful impact on psychological empowerment, but, as discussedabove, they explicitly acknowledge a role for individual differ-ences because of the perceptual perspective they take on empow-erment (Conger & Kanungo, 1988; Spreitzer, 1995b; Thomas &Velthouse, 1990). Thus, to more completely specify psychologicalempowerment theory, we compare the relative contribution of

contextual antecedents (i.e., higher performance managerial prac-tices, socio-political support, leadership, and work design charac-teristics) as a set to the individual difference correlates of psycho-logical empowerment (i.e., positive self-evaluation traits,education, job level, age, and tenure) as a set. Because strongtheorizing is not currently warranted, we propose the following asa research question: We expected the contextual variables to bemore strongly related than the individual differences to psycho-logical empowerment.

Research Question 1: Are contextual factors more stronglyrelated than individual characteristics to perceptions of psy-chological empowerment?

Attitudinal Consequences of PsychologicalEmpowerment

Job satisfaction. Job satisfaction has been conceptualized asthe extent to which one’s needs are fulfilled at work (Locke, 1976).A sense of meaning and self-determination allow one to fulfillimportant needs for growth through the experience of autonomy,competence, and self-control at work (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Hack-man & Oldham, 1980). In addition, feelings of competence andimpact augment the extent to which one’s work serves to fulfillthese innate needs, as they too reflect opportunities to experiencecompetence and control at work. Thus, psychologically empow-ered workers are likely to experience more intrinsic need fulfill-ment through work and therefore report higher levels of jobsatisfaction.

Organizational commitment. Meyer, Becker, and Vanden-berghe (2004) noted a strong correspondence between intrinsicforms of motivation and affective commitment. The meaningdimension of psychological empowerment in particular invokesaffective organizational commitment because it assesses the fitbetween the demands of the work role and the individual’s needsand values (Kristof-Brown, Zimmerman, & Johnson, 2005; Spre-itzer, 1995b). In addition, feelings of autonomy, competence, andimpact are likely to increase the individual’s commitment to theorganization, as they will further enhance the ability of the indi-vidual to express his values and interests through his work. Finally,psychological empowerment should also be associated with in-creased continuance commitment (Meyer & Allen, 1991), becausethe loss of an empowering work arrangement may be viewed as thesacrifice of something valuable that is difficult to replace withanother employer.

Strain. An important debate concerns the level of strainexperienced by empowered employees (Spreitzer, 2008). The la-bor process theory perspective (e.g., Harley, 1999; Harley, Allen,& Sargent, 2007) suggests that empowerment is a form of workintensification that involves increasing the scope of employeeresponsibilities without a concomitant increase in rank or pay.Hardy and Leiba-O’Sullivan (1998) further noted that little realpower or control actually flows to “empowered” employees. Ac-cording to this perspective, empowerment should lead to increasedfeelings of strain among employees. On the other hand, self-determination, competence, and impact should function together toreduce strain even if work demands go up because they increasefeelings of control (Matteson & Ivancevich, 1987; Spreitzer, Kiz-ilos, & Nason, 1997). Perceived control over potential stressors

reduces perceived strain (Karasek, 1979; Spector, 1986). Thus, ourexpectation was that psychologically empowered employeeswould report lower levels of strain due to an increased sense ofcontrol at work.

Turnover intentions. Because individuals are likely to viewpsychologically empowering work as a valuable resource providedby the organization, employees will feel obligated to reciprocatesuch a beneficial work arrangement with increased loyalty to theorganization and continued employment (Blau, 1964). Empower-ing work arrangements may also be difficult to find or establishwith another employer. This lowers the net benefit associated withalternative job opportunities and thus further lowers the probabilityof turnover (Griffeth, Hom, & Gaertner, 2000). We thus expectedthat psychological empowerment would be related to lowerturnover.

Hypothesis 4: Psychological empowerment will be positivelyrelated to the employee work attitudes of (a) job satisfactionand (b) organizational commitment and will be negativelyrelated to (c) strain and (d) turnover intentions.

Behavioral Consequences of PsychologicalEmpowerment

Task performance. Theorists have argued that psychologi-cally empowered employees anticipate problems and act indepen-dently in the face of risk or uncertainty, exert influence over goalsand operational procedures so that they can produce high-qualitywork outcomes, and demonstrate persistence and resourcefulnessin the face of obstacles to work goal accomplishment (Spreitzer,1995b, 2008). Meaning and self-determination, two components ofpsychological empowerment, have already been shown to have asmall but statistically significant relationship with job performance(Fried & Ferris, 1987; Humphrey et al., 2007), as explained by jobcharacteristics theory (Hackman & Oldham, 1980). Psychologicalempowerment assesses feelings of competence and impact inaddition to meaning and self-determination. Empirical researchindicates that competency (i.e., self-efficacy) and impact beliefsincrease performance by increasing task effort and persistence(e.g., Bandura & Locke, 2003; Sadri & Robertson, 1993; Stajkovic& Luthans, 1998; for some limiting conditions, see Vancouver &Kendall, 2006). For these reasons, we expected psychologicalempowerment would be positively associated with task perfor-mance.

Organizational citizenship behaviors. According to psy-chological empowerment theory, employees who feel a sense ofempowerment are likely to take an active orientation toward theirwork and perform “above and beyond” the call of duty (Spreitzer,2008). Meaningful work over which one has individual discretionis likely to lead to organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs)because it fosters a sense of identification and involvement in theoverall workplace, not just one’s defined work role. Competenceand impact are likely to further encourage OCBs because theemployee will feel capable of achieving positive outcomes in herwork unit if she tries (Bandura, 1997). Thus, psychological em-powerment will likely be associated with OCBs.

Innovation. A key objective of empowerment is to releasethe potential within employees to make a positive change in theirwork roles, work units, or organization (Block, 1987; Randolph,

1995). In conjunction with the motivation to be creative associatedwith intrinsic motivators such as meaning and self-determination(Amabile, 1988), feelings of competence and impact are likely toenhance the ability of employees to implement their ideas andsuggestions for change, resulting in greater innovation at work. Wethus expected psychological empowerment would be positivelyassociated with innovation (Kanter, 1983; Spreitzer, 1995b).

Hypothesis 5: Psychological empowerment will be positivelyrelated to the employee work behaviors of (a) task perfor-mance, (b) OCB, and (c) innovation.

Antecedents and Consequences of Team-LevelEmpowerment

The final set of hypotheses concerns the antecedents and out-comes associated with team empowerment. Empowerment hasbeen conceptualized at the individual and team levels of analysis(e.g., Kirkman & Rosen, 1997, 1999). Individual psychologicalempowerment focuses on how empowered the individual feelspersonally, whereas team empowerment refers to shared percep-tions among team members regarding the team’s collective level ofempowerment (Chen, Kirkman, et al., 2007). Teams that are moreempowered feel that they have more intrinsically meaningful orworthwhile work and, as a group, have a higher degree of choiceor discretion in deciding how they carry out their team tasks; theybelieve that they have the collective ability to accomplish work-related tasks and that these tasks have an impact or significantimportance for their organization. Although team performance ismore than the simple aggregation of the individual performance ofteam members (Kozlowski & Bell, 2003), scholars have proposedthat empowerment shares similar meanings and functional rela-tionships at the individual and team levels (Chen, Kirkman, et al.,2007; Kirkman & Rosen, 1997). Thus, on the basis of the logic asdeveloped in the hypotheses above for individual empowerment,we expected organizational high-performance managerial prac-tices, socio-political support of the team, supportive leadership ofthe team, and team-level work design characteristics would bepositively related to feeling of team empowerment. Team size wasalso included as an exploratory antecedent.

Hypothesis 6: Contextual factors including (a) high-perfor-mance managerial practices, (b) socio-political support for theteam, (c) positive leadership, and (d) work design character-istics will be positively related to team empowerment.

Likewise, we expected team empowerment would be positivelyrelated to team performance (Chen, Kirkman, et al., 2007; Kirk-man & Rosen, 1997). As with individuals, empowered teams arelikely to be motivated by a sense of ownership or responsibilityover their work; they are likely to take an active orientation towardtheir work and their work environment, seeking continuous im-provement in work processes and seeking innovative solutions towork problems; and they are likely to strive to produce higherquality work products and services. Empowered teams are there-fore likely to be more effective and productive.

Hypothesis 7: Team empowerment will be positively relatedto team performance.

Homology of Empowerment Relationships AcrossIndividual and Team Levels

Our final formal hypothesis examines the extent of multilevelhomology across individual and team levels of analysis for em-powerment theory. Comparisons across levels, while rare in theliterature, are important because they extend a theory’s parsimony,breadth, and explanatory power (Chen, Bliese, & Mathieu, 2005).According to a typology developed by Chen et al., metaphorichomology posits only that parallel relationships will be consis-tently significant across levels of analysis. Identical homology, onthe other hand, predicts that parallel relationships will be statisti-cally indistinguishable in direction and magnitude across levels.Because identical homology requires the most precise predictions,it represents the most mature stage of multilevel theory testing(Chen et al., 2005).

Researchers have theorized that empowerment is a constructwith very similar functional relationships at the individual andteam levels (e.g., Chen et al., 2007; Kirkman & Rosen, 1997,1999). Empowerment is a form of motivation, and the limitedresearch on motivation at multiple levels that exists suggests thatmotivational mechanisms have similar antecedents and effectsacross individual and team levels of analysis (e.g., Chen, Thomas,& Wallace, 2005; DeShon, Kozlowski, Schmidt, Milner, & Wiech-mann, 2004; Marks, Mathieu, & Zaccaro, 2001). Although pro-cesses related to the development of coordination in teams mightweaken the positive effects of motivation at the team level, inestablished teams, such as those likely to be found in the fieldstudies upon which this meta-analysis is based, coordination issuesare likely to be worked out and individual motivation and effort arelikely to become focused on team outcomes (Kozlowski, Gully,Nason, & Smith, 1999). On the basis of these theories and find-ings, we hypothesized identical homology for empowermentacross individual and team levels of analysis.

Hypothesis 8: Empowerment will demonstrate identical ho-mology across levels.

Boundary Conditions of Psychological Empowerment

Scholars have long speculated on the extent to which the posi-tive effects of empowerment generalize across situations and set-tings (Spreitzer, 2008). Differences across context can have im-portant implications for empowerment theory and practice(Bamberger, 2008; Johns, 2006). For example, evidence for con-textual moderation would suggest additional variables and pro-cesses that may limit the influence of empowerment on employeeattitudes and behaviors. On the other hand, failure to find moder-ation extends the parsimony and generalizability of psychologicalempowerment theory. A number of researchers have argued thatcertain types of industries (Batt, 2002; Combs et al., 2006), occu-pations (Avolio, Zhu, Koh, & Bhatia, 2004; Kraimer et al., 1999),and cultures (Ergeneli, Sag, Ari, & Metin, 2007; Seibert et al.,2004) may moderate the effectiveness of empowerment. Becauselittle systematic theory has been developed in this area, we developonly a set of exploratory research questions below.

With regard to industry differences, some scholars have specu-lated that empowerment is likely to be most effective in the servicesector, because service workers tend to have more opportunity to

engage in discretionary behavior (e.g., with a customer) than theircounterparts in a manufacturing environment, where standardizedprocedures and bureaucratic structures tend to prevail (Batt, 2002).However, Combs et al. (2006) argued that more direct contact withcustomers itself provides work motivation, obviating the need forintrinsic motivation and thus empowerment. Due to these contra-dictory predictions, a direction is not specified for this moderationhypothesis; however, to the extent that there are differences, publicsector employees would be expected to fall between the extremesof manufacturing and service employees.

A similar logic regarding discretion, motivation, and employ-ees’ ability to influence outcomes applies for occupational type.Early work by Kanter (1983) as well as Spreitzer (1996) focusedon middle managers as the target of empowerment efforts, perhapsin the belief that managerial employees would have the greatestuntapped ability and opportunity to impact work unit performance.On the other hand, work design theory and other approaches tohigh-involvement work systems have often focused on nonmana-gerial employees (Hackman & Oldham, 1980; Parker & Wall,1998). Empowerment might have a stronger effect among non-managers, due to a lower initial baseline for discretion and controlamong such employees (Kraimer et al., 1999). Again, we madeno directional hypothesis but would expect results for theprofessional/technical employees to be most similar to those formanagerial employees, due to the similar levels of skill and au-tonomy inherent in professional work.

Finally, we explored culturally distinct geographic region as amoderator. Several scholars have suggested that cultural valuesmay moderate the effects of empowerment (Avolio et al., 2004;Seibert et al., 2004). For example, high power distance culturesmay react less positively to psychological empowerment becauseof its reliance upon power-sharing organizational structures andpractices. Unfortunately, too few studies measuring psychologicalempowerment and cultural values have been conducted for us tomake reliable comparisons. We therefore explored the moderatingeffects of broad geographic regions that are thought to be cultur-ally distinct in hopes of stimulating future research on culturalvalues and psychological empowerment.

Research Question 2: Do industry, occupation, or culturallydistinct geographic region moderate the relationship of psy-chological empowerment to the outcomes of our model?

Construct Validity of Psychological Empowerment

Our final set of research questions addresses the appropriatenessof viewing psychological empowerment as a unitary second-orderconstruct rather than as four distinct constructs. Spreitzer (1995b)explicitly modeled empowerment as a second-order factor ac-counting for the shared variance among the four lower orderfactors of meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact.Following Spreitzer (1995b), many researchers have specifiedpsychological empowerment as a single, unidimensional construct(e.g., Chen & Klimoski, 2003; Erdogan & Bauer, 2009; Zhang &Bartol, 2010). However, another early study by Spreitzer herself(Spreitzer et al., 1997) found results suggesting that the meaningand competence subdimensions of empowerment were related toattitudinal outcomes but only the impact subdimension was relatedto work effectiveness. As a result, other studies have formulated

different hypotheses for the relationship of each of the four di-mensions of empowerment with criterion variables (e.g., Ergeneliet al., 2007; Kraimer et al., 1999; Liden et al., 2000; Wang & Lee,2010).

This is a fundamental question for psychological empowermenttheory (Spreitzer, 2008). If relationships with outcome variablesdiffer by subdimensions, it would be appropriate to treat eachsubdimension as a separate construct. This would call into questionthe idea of a unitary psychological empowerment construct. On theother hand, if apparent differences across subdimensions aremerely the result of differences in subscale reliability or samplingerror (Hunter & Schmidt, 2004), substantive conclusions about therelationships of subdimensions to different outcomes are not wellfounded. Building upon an approach used by LePine, Erez, andJohnson (2002), we conduct three analyses with our meta-analyticdata to examine the structure of the psychological empowermentconstruct.

First, we explore the relationships of each separate empower-ment subdimension with our dependent variables. Evidence ofdiscriminant validity among the subdimensions is supplied if thesubdimensions exhibit statistically different relationships with agiven outcome. If differences in the direction or magnitude ofthese relationships are not in evidence, treatment of psychologicalempowerment as a single construct is supported. Second, wecompare the strength of the unitary psychological empowermentconstruct as a predictor of our outcome variables to the strength ofthe four separate subdimensions. If any of the separate subdimen-sions demonstrate stronger relationships with an outcome variablethan does the global unitary construct, use of the global constructis questionable. If not, use of the global construct is furtherjustified. Finally, we use confirmatory factor analysis based uponmeta-analytic correlations among the four subdimensions to di-rectly assess the fit of the hierarchical model of psychologicalempowerment originally examined by Spreitzer (1995b) but rarelyassessed in published studies since that time. Given the complexnature of these analyses, we posed only the following generalresearch question:

Research Question 3: Should psychological empowerment betreated as a unitary construct?

Method

Identification of Studies and Criteria for Inclusion

We performed an extensive electronic and manual search usingpsychological empowerment and empowerment as the keywords toidentify published articles, conference papers, working papers, anddoctoral dissertations. For the electronic search, we used Psy-cINFO and Web of Science databases. In addition, all articlesciting Spreitzer (1995a, 1995b, 1996; Spreitzer et al., 1997), asindicated by the Social Sciences Citation Index, were examined.We also obtained relevant paper presentations from recent schol-arly meetings and performed a Google Scholar search to look forunpublished working papers. A manual search was conducted as ofJuly 2010 to account for articles not yet included in the electronicdatabases. We searched in the following journals considered to beinfluential in the area (Podsakoff, Mackenzie, Bachrach, & Pod-sakoff, 2005): Academy of Management Journal, Administrative

Science Quarterly, Journal of Applied Psychology, OrganizationalBehavior and Human Decision Processes, Personnel Psychology,Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Management, Journalof Organizational Behavior, and Leadership Quarterly. In addi-tion, we sent e-mail solicitations to subscribers of the Academy ofManagement listservs to get in-press and unpublished studies.These searches uncovered more than 1,000 abstracts of publishedarticles, dissertations, working papers, and conference presenta-tions.

The above abstracts were reviewed for content and consid-ered for inclusion in the meta-analysis. For a study to beincluded in the present review, it had to meet the followingcriteria. First, the article had to report the statistical informationneeded to calculate the correlations among the variables. Sec-ond, a study must have investigated at least one relationshipbetween psychological empowerment and its contextual ante-cedents or consequences at the individual or team level. Third,a study must have been based on adult participants and con-ducted in an organizational field setting rather than in a labo-ratory. This allowed us to generalize our results to the popula-tion of working adults. These exclusions resulted in a final setof 142 articles representing 151 independent samples, including79 published studies and 63 unpublished dissertations andworking papers. These articles are marked in the Referencessection by an asterisk.

Coding Procedures

Variables were coded into the prescribed contextual anteced-ents, correlates (individual characteristics), and consequences cat-egories according to the category definitions and coding rules weestablished. For a detailed list of antecedent, correlate, and conse-quence variables within each category, please refer to AppendicesA and B.

For individual-level psychological empowerment, the majorityof the studies (72%, or 92 studies) used Spreitzer’s (1995b) scale.For those studies that either developed their own measures (e.g.,Chiles & Zorn, 1995; Menon, 1995) or used other measures ofpsychological empowerment (e.g., Short & Rinehart, 1992), wecarefully examined the definition and wording of the measures.Only those measures that were explicitly labeled as “empower-ment” (e.g., Wu, 1994), or “psychological empowerment” (e.g.,Lawrence, 1997) and assessed the psychological states necessaryfor individuals to feel a sense of intrinsic task motivation wereaccepted as equivalent measures of psychological empowerment.1

To eliminate any potential contamination, we based allsubdimension-level analyses (e.g., correlations among the foursubdimensions) on studies that used Spreitzer’s (1995b) 12-itemscales. For team-level empowerment, the majority of studies (63%,or 12 studies) used either Kirkman and Rosen’s (1999) teamempowerment scale or Spreitzer’s (1995b) scale. All measureswere conceptualized as team members’ shared perceptions ofcollective level of empowerment.2

To ensure coding accuracy and reliability, all three authorsindependently coded all of the articles. For individual-level psy-chological empowerment, the overall consensus rate was 90%. Ouragreement on how contextual antecedents were coded was 83%;our agreement on coding of the effect sizes was 96%; and ouragreement on the reliabilities of the variables was 92%. For team-

level empowerment, the consensus rate was 90%: All of ourdisagreements focused on how team antecedents were coded.Eventually, for both individual- and team-level studies, all discrep-ancies were resolved through discussion.

Meta-Analytic Techniques

We chose a random-effect model of meta-analysis implementedwith hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) software (Bryk &Raudenbush, 1992).3 This method provides parameter estimatesand can be used to test the significance of differences betweenparameters based on the entire data set rather than subsets of thedata (Erez, Bloom, & Wells, 1996). Prior research on meta-analytic methods (Erez et al., 1996; Field, 2005; Hunter &Schmidt, 2004; Schmidt & Hunter, 1999) has shown that randomeffect approaches, such as the one recommended by Bryk andRaudenbush (1992), generate more accurate parameter estimatesthan do fixed effect approaches.

We followed the detailed procedure described in LePine et al.(2002, pp. 56–57) to conduct meta-analyses with HLM software.In particular, we performed two sets of analyses. The first set ofanalyses was based on an unconditional model (i.e., one withoutmoderators) to estimate the meta-analytic correlations betweenpsychological empowerment and its antecedents, correlates, andconsequences as well as the meta-analytic correlations among thesubdimensions of psychological empowerment. This is similar toestimating the grand mean for each relationship in a multilevelmodel. Finding significant between-studies variance (�2) suggeststhat primary correlations are not homogenous and that study char-acteristics not included in the model may serve as moderators. Wethen back-transformed the grand means to normal correlationsusing Equation 14 in Erez et al. (1996, p. 289) and reported thesecorrelations.

The second sets of analyses were based on a conditional modelin which covariates (moderators) were modeled by the use ofdummy variables. For example, to compare the relative magnitudeof the relationships of the four subdimensions with the conse-quences, we used one subdimension (meaning) as the referencegroup and used three dummy variables to capture the remainingthree subdimensions of psychological empowerment. As in regres-sion analysis, HLM outputs provide intercept coefficient for thereference group and regression coefficients for dummy codedgroups. If a coefficient is significant, this means that the specific

1 To examine whether the use of different psychological empowermentmeasures may moderate the individual-level relationships in Tables 1 and3, we constructed a conditional model in which studies that used Spre-itzer’s (1995b) scale were coded as the reference group. The results showedno evidence of moderating effects.

2 Similarly, to test whether the use of different psychological em-powerment measures may moderate the relationship between team-levelempowerment and team performance (both self- and non-self-reports),we constructed a conditional model. Studies that used Spreitzer’s(1995b) scale was coded as the base group, and studies that usedKirkman and Rosen’s (1999) scale and all other scales were dummycoded as two categories. The results showed no evidence of moderatingeffect.

3 We thank the anonymous reviewer who suggested that we use HLMfor these analyses.

dummy-represented group (e.g., competence) has a significantlydifferent correlation with the consequence of interest (e.g., orga-nizational commitment) than does the reference group (e.g., mean-ing). In addition, the sign of the regression coefficient indicateswhether the specific dummy-coded group has a significantlyhigher relationship (if the sign is positive) or lower relationship (ifthe sign is negative) with the consequence than does the referencegroup.

Reliability coefficients of variables reported in the originalstudy were used to correct for measurement error in correlationsbefore they were transformed into Hotelling’s and Fisher’s z tonormalize their distribution (Erez et al., 1996). For team-levelstudies, ICC(2), an index of the reliability of group means, wasused as the reliability estimate whenever such information wasavailable (e.g., Combs et al., 2006, p. 512). For studies that didnot report reliability information, we used the average reliabil-ity obtained from those studies that did report data for thatvariable. The average reliability coefficient for psychologicalempowerment and its antecedents and consequents was com-puted by taking the arithmetic mean of the reliability coeffi-cients reported in primary studies. When we estimated truemean population correlations between psychological empower-ment and its antecedents and consequences and the moderatingeffect of between-studies characteristics (e.g., occupation; seeTables 4 and 5), only one effect size was taken from eachindependent sample. If original studies reported multiple mea-sures of the same construct-level relationship within a singlesample (e.g., correlations of each subdimension of psycholog-ical empowerment with managerial effectiveness; Spreitzer,1995b), we computed a composite correlation with the formulaprovided in Hunter and Schmidt (2004, p. 436). Otherwise, theaverage of the raw correlations was used. This reduces theinfluence of measurement error on within-studies variance(Erez et al., 1996).

We present the uncorrected population correlation estimate(r), the population correlation corrected for unreliability (rc),the number of different studies (kd), the number for correlations(kc), the total number of participants in the studies (N), and thebetween-studies variance (�2) whenever it is feasible. The nullhypothesis that between-studies variance is zero (�2 � 0) isassessed by a Cochran chi-square test (Cochran, 1937). If thechi-square test is statistically significant, potential moderators(e.g., industry, occupation) can be modeled and tested. We alsopresent the 95% confidence intervals (CIs). If a 95% confidenceinterval does not include zero, this indicates that the correctedmeta-analytic correlation is statistically significant at the .05level. The cutoff value of the minimum number of primarystudies to be included in each meta-analysis was set to three(Chambless & Hollon, 1998).

We used LISREL Version 8 (Jöreskog & Sörbom, 2005) toconduct a hierarchical confirmatory factor analysis using thefour components of psychological empowerment. The meta-analytically derived correlations among the four subdimensionsand the harmonic mean sample size were used as inputs(Viswesvaran & Ones, 1995). Following the recommendationsby Hu and Bentler (1999), we evaluated model fit using thejoint criteria of the standard root mean residual (SRMR) and thecomparative fit index (CFI), which do the best job of balancingType I and Type II error rates. Hu and Bentler recommended

that a SRMR value less than or equal to .08 and a CFI valuesgreater than or equal to .96 be regarded as a good model fit.

Results

Antecedents of Psychological Empowerments

Table 1 presents the meta-analytic correlations among psycho-logical empowerment and its antecedents. Results in Table 1 (seecoefficients in column 5) show that all of the predicted antecedentswere positively related to psychological empowerment. Consistentwith Hypothesis 1, all of the contextual antecedents, namely,high-performance managerial practices, socio-political support,leadership,4 and work design characteristics, exhibited relativelystrong relationships with psychological empowerment (Cohen,1988). In addition, because the 95% CIs of all these meta-analyticcorrelations exclude zero, the positive relationships between thesecontextual antecedents and psychological empowerment are sig-nificantly greater than zero at the .05 level (Whitener, 1990).

Hypotheses 2 and 3 referred to several individual character-istics thought to be correlated with psychological empower-ment. Participants’ positive self-evaluation traits display astrong positive relationship with psychological empowerment(rc � .48, N � 5,273), and the 95% CI excludes zero. Thus,Hypothesis 2 was supported. Hypothesis 3 posits that humancapital variables, including education, job level, tenure, andage, will have positive relationships with psychological em-powerment. Results in Table 1 provide mixed support for thishypothesis. Job level, tenure, and age are positively related topsychological empowerment (rc � .19, .11, and .11, respec-tively), and their 95% CIs did not include zero. However, the CIfor education did include zero. Although not specifically hy-pothesized, we found that men and women did not significantlydiffer in feelings of psychological empowerment; the 95% CI ofgender [�.10, .00] includes zero.

Research Question 1 suggests that the effect size of the contex-tual constructs would be larger than the effect size of the individualcharacteristics as a set. The set of results shown in Table 2 supportsthis speculation. Although the individual characteristics are signif-icantly related to perceptions of psychological empowerment (cor-rected coefficient � .14, p � .01), the positive and significantestimate for the contextual constructs (corrected coefficient � .42,p � .01) demonstrates that the set of contextual factors is morestrongly related to psychological empowerment than are the indi-vidual characteristics. However, inspection of Table 1 suggeststhat positive self-evaluation traits have a stronger relationship thanthe human capital variables with psychological empowerment. Totest this observation, we ran a conditional model with the positiveself-evaluation traits as the reference group and each of the humancapital variables as dummy-coded groups. The second set of re-sults in Table 2 show that the human capital variables each have a

4 Given that transformational leadership and leader–member exchangetheories have clear theoretical links to psychological empowerment, weexamined their relationships with psychological empowerment separately.We found that transformational leadership and leader–member exchangeyielded similar results to other positive leadership antecedents (rc � .42,N � 4,628; rc � .54, N � 7,331, respectively).

significantly weaker relationship with psychological empower-ment than did the self-evaluation traits. We therefore reexaminedResearch Question 1, this time using only positive self-evaluationtraits as the reference category. The nonsignificant results for eachof the contextual variables indicate that no contextual variable ismore strongly related to psychological empowerment than is thepositive self-evaluation trait. Overall, these results indicate that thecontextual antecedents and positive self-evaluation traits have ef-fects on psychological empowerment that are not statistically

distinguishable from each other, but they are stronger than theeffects of the human capital variables.

Attitudinal and Behavioral Consequences ofPsychological Empowerment

Results in Table 3 summarize the relationships among psycho-logical empowerment and its consequences. Psychological em-powerment was positively related to job satisfaction and organi-

Table 1Meta-Analytic Antecedents of Individual-Level Psychological Empowerment (ILPE)

Variable Alpha of variable Alpha of ILPE r [95% CI] rc[95% CI] Kd; Kc; N �2

Contextual antecedents

High-performance managerial practices .82 .80 .38 [.31, .44] .48 [.39, .56] 27; 27; 12,357 .075��

Social-political support .81 .80 .37 [.31, .42] .48 [.41, .54] 49; 49; 21,659 .091��

Leadership .88 .82 .43 [.38, .47] .53 [.45, .60] 51; 51; 16,979 .131��

Work design characteristics .75 .79 .45 [.34, .54] .58 [.46, .68] 12; 12; 3,907 .080��

Individual characteristics

Positive self-evaluation traits .72 .83 .33 [.23, .41] .48 [.26, .65] 9; 9; 5,273 .129��

Gender (M � 0; F � 1) .84 �.05 [�.09, .00] �.05 [�.10, .00] 25; 25; 9,128 .013��

Education .82 .04 [.00, .07] .04 [.00, .07] 20; 20; 6,425 .003�

Job level .73 .17 [.02, .31] .19 [.03, .34] 5; 5; 4,550 .032��

Tenure .84 .10 [.06, .13] .11 [.06, .15] 28; 28; 11,421 .008��

Age .81 .10 [.06, .13] .11 [.07, .15] 36; 36; 12,954 .010��

Note. r � uncorrected population correlation; 95% CI � 95% confidence interval around the population correlation; rc � population correlation correctedfor unreliability; Kd � number of different studies; Kc � number of correlations; N � total sample size; �2 � between-studies variance.� p � .05. �� p � .01.

Table 2Conditional Model Estimates for Relative Impact of the Antecedents on Individual-LevelPsychological Empowerment

Fixed effect Uncorrected coefficient Corrected coefficient

Individual-level psychological empowerment(Kd � 109; Kc � 237; N � 41,900)

Individual characteristicsa,b .12�� .14��

Contextual factorsc .31�� .42��

Positive self-evaluation traitsa .33�� .52��

Education �.30�� .49��

Job level �.16�� .32��

Tenure �.24�� .41��

Age �.23�� .41��

Positive self-evaluation traitsa .34�� .52��

High-performance managerial practices .05 .00Socio-political support .05 .00Leadership .11 .07Work design characteristics .14 .14

Note. Kd � number of different studies; Kc � number of correlations; N � total sample size.a The base category. b Including positive self-evaluation traits, education, job level, tenure, and age. c In-cluding work design characteristics, high-performance managerial practices, socio-political support, and lead-ership.� p � .05. �� p � .01.

zational commitment and negatively related to turnover intentionsand strain. Because the 95% CIs exclude zero, these relationshipsare statistically significant (p � .05). Thus, Hypothesis 4 wassupported. In addition, results in Table 3 show that psychologicalempowerment was positively related to task performance, OCB,and innovation at work. All of these positive relationships aredistinguishable from zero, thus supporting Hypothesis 5. Note thatthe results hold for both self-rated and non-self-rated (e.g.,supervisor-rated) behavioral outcomes. Also note that the tau-squares for all of the population level correlation estimates inTable 1 and Table 3 were statistically significant, justifying oursearch for moderators.

Antecedents and Consequences of Team-LevelEmpowerment

Table 4 shows that, consistent with Hypothesis 6, high-perfor-mance managerial practices, socio-political support, leadership,and work design characteristics were all significantly related toteam empowerment (p � .05). As shown in Table 4, and insupport of Hypothesis 7, team empowerment was positively re-lated to team performance (rc � .51, N � 1,854), and this resultheld for the subsample that included only non-self-rated perfor-mance measures (rc � .43, N � 1,561). These positive relation-ships were statistically significant (p � .05). Note that tau-squarewas statistically significant for all of the relationships in Table 4,

Table 3Meta-Analytic Consequences of Individual-Level Psychological Empowerment (ILPE)

Variable Alpha of variable Alpha of ILPE r [95% CI] rc [95% CI] Kd; Kc; N �2

Attitudinal consequences

Job satisfaction .82 .81 .52 [.47, .56] .64 [.60, .69] 53; 53; 17,875 .078��

Organizational commitment .79 .80 .49 [.45, .53] .63 [.56, .69] 31; 31; 14,344 .084��

Strain .73 .80 �.28 [�.36, �.20] �.37 [�.48, �.26] 20; 20; 7,764 .082��

Turnover intentions .85 .79 �.30 [�.37, �.22] �.36 [�.44, �.27] 17; 17; 8,384 .042��

Behavioral consequences

Task performance .80 .80 .26 [.20, .31] .36 [.24, .47] 34; 34; 8,774 .153��

Task performancea .84 .82 .21 [.15, .26] .27 [.20, .34] 22; 22; 6,118 .028��

Task performanceb .74 .76 .33 [.21, .44] .54 [.21, .76] 12; 12; 2,656 .480��

OCB .84 .79 .28 [.19, .36] .38 [.23, .52] 17; 17; 7,461 .123��

OCBa .84 .80 .24 [.14, .33] .34 [.14, .50] 11; 11; 3,174 .120��

OCBb .85 .76 .36 [.18, .52] .47 [.21, .66] 6; 6; 4,287 .133��

Innovation at work .92 .82 .29 [.18, .39] .33 [.21, .45] 9; 9; 3,110 .041��

Innovation at worka .93 .81 .24 [.18, .31] .28 [.20, .36] 8; 8; 2,027 .010��

Note. r � uncorrected population correlation; 95% CI � 95% confidence interval around the population correlation; rc � population correlation correctedfor unreliability; Kd � number of different studies; Kc � number of correlations; N � total sample size; �2 � between-studies variance; OCB �organizational citizenship behavior.a Results are based on non-self-rated outcome measures. b Results are based on self-rated outcome measures.�� p � .01.

Table 4Meta-Analytic Antecedents and Consequences of Team Empowerment

VariableReliabilityof variable

Reliability ofteam empowerment r [95% CI] rc [95% CI] Kd; Kc; N �2

Antecedents

High-performance managerial practices .76 .77 .42 [.28, .54] .52 [.39, .63] 7; 7; 875 .029��

Socio-political support .73 .82 .40 [.27, .51] .56 [.18, .79] 3; 3; 519 .147��

Leadership .82 .84 .47 [.32, .60] .61 [.43, .74] 11; 11; 1,162 .144��

Work design characteristics .76 .78 .34 [.14, .51] .49 [.20, .70] 6; 6; 829 .157��

Team size .71 �.11 [�.28, .06] �.12 [�.31, .08] 6; 6; 328 .030�

Consequences

Team performance .76 .82 .36 [.25, .45] .51 [.35, .64] 20; 20; 1,854 .176��

Team performancea .77 .81 .32 [.21, .41] .43 [.26, .58] 18; 18; 1,561 .156��

Team performanceb .87 .88 .52 [.40, .63] .60 [.48, .69] 6; 6; 583 .024��

Note. r � uncorrected population correlation; 95% CI � 95% confidence interval around the population correlation; rc � population correlation correctedfor unreliability; Kd � number of different studies; Kc � number of correlations; N � total sample size; �2 � between-studies variance.a Results are based on non-self-rated outcome measures. b Results are based on self-rated outcome measures.�� p � .01.

again implying the potential existence of moderators. However,moderator analyses for team empowerment were not feasible,given the relatively limited number of primary studies and the lackof relevant information (e.g., task interdependence) reported inprimary studies.

Homology of Empowerment Relationships AcrossLevels

Table 5 summarizes the results of Hypothesis 8, which proposesidentical homology across individual and team levels. Our resultsshow that the effect size for the four antecedents (i.e., high-per-formance managerial practices, socio-political support, leadership,and work design characteristics) and the one outcome (i.e., taskperformance) were not significantly different across levels of anal-ysis. For example, the relationship of high-performance manage-rial practices to empowerment at the individual level was statisti-cally significant (corrected coefficient � .52, p � .01) and therelationship at the team level was not significantly different fromthe individual-level relationship (corrected coefficient � .05, ns).These results support the hypothesis of identical homology acrosslevels, because they show that empowerment demonstrates rela-tionships that do not differ in direction or magnitude at the indi-vidual and team levels.

Boundary Conditions for PsychologicalEmpowerment–Work Outcomes Relationships

Table 6 presents the results of the exploratory moderator anal-yses for the effect of individual level psychological empowermenton work outcomes. Industry was the only variable that moderatedthe relationship between psychological empowerment and job sat-isfaction. Employees in the service industry reacted to psycholog-ical empowerment more positively in terms of job satisfaction thandid employees in manufacturing industries. Likewise, only onevariable, culturally distinct geographic region, moderated the re-lationship between psychological empowerment and task perfor-mance. In particular, psychological empowerment had a signifi-cantly higher correlation with task performance in Asia than inNorth America.5

Construct Validity of Unitary PsychologicalEmpowerment

The next set of analyses addresses Research Question 3, whichconcerns the construct validity of the unitary psychological em-powerment construct. First, we argued that evidence of discrimi-nant validity among the four empowerment subdimensions wouldundermine the use of the unitary, second-order psychologicalempowerment construct, because it would suggest that each sub-dimension has a unique pattern of relationships with outcomevariables. This set of analyses therefore examined the discriminantvalidity of the four psychological empowerment subdimensionsagainst the available outcome variables of job satisfaction, orga-nizational commitment, strain, task performance, OCB, and inno-vation at work. The results of the conditional random effect modelsare displayed in Table 7. Note that the meta-analytic correlationsfor the behavioral outcomes are based on the full set of studies(including self- and non-self-rated behaviors). The results suggest

that the four subdimensions did not significantly differ amongthemselves as predictors of any of the outcomes except organiza-tional commitment. Subsequent analyses with competence usedas the base category show that competence is a significant predic-tor of organizational commitment but is a significantly weakerpredictor than meaning and impact.6 Overall, there is little evi-dence of discriminant validity among the four psychological em-powerment subdimensions. This provides support for the use of aunitary psychological empowerment construct.

Second, we directly compared the effect size (i.e., validity asa predictor) of the unitary psychological empowerment con-struct and the effect sizes of the four empowerment subdimen-sions as predictors of our outcome variables. To the extent thatany of the subdimensions demonstrate a stronger relationshipwith an outcome variable than does the unitary construct, use ofthe unitary construct is less justifiable. A conditional model wasexamined in which the unitary measure of psychological em-powerment was coded as the reference group and each of thesubdimensional measures were coded with dummy variables.The results of the conditional model analyses are reported inTable 8. In no case did an empowerment subdimension dem-onstrate a stronger relationship with an outcome variable thandid the unitary psychological empowerment construct. As oneexample, competence and self-determination are significantlyweaker predictors of organizational commitment (�.37, p �.01; �.27, p � .05, respectively) than is the unitary psycho-logical empowerment construct. Eighteen of the 24 possiblecomparisons indicate no statistically significant difference inthe variance explained by psychological empowerment relativeto the empowerment subdimensions. As posited by LePine et al.(2002), when there is no difference in the validity of the globalconstruct relative to the subdimensions, there is no advantage inusing the separate subdimensions in an analysis. Therefore, ourresults again suggest that use of the unitary psychologicalempowerment construct is most appropriate.

Finally, we argued that in order to justify use of the single,global psychological empowerment construct, the four subdimen-sions of empowerment should load together on a single higherorder construct. In order to test this proposition, we computed thecorrected meta-analytic correlations among the four subdimen-sions. The correlations among the subdimensions are presented inTable 9. The mean corrected correlation among the four subdi-mensions is .50, which is relatively high. A confirmatory factormodel was specified in which the first-order constructs of mean-ing, competence, self-determination, and impact were each loadedonto a single second-order latent construct representing psycho-logical empowerment. According to standards specified by Hu and

5 We also examined conditional models with the other two groups (e.g.,service and public) under each moderator (e.g., industry) as the basecategory respectively. However, we did not find any new significantdifferences than the two reported in Table 6. Therefore, the results of theseadditional analyses were not reported.

6 For all other dependent variables (i.e., job satisfaction, strain, taskperformance, OCB, and innovation), the same comparison analyses wereconducted with the other three dimensions used as the base category. Nosignificantly different relationships were found. Thus, the results of thesecomparisons were not reported.

Bentler (1999), the resulting model demonstrated good fit, �2(2) �357.79, p � .01, standardized root-mean-square residual � .035,comparative fit index � .97, and the loading for each of thesubdimensions was statistically significant (see Figure 2). Analternative model in which the empowerment perceptions wereeach treated as independent factors (i.e., a four-factor model withno higher order factor) provided a poor fit to the data, �2(6) �12,786.57, p � .01, standardized root-mean-square residual � .39,comparative fit index � .18. The one-factor hierarchical modelwas thus retained as the best representation of the data.

Discussion

Summary of Findings and Theoretical Contributions

The present study represents the only meta-analytic assess-ment of psychological empowerment to date. Overall, our find-ings support and extend many of the key propositions of psy-chological empowerment theory. One of our theoreticalobjectives was to synthesize an integrated model of the ante-cedents and outcomes associated with the sociostructural (e.g.,Kanter, 1977) and psychological (Spreitzer, 1995b; Thomas &Velthouse, 1990) approaches to empowerment. In terms ofantecedents, a range of contextual variables was strongly asso-ciated with individual-level psychological empowerment, in-cluding perceptions of high-performance managerial practices,socio-political support, leadership, and work design character-istics. Human capital variables such as age, education, andtenure displayed a small positive association with psychological

empowerment. However, these individual characteristics showa weaker influence than the contextual variables on psycholog-ical empowerment, and we caution readers not to make sub-stantive interpretations, given the small magnitudes of theseassociations. Although Kanter’s (1977) early observations werethat women were given little power in organizations and thusdid not feel psychologically empowered, gender has a small andstatistically nonsignificant relationship with psychological em-powerment. The exception to these weak effects for individualcharacteristics is the finding that positive self-evaluation traitsare as strongly associated with psychological empowerment asany of the contextual antecedents.

In terms of consequences, our findings reveal psychologicalempowerment to be strongly related to important employeeattitudes such as job satisfaction and organizational commit-ment. Consistent with Karasek’s (1979) demands-controlmodel, our results also show that more empowered individualsreported lower levels of strain. Our results further show thatpsychological empowerment has moderate effects onindividual-level behavioral outcomes such as job performance,OCBs, and innovative performance. Together, these resultsshow that psychological empowerment can be influenced by arange of contextual variables and individual traits and is in turnassociated with important employee attitudes and work behav-iors.

We also examined antecedents and consequences of team-level empowerment. Our results show that all of the contextualantecedents that are correlated with individual-level psycholog-

Table 5Conditional Model Estimates of the Homology of Antecedent and Outcome Relationships WithEmpowerment Across the Individual and Team Levels

Fixed effectUncorrectedcoefficient

Correctedcoefficient Kd; Kc; N

High-performance managerial practicesIndividual-level psychological empowerment .40�� .52�� 27; 27; 12,357Team-level empowerment .05 .05 7; 7; 875

Socio-political supportIndividual-level psychological empowerment .39�� .52�� 49; 49; 21,659Team-level empowerment .02 .11 3; 3; 519

LeadershipIndividual-level psychological empowerment .45�� .59�� 51; 51; 16,979Team-level empowerment .06 .11 11; 11; 1,162

Work design characteristicsIndividual-level psychological empowerment .48�� .66�� 12; 12; 3,907Team-level empowerment �.12 �.12 6; 6; 829

Task performanceIndividual-level psychological empowerment .26�� .38�� 34; 34; 8,774Team-level empowerment .11 .19 20; 20; 1,843

Task performancea

Individual-level psychological empowerment .22�� .27�� 22; 22; 6,118Team-level empowerment .11 .19 18; 18; 1,561

Task performanceb

Individual-level psychological empowerment .34�� .61�� 12; 12; 2,656Team-level empowerment .22 .04 6; 6; 584

Note. Individual-level psychological empowerment is the base category; Kd � number of different studies;Kc � number of correlations; N � total sample size.a Results are based on non-self-rated outcome measures. b Results are based on self-rated outcome measures.�� p � .01.

ical empowerment also demonstrate strong relationships withteam-level empowerment. Team empowerment also has posi-tive effects on team performance. Further, we explored the extentto which homology (Chen, Bliese, & Mathieu, 2005) is demonstratedby empowerment across the individual and team levels of analysis.Our results show that parallel constructs have relationships that do notdiffer significantly across levels of analysis, at least for the constructsavailable for this meta-analysis. Almost since the inception of psy-chological empowerment theory, researchers have argued that em-powerment is functionally equivalent across these two levels of anal-ysis (e.g., Chen et al., 2007; Kirkman & Rosen, 1997, 1999), althoughthey have been vague about the specific type of homology. Our resultsestablish identical homology across levels, extending the parsimony,breadth, and explanatory power of empowerment theory.

We also examined boundary conditions around the effective-ness of psychological empowerment. Results indicated that theeffects of psychological empowerment on job satisfaction tendto be strongest in the service sector. However, this industrydifference did not emerge against task performance. Thus,although empowerment allows service work to be experiencedas more fulfilling, this satisfaction does not necessarily translateinto higher performance. This may be due to the fact thatperformance in a service environment, such as a customer

purchase, is only indirectly affected by employee attitudes. Ourresults also provided evidence that psychological empowermenthas relatively stronger effects on task performance (but notsatisfaction) in Asia than in North America. We speculate thatpsychological empowerment might be more effective in collec-tivist cultures because members of such cultures may reactmore strongly to cues promoting identification and inclusive-ness, such as psychological empowerment. On the other hand,this result may have less to do with cultural values and more todo with the standard work arrangements in the Asian settingssampled. A small increase in empowerment may lead to greaterimprovements in performance if the initial baseline for thesearrangements is low. Either way, our results serve to reinforcecalls for future research on cultural values or region and psy-chological empowerment (Spreitzer, 2008). That said, perhapsthe most important result of our moderator analyses is therobust positive effects of psychological empowerment acrossindustry, occupation, and culturally distinct geographic region,which again extends the breadth of psychological empowermenttheory by suggesting that the benefits of empowerment extendacross a wide range of contexts.

The final objective of the study was to assess the validity ofSpreitzer’s (1995b) theoretical conceptualization of the psycho-

Table 6Conditional Model Estimates of Moderation Effects for Industry, Occupation, and GeographicRegion on the Relationship of Psychological Empowerment with Outcomes

Job satisfaction

Industry (Kd � 46; Kc � 46; N � 15,527)Manufacturinga .43�� .53��

Service .18 .28�

Public .13 .17Occupation (Kd � 35; Kc � 35; N � 11,279)

Nonmanageriala .58�� .71��

Professional .02 .26Managerial �.01 .04

Culturally distinct geographic region(Kd � 43; Kc � 43; N � 15,465)

Asiaa .57�� .75��

North America .02 .10Latin America �.25 �.27

Task performance

Industry (Kd � 30; Kc � 30; N � 7,695)Manufacturinga .35� .49�

Service �.11 �.10Public �.10 �.14

Occupation (Kd � 20; Kc � 20; N � 4,731)Nonmanageriala .28�� .37��

Professional .05 .11Managerial �.02 �.01

Culturally distinct geographic region(Kd � 30; Kc � 30; N � 8,420)

Asiaa .37�� .70��

North America �.14 �.39�

Middle East �.16 �.45

Note. Kd � number of different studies; Kc � number of correlations; N � total sample size.a The base category. All other coefficients represent the difference between each of the other categories and thebase category.� p � .05. �� p � .01.

logical empowerment construct. Conditional random effectsmodels failed to provide evidence for discriminant validityamong the four psychological empowerment dimensions but didshow that the unitary or global psychological empowermentconstruct was at least as strongly related to outcomes as any ofthe subdimensions. A confirmatory factor analysis based onmeta-analytically derived correlations supports the view thatpsychological empowerment forms a single, second-order latentconstruct. Together, these analyses provided strong support for Sp-reitzer’s (1995b) conceptualization of psychological empowerment asa single second-order construct made up of the four cognitions ofmeaning, competence, self-determination, and impact.

Practical Contributions

One key practical implication of this study is the conclusion thatempowerment is an effective approach for improving employeeattitudes and work behaviors in a broad range of contexts (i.e.,industries, occupations, and geographic regions). The concept ofemployee empowerment has stirred controversy almost since itsintroduction into the management literature. Although popularaccounts have sometimes made exaggerated claims regarding the“lightning-like” ability of empowerment to “revitalize” organiza-

tions (e.g., Byham, 1997), others have noted high failure rates forempowerment interventions in organizations (e.g., Argyris, 1998;Hardy & Leiba-O’Sullivan, 1998; Randolph, 1995) and have cau-tioned practitioners that empowerment is a chimera, like “theemperor’s new clothes” (Argyris, 1998). Although we do notexamine the effectiveness of empowerment interventions in thisstudy, our research framework (see Figure 1) does provide a clearset of factors that practitioners might focus upon if they wish toincrease psychological empowerment in their organization. Forexample, at the organizational level, it appears that high-per-formance managerial practices (i.e., extensive use of training,open information sharing, decentralization, participative deci-sion making, and contingent compensation) can be used topromote a more psychologically empowered workforce. Pro-moting effective forms of leadership and supportive peer rela-tionships within the work unit should also play an importantrole in empowering employees. Consistent with job character-istics theory (Hackman & Oldham, 1980), the design of thework itself can be used to promote psychological empower-ment. Finally, our results suggest that all of these factors will beeffective in promoting empowerment whether employees workas individuals or as members of teams.

Table 7Conditional Model Estimates for Relationship of Psychological Empowerment Dimensionsto Outcomes

Job satisfaction (Kd � 17; Kc � 58; N � 6,207)Intercept (meaning) .51�� .64��

Self-determination �.08 �.08Impact �.05 �.04Competence �.17 �.19

Organizational commitment (Kd � 9; Kc � 34; N � 3,215)Intercept (meaning) .52�� .65��

Self-determination �.11 �.14Impact �.06 �.06Competence �.31�� .33��

Strain (Kd � 8; Kc � 32; N � 2,681)Intercept (meaning) �.28�� .34��

Self-determination .04 .05Impact .04 .08Competence .04 .02

Task performance (Kd � 11; Kc � 41; N � 2,651)Intercept (meaning) .14 .19��

Self-determination .13 .07Impact .04 .08Competence .01 .01

OCB (Kd � 5; Kc � 18; N � 993)Intercept (meaning) .22� .31Self-determination �.05 �.08Impact .00 �.00Competence .17 .32

Innovation (Kd � 3; Kc � 11; N � 896)Intercept (meaning) .10 .11Self-determination .07 .09Impact .10 .12Competence .05 .07

Note. Meaning was the base category. All other coefficients represent the difference between each variable andthe meaning base group. Kd � number of different studies; Kc � number of correlations; N � total sample size;OCB � organizational citizenship behavior.� p � .05. �� p � .01.

Both sociostructural and psychological approaches to empow-erment have focused primary attention on contextual factors asantecedents of empowerment. However, our results show thatpositive self-evaluation traits are as strongly associated with psy-chological empowerment as any of the contextual antecedents.Therefore, a practical implication of our results is that organiza-tions might consider selecting employees who have positive self-evaluation traits to help establish a workforce that is more willingand able to show initiative and take an active role in improving itsown performance.

An issue of practical importance, especially to employees andlabor union leaders, concerns the extent to which empowermentmay be a form of managerial rhetoric designed to increase top-down managerial control (e.g., Argyris, 1998; Barker, 1993) orcamouflage a work intensification strategy (e.g., Harley et al.,2007). Our results show that psychologically empowered employ-ees report experiencing less rather than more strain, suggesting thatthese employees at least perceive more control at work. However,we must caution readers that we do not know how often organi-

zations employ the rhetoric of empowerment but fail to followthrough by altering any of the key antecedents that lead to a morepsychologically empowered workforce. Dynamics around the im-plementation of empowerment and the rate of failure associatedwith empowerment change efforts are important areas for futureapplied research.

Limitations and Future Research

We should note several limitations of our study. First, cautionshould be exercised in interpreting causality among variables.Although we classified variables as antecedents or consequencesbased on theoretical considerations, the majority of the primarystudies were cross-sectional rather than longitudinal. We thereforesuggest that more longitudinal research be done on empowermentin order to better determine the causal direction of relationshipsinherent in empowerment theory (Spreitzer, 2008).

Second, there is evidence that additional moderators may oper-ate for virtually all of the relationships observed in our study, but

Table 8Conditional Model Estimates for Differences Between Studies Using Global PsychologicalEmpowerment (PE) and Studies Using PE Dimensions

Job satisfaction (Kd � 43; Kc � 84; N � 15,637)Global PE .52�� .66��

Meaning �.01 �.02Self-determination �.13 �.16Impact �.06 �.08Competence �.19� �.21�

Organizational commitment (Kd � 21; Kc � 45; N � 10,815)Global PE .50�� .70��

Meaning .01 �.06Self-determination �.14� �.27�

Impact �.06 �.15Competence �.29�� .37��

Strain (Kd � 18; Kc � 42; N � 7,281)Global PE �.29�� .40��

Meaning .07 .05Self-determination .08 .10Impact .09 .14Competence .05 .08

Task performance (Kd � 29; Kc � 59; N � 7,993)Global PE .30�� .48��

Meaning �.14� �.29�

Self-determination �.10 �.24Impact �.08 �.21Competence �.13� �.28�

OCB (Kd � 14; Kc � 27; N � 5,635)Global PE .30�� .37��

Meaning �.14 �.17Self-determination �.09 �.12Impact �.08 �.09Competence �.19 �.21

Innovation (Kd � 8; Kc � 16; N � 2,027)Global PE .27�� .30��

Meaning �.17� �.19�

Self-determination �.10 �.11Impact �.07 �.07Competence �.12 �.13

Note. Global psychological empowerment was coded as the base category. Kd � number of different studies;Kc � number of correlations; N � total sample size.� p � .05. �� p � .01.

sufficient information to examine these moderators was not avail-able in the primary studies. For instance, although we found someeffects for geographic region, we were not able to examine themoderating role of specific cultural variables. Future cross-culturalresearch might include individualism–collectivism and power dis-tance variables to better understand the cultural region effectsfound here.

Third, although our theoretical framework guided the choice ofour study variables, we acknowledge that empowerment may havea broader range of antecedents and consequences than those in-cluded in our meta-analysis. For example, psychological empow-

erment may decrease the level of employee withdrawal or coun-terproductive work behavior, yet we were unable to examine thispossibility due to the lack of primary studies. Additional studiesrelating empowerment to voice and other forms of proactive be-haviors (Parker & Collins, 2010) also have the potential to signif-icantly extend psychological empowerment theory. Also, a morecomplete set of wellness outcomes (Spreitzer, Sutcliffe, Dutton,Sonenshein, & Grant, 2005) should be highly relevant in futureresearch. The need to consider a broader range of antecedents andconsequence is even more pressing at the team level of analysis.We found enough primary studies to examine only one teamempowerment outcome: team performance. Thus, we suggest anexpansion of the criterion space of team empowerment to includeoutcomes such as team satisfaction or viability. Moreover, on theantecedent side, a number of other team structure, composition,and process variables might help scholars better understand how orwhen team empowerment is likely to arise or be effective. Forexample, how does team personality composition affect team-levelempowerment (Bell, 2007; Stewart, 2006)? Do team membersexperience more conflict or burnout in empowered teams? Futureresearch should examine the ways that team dynamics affect bothteam and individual empowerment.

Finally, we were able to conduct this meta-analysis using onlyemployee perceptions of organization-level antecedents of psycho-logical empowerment. Recent research demonstrates the utility ofexamining individual perceptions of high-performance managerialpractices (Liao et al., 2009), but a more complete model ofempowerment would include both organizational level and indi-vidual level data.

The strength of our findings suggests that future research mightseek greater integration of psychological empowerment theorywith other existing theories of work behavior. For example, ourfindings suggest that leadership is as strongly related to empow-erment as other antecedents more traditionally associated withempowerment, such as organizational policies and work designcharacteristics. Although some of the earliest proponents of em-

Psychological empowerment

Meaning Competence Self-determination

Impact

.65** .63** .81** .73**

Y1 Y2 Y3 Y4

1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0

Figure 2. Standardized factor loadings of the first-order subdimensions on the second-order psychologicalempowerment factor. Indices: �2(2) � 357.79, p � .01, standardized root-mean-square residual � .035,comparative fit index � .97. �� p � .01.

Table 9Population Correlations Among PsychologicalEmpowerment Dimensions

Dimension 1 2 3 4

1. Meaning —2. Competence —

r [95% CI] .41 [.35, .48]rc [95% CI] .50 [.43, .58]K (N) 30 (9,458)�2 .079��

3. Self-determination —r [95% CI] .43 [.36, .48] .41 [.33, .47]rc [95% CI] .50 [.42, .56] .50 [.40, .57]K (N) 28 (8,225) 29 (8,282)�2 .050�� .094��

4. Impact —r [95% CI] .40 [.35, .45] .34 [.26, .42] .53 [.47, .58]rc [95% CI] .46 [.40, .52] .41 [.30, .50] .62 [.55, .67]K (N) 28 (8,225) 29 (8,282) 30 (8,331)�2 .033�� .104�� .068��

Note. r � uncorrected population correlation; 95% CI � 95% confidenceinterval around the population correlation; rc � population correlationcorrected for unreliability; K � number of studies; N � total sample size;�2 � between-studies variance.�� p � .01.

powerment emphasized the role of organizational leaders (e.g.,Bennis & Nanus, 1985), only more recently have leadership re-searchers begun to regard psychological empowerment as an in-tegral part of their models (e.g., Kark et al., 2003; Liden et al.,2000). Thus, closer integration of leadership and psychologicalempowerment theories appears to be an important developmentmeriting further investigation. In addition, human resource strat-egy researchers (e.g., Combs et al., 2006; Liao et al., 2009) havebegun to recognize psychological empowerment as a relevantindividual-level outcome of high-performance managerial prac-tices. Psychological and team empowerment should therefore beexamined as an important mediator in research on leadership,human resource strategy, and other theories of employee behavior.Similarly, our findings regarding the strong effects of socio-political support suggest that psychological empowerment be moreclosely integrated into models of organizational support. Research-ers in the stress area could examine whether psychological em-powerment is more effective than control alone as a buffer of thestress or strain relationship.

The strength of the relationships between psychological em-powerment and various workplace attitudes and behaviors com-pares favorably with some of the most robust motivation theo-ries in the field, such as goal setting (Mento, Steel, & Karren,1987; Tubbs, 1986) and job design theory (Fried & Ferris,1987; Humphrey et al., 2007). The inclusion of OCBs andinnovation as outcomes suggests that psychological empower-ment theory is relevant to a broader range of work behavior thanis often found in these other prominent motivation theories.Future research might therefore explore greater integration be-tween psychological empowerment theory and theories of mo-tivation based on a self-regulatory framework, such as goal-setting theory (Locke & Latham, 2002), regulatory focus theory(Higgins, 1997), or regulatory fit theory (Higgins, 2000). Anumber of important questions arise. For example, do empow-ered employees or teams set more difficult goals or demonstratemore commitment to those goals? Is empowerment more asso-ciated with regulatory focus or the strategy and means used toapproach goals? Can empowerment interventions have unin-tended negative consequences if they alter regulatory strategiesbut not regulatory focus, thus producing regulatory nonfit?Integration of psychological empowerment theory with thesetheories of motivation might extend the range of processes andoutcomes to which both sets of theories apply.

Many multilevel theories in the field of organizational behaviorremain metaphoric and thus lack precision of prediction (Kozlow-ski et al., 1999). Our findings demonstrate identical homologyacross individual and team levels and support efforts to establishsuch homology for other multilevel theories. Given our findingregarding the strong effect of positive self-evaluation traits, theo-ries of team composition and performance might pay more atten-tion to the way this trait affects team performance. From a meth-odological point of view, the conditional random effects modelswe used to test multilevel homology in this paper can be used asa template for other meta-analyses that examine theories withmultiple level implications.

Finally, our results provide strong support for Spreitzer’s(1995b) original conceptualization of psychological empowermentas a unitary construct or “gestalt” reflecting the four specificcognitions. Although it remains valid to develop more detailed

theories concerning the specific empowerment subdimensions(e.g., self-determination theory, social-cognitive theory), thestrong intercorrelations among the subdimensions suggest that inworkplace settings the four cognitions that make up psychologicalempowerment are likely to occur together; thus, little is to begained by examining them as separate constructs. It is thereforeappropriate to develop hypotheses for psychological empower-ment as a global construct.

Conclusion

In sum, the results of this meta-analysis confirm psychologicalempowerment theory as an important approach to individual andteam motivation in the workplace. They show that psychologicalempowerment can be conceptualized as a unitary second-orderconstruct made up of four distinct subdimensions. Psychologicalempowerment perceptions can be shaped by contextual anteced-ents and individual characteristics and can have benefits for em-ployees and for organizations across a variety of contexts. Wehope these conclusions promote further research on and imple-mentation of empowerment at work.

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(Appendices follow)

Appendix A

Primary Study Variable Labels Included in Antecedents, Correlates, and Consequences ofIndividual-Level Psychological Empowerment

High-performance managerial practices

Adequacy of training Organization learning orientation practicesCompetency-based reward Organizational-level context factors (i.e., organizational

rigidity and inflexibility)Empowerment management practices Participation in goal settingHigh-performance work system Participatory decision makingHuman resource practices (i.e., information sharing,

pay-for-performance, participation) Reward, recognition, and trainingIncentives RewardsInformation sharing and rewards Structural empowermentManagement practices (i.e., organization helps

employees gain skills at work)Supervisor control of rewards (i.e., using a decentralized

reward system)Organizational empowerment Training and rewards

Socio-political support

Access to resources Organizational supportCohesion Peer supportCommunication and support of management Perceived organizational supportFormalization (i.e. extent to which organization has

formal rules)Perception of accountability (i.e., extent to which managers

feel uncertain and exposed about meeting goals)Information privacy practices (i.e., organization seeks

approval about how it uses employees’ personalinformation) Resource availability

Innovative climate Social exchangesJustice/fairness perceptions (i.e., procedural, distributive,

interactional) Social political supportOrganizational climate Supportive organizational environmentOrganizational culture Team member exchange

Trust (i.e., in management and peers)Work group climate

Positive leadership

Authentic leadership Managerial behaviorsAutonomy support from leader Managerial control (i.e., setting clear priorities for followers)Charismatic leadership Participative leadershipCommunication with supervisor Trust in leaderDevelopmental experiences from leader Supervisor supportivenessEmpowering leadership Supervisory working allianceLeader approachability Transformational leadershipLeader–member exchange Trust in leaderLeader support

Work design characteristics

Job characteristics Role overloadJob enrichment Role clarityJob-related context factors (i.e., constant feedback about

performance) Routineness of tasksRole ambiguity Task feedback

Work characteristics

Positive self-evaluation traits

Core self-evaluation Need for achievement and need for power (i.e., confidentbeing in charge)

General self-efficacy Self-consciousnessLocus of controlMotivation to lead

(Appendices continue)

Appendix A (continued)

Attitudinal consequences

Job satisfaction Propensity to leave the organizationJob satisfaction Turnover intentionsPromotion satisfaction StrainWork satisfaction Burnout

Organizational commitment Job pressureAffective commitment Job-related strainCommitment to quality Perceived stressOrganizational commitment Psychological strainOrganizational involvement Psychological withdrawal behavior

Turnover intentions Time stress and anxietyIntent to leave Work stressIntent to remain

Behavioral consequences

Task performance Work effectivenessBehavioral empowerment (i.e., perseverance in

achieving the standards of quality) Organizational citizenship behaviorsIn-role performance Change-oriented organizational citizenship behaviorJob performance Contextual performanceManagerial effectiveness Extrarole behaviorObjective job performance Organizational citizenship behaviorProductivity Submitting suggestionsQuality of patient care InnovationService performance CreativityTask performance Creative performance

Innovative behavior

Appendix B

Primary Study Variable Labels Included in Antecedents and Consequences of Team-LevelPsychological Empowerment

High-performance managerial practices

Knowledge management system Organizational decentralizationHigh performance work system Empowerment climateHuman resource decisions

Socio-political support

Executive management support Organizational supportPerceived organizational supportPositive leadership

Delegation (by leader) Socialized charismatic leadershipExternal leadership Supervisor supportLeadership climate Transformational leadershipPerformance management by external leader

Work design characteristicsRole clarity Task interdependenceRoutineness of tasks Team workloadTask feedback Work design

Team task performanceCustomer service ratings (for team) Team performanceGroup performance Team productivitySafety performance Work unit performanceTeam effectiveness

Received September 30, 2009Revision received November 30, 2010

Accepted December 10, 2010 �

Antecedents and Consequences of Psychological and Team Empowerment in Organizations: A Meta-Analytic...

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