EMPOWERMENT AND THE EFFECTS ON
COMMITMENT TO CHANGE
Master thesis, Msc BA Change Management & Msc Human Resource Management
University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business
August 31, 2013
GEORG HEEREMANS
Student number: 1708392
Herestraat 79b
9711 LC Groningen
Tel.: +31 (0)6 444 32 501
g.e.m.heeremans@student.rug.nl
Supervisor:
Prof. Dr. O. Janssen
Co-assessor:
Dr. C. Reezigt
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change ABSTRACT
Psychological empowerment is commonly viewed as a promising approach to improve employee job-related attitudes, customer service, operational efficiency and performance. However, there is a lack of research on psychological empowerment in change-oriented contexts. Using data from 120 employees in a financial organization in the middle of a change process, this study tested a model of the relationships between empowering leadership, psychological empowerment and commitment to change. Psychological empowerment has been examined as a process in which empowerment cognitions during the change process can increase or decrease (i.e. referent outcome cognitions) and in which there are expectations of empowerment developments towards the future (i.e. amelioration outcome cognitions). Results suggest that referent outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment partly mediate in the relationship between empowering leadership and commitment to change, whereas amelioration outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment did not operate as a mediating process in this relationship.
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change INTRODUCTION
Many organizational leaders realize that the biggest bottleneck to success when making changes could be their own employees. Employees that will not be committed or satisfied will fight back implementation, try to slow it down or even push it back. Eventually this could lead to unsuccessful change. Commitment to change is considered to be one of the most important factors for the successful implementation of change initiatives (Herscovitch & Meyer, 2002). Commitment represents the glue that offers a vital bond between people and change goals. Despite the awareness of its importance, little attention has been paid to underlying factors and processes that will influence commitment in change management.
It has almost become a truism that the way to maximize employee commitment to change is to include employees in the change process, ideally during the project design phase (Kiesler, 1971). Employee empowerment fosters a competitive climate and facilitates change in organizations (Ongori & Shunda, 2008). Despite those acknowledgements, only a few articles have been published on psychological empowerment and the effects on commitment to change in the field of change management. Argyris (1998) argued for the potential of empowerment to contribute to employee commitment to change but did not mention any evidence of success in achieving this potential.
Although there is some substantial conceptual evidence for the effects of employee empowerment on commitment to change, empirical evidence is still scarce. Two important questions need to be raised first:
(1) Is employee empowerment preferable in change management, and does this lead to commitment to change?
(2) What role could leaders play in empowering their employees in change contexts? We believe that empowerment could be an important construct in change management as it offers a feeling of being deeply involved in the organization and change process. The sense of meaning derived from being psychologically empowered could result in strong commitment to change.
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change process (e.g., Conger & Kanungo, 1988). Leaders can engage employees in the change process through delegation of extensive responsibility to their staff. This will create an environment that enables followers to satisfy needs for growth and autonomy. Employees will experience effective self-control and self-direction toward organizational objectives (Cohen et al., 1997; Manz & Sims, 1987; Sims & Manz, 1996; Yun et al., 2006; Yun et al., 2005). This is what we call empowering leadership. Empowering leaders could be essential to enhance psychological empowerment (Faulkner & Laschinger, 2008).
Empowering leadership in regular context is positively related to employee commitment (Liden et al., 2000). This study will investigate whether or not this relation will hold in a change related context. In this way, a change management perspective will be added onto the growing literature of empowerment.
As mentioned earlier this study will explore the effects of a possible mediator between empowering leadership and commitment to change, namely psychological empowerment as delineated by Spreitzer (1995). The psychological empowerment model of Spreitzer is adapted by adjusting the psychological empowerment construct on the basis of the “referent cognition theory” (Folger et al., 1983). We consider two important elements of psychological empowerment in a change process: referent outcomes cognitions (ROC) and amelioration outcome cognitions (AOC). Referent outcomes cognitions refer to the current level of psychological empowerment that employee feel in a change process compared to their feeling of psychological empowerment before change. Amelioration outcome cognitions refer to the comparison between current level of psychological empowerment and the expected level of empowerment in the future.
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change This study contributes to the literature in three important ways. First, using the referent cognitions theory, this study provides insights in the relation between empowering leadership and the development of psychological empowerment in a change process. Secondly, this study will contribute to the literature of psychological empowerment by investigating the role of referent cognitions in psychological empowerment. Finally, this study investigates the role of referent and amelioration outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment in commitment to change, thereby providing insights in the mediating effect of psychological empowerment between empowering leadership and commitment to change.
Figure 1:
Conceptual Model in which referent outcome cognitions and amelioration outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment mediate in the relationship between empowering leadership and employee commitment to change
Psychologcal Empowerment Empowering Leadership
During Change
Referent OutcomesCognitions Past vs. Now
Amelioration Outcome Cognitions Now vs. Future Expectations
Commitment to change
H: 1B
H: 1A H: 2
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change THEORY AND HYPOTHESES
Empowering leadership and commitment to change
Empowering leadership refers to a leadership style in which leaders delegate extensive responsibility to employees and create an environment that enables employees to satisfy needs for growth and autonomy. Employees will experience effective self-control and self-direction towards change- and organizational objectives (Cohen et al., 1997; Manz & Sims, 1987; Sims & Manz, 1996; Yun et al., 2006; Yun et al., 2005). Employee empowerment is important to the organizational change process because empowerment satisfies the employee's need for a sense of control. Empowering leadership is a style of leadership that stimulates employees to develop management or self-leadership skills. It is also called “superself-leadership” (Pearce et al., 2003). Based on the conceptualization of Conger and Kanungo (1988), empowering leadership enables subordinates to share power by enhancing the meaningfulness of work, fostering participation in decision making, expressing confidence in high performance and providing autonomy from bureaucratic constraints.
Enhancing the meaningfulness of work refers to leader behaviours aimed at providing purpose
and meaning to the work of employees, for that reason employees can identify themselves as important members of the organization and are motivated to perform their tasks. For empowering leaders this includes assisting the employee in understanding the importance of their contributions of their role to the organization.
Fostering opportunities for participation in decision-making refers to leader behaviours aimed at
gaining inputs from employees in problem situations and encouraging active involvement from employees in decision-making processes. Empowering leadership will create opportunities for employees to express their opinions and making decisions together with employees.
Expressing confidence in high performance refers to leader behaviours aimed at developing the
confidence of employees, as well as showing confidence in the employee’s ability to perform at a high level. This includes recognizing the accomplishments of the employees and conveying to employees that they are capable of fulfilling leader's expectations.
Providing autonomy from bureaucratic constraints refers to leader behaviours aimed at
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change empowering leadership and commitment to change. We believe empowering leadership works through psychological empowerment to ultimately influence commitment to change. In a change process psychological empowerment can increase or decrease during change. Therefore, we make use of referent cognitions in measuring psychological empowerment developments during change.
Empowering leadership and referent and amelioration outcome cognitions of empowerment
We believe that the relation between empowering leadership during change and commitment to change is mediated by psychological empowerment. According to Conger and Kanungo (1988) psychological empowerment is a process of heightening feelings of employees’ self-efficacy through the identification of conditions that foster powerlessness and through their removal by both formal organizational practices and informal techniques of providing efficacy information. Thomas and Velthouse (1990) extended this approach by arguing that psychological empowerment is multi-faced and that the essence cannot be captured by a single concept. According to Spreitzer (1995), psychological empowerment is an “active work orientation where an individual wishes and feels able to shape his/her work role and context” (Spreitzer, 1995, p. 1444). Spreitzer (1995) defined empowerment as a process or psychological state manifested in four cognitions reflecting an individual’s orientation to his or her work role. The four cognitions are: meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact.
Meaning refers to the value of a work goal or purpose, judged in relation to an individual’s own
ideals or standards (Thomas & Velthouse, 1990). Meaning involves a fit between the requirements of a work role and beliefs, values and behaviours (Hackman & Oldham, 1980). Meaning concerns an individual’s feeling that one’s work is personally important.
Competence, or self-efficacy, refers to an individual’s belief in her capability to perform work
role activities with skill (Gist, 1987).
Self-determination refers to an individual’s sense of having choice in initiating and regulating
actions (Deci, Connell, & Ryan, 1989), one’s freedom to choose how to initiate and carry out tasks.
Impact refers to the degree to which an individual can influence strategic, administrative or
operating outcomes at work (Ashforth, 1989), the degree to which one views one’s behaviours as making a difference in work outcomes.
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change four factors of the psychological empowering construct will be measured with two important factors of the “referent cognition theory”. Namely: referent outcomes cognitions and amelioration outcome cognitions. Referent outcome cognitions are alternative, imaginable circumstances that differ from a person's actual circumstances (Aquino et al., 1997).People are most likely to be satisfied when existing reality is more attractive than referent outcomes. As referent outcomes are compared to existing outcomes, people think about "what might have been." Therefore, referent outcomes cognitions are alternative outcomes that differ from a person’s actual circumstances (Folger et al., 1983). Hence, in this research we will compare the perceived current psychological empowerment with the level of psychological empowerment before the change (referent outcome). Empowering leaders can influence those referent cognitions by empowering employees during change, so that psychological empowerment will increase. Empowering leadership involves a set of leader behaviours that focusses toward developing the influence capabilities, including: autonomy, control, direction, self-regulation, self-management, and self-leadership of followers (Manz & Sims, 1987). We believe that empowering leadership during change can positively influence employees’ comparison of the feeling of psychological empowerment before change and the current feeling of empowerment during change. We expect to see a relation between a more perceived empowering leadership style and a positive comparison between psychological empowerment before change and psychological empowerment as it is now/during change (i.e. referent outcome cognitions).
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change The reason that we will not take into account justification is because of the fact that our research will be more on psychological empowerment and less on justification.
We will shortly argue how empowering leaders could reach the potential of influencing perceived level of psychological empowerment during change. Zhang and Bartol (2010) indicated four factors that empowering leaders tend to do; enhance the meaningful of work, refer to confidence in a member’s competence, provide self-determination and autonomy, and foster employee’s participation in decision making. All four factors are closely related to the four items of psychological empowerment developed by Spreitzer (1995).
An empowering leader tends to enhance meaningfulness of work by demonstrating to the employee their faith in the quality and importance of employee contributions, and their confidence that employees can make a difference (Grant, 2008). Empowering leadership could enhance the feeling of meaning by altering followers perceptions of the job and employee positions within organizational change. Empowering leadership could transform followers into self-leader (Pearce et al., 2003). We consider that self-leaders will feel higher importance of their own work than followers, in this way empowering leadership could enhance the feeling meaning of employees. Empowering leaders could stimulate self-leadership within change by creating positions or task teams in which employees can influence the change process.
Empowering leadership also has a considerable impact on employees’ feeling of competence by influencing employees’ perceptions of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy can be increased by the experience of mastering a task or through praise and encouragement expressed by a superior (Bandura, 1986). More involvement of subordinates in decision making and a closer interaction between subordinates and leaders could enhance self-efficacy. An empowering leader who gives employees information and ask employees to participate in the decision making process or the change process and who models correct behaviours should provide subordinates with opportunities for learning. An empowering leader tends to expresses confidence in employee competences and prospects, this will strengthen their feeling of self-efficacy and thus competence. Empowering leaders could involve employees in the change processes and ask them for their opinions.
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change 1986), thereby this will foster a feeling of self-determination. In change management empowering leaders could give employees responsibilities to determine by themselves how to implement the organizational changes that are need to be made into their job and day-to-day work activities.
Empowering leadership will also signal to subordinates that they “count around here” (Pierce & Gardner, 2004) and tries to boost an employee’s participation in to the decision making process or change management process, therefore employees consider themselves as insiders. Consequently, employees value an increased impact on outcomes and individuals surrounding them. Therefore empowering leadership could also enhance the feeling of employees’ impact during change, by transforming employees into change agents.
All the factors described above can positively influence psychological empowerment cognitions. Employees will perceive an increased feeling of psychological empowerment (i.e. referent outcome cognitions) and will also perceive empowerment expectations to the future (i.e. amelioration outcome cognitions). Expectations could be characterised as an individual’s subjective belief in the probability that a given state either already does exist or will exist in the future (Woodman & Tolchinsky, 1985). Amelioration outcome cognitions are based on the belief that psychological empowerment will improve during organizational change, therefore an empowering leader has to create a vision in the different aspects of psychological empowerment, as described above.
To conclude, we expect that empowering leadership will be a key variable in creating psychological empowerment. All the research of psychological empowerment and empowering leadership so far is conducted in stable, non-changing environments. The literature sketches a positive relation between empowering leadership and psychological empowerment in non-changing organizations. We expect to see that this relation will be still prevalent in organization in change. However, in a change-oriented context numerous aspects can influence this relation and thereby strengthen, weaken or completely fade away the existing relation. Through our adapted psychological empowerment construct, we will measure psychological empowerment during change.
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change Referent cognitions of psychological empowerment and commitment to change
As leaders and organizations are able to influence employees’ psychological empowerment, it is important to know to what extent this variable influences employees’ commitment to change. Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) claim that commitment is one of the most important factors involving support for change initiatives. Despite the awareness of its importance, there has been little attention paid to the definition and measurement of commitment in change contexts. There is a lack of research about psychological empowerment and its effect on employees’ commitment in organizations experiencing change. Robinson et al., (1994) assume that psychological empowerment reflects the on-going ebb and flow op employee’s perceptions and attitudes about their work environment in relation to themselves. We expect that more psychological empowerment compared to the situation before change (increased referent cognitions) will lead to more commitment to change.
We presume that the referent outcomes of psychological empowerment (comparing the current psychological empowerment with psychological empowerment before change) could enhance commitment to change. When employees believe that their current psychological empowerment is improved compared with their psychological empowerment before change, they feel more involved and therefore their commitment to change will rise. Previous research showed that empowerment will lead to higher commitment and concentration of energy (Kanter, 1983). According to Hanold (1997), more empowerment will create more job autonomy. Consequently employees feel more involvement beyond the defined jobs and will value greater affective commitment. Empowered employees see themselves as more competent and more influential in their job and work environments (Quinn & Spreitzer, 1997).
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change value greater affective commitment. Moreover, an increase in psychological empowerment during change could be important because it provide employees to participate in change management. Participation provides opportunities to receive more information about the change. Without proper information, employees can hardly be involved in the change effort. Kotter (1995) has stressed the importance of credible and timely information to capture the hearts and minds of employees. Emotional involvement is a significant indicator of commitment to change (Devos, 2001).
Therefore, we expect to see a positive relation between referent outcomes of psychological empowerment and affective commitment to change. In our research we will investigate the relation of an increased or decreased psychological empowerment towards affective commitment to change.
Psychological empowerment may be negatively related to continuance commitment to change. Continuance commitment to change reflects an individual’s recognition that withholding support for change may be associated with some kind of cost (Herscovitch & Meyer, 2002). Higher psychological empowerment will lead to the perception that alternatives will be available and cost in withholding support for change will decrease. Psychological empowered employees feel less obligated to act in line with organizational initiatives and they will rely more on their own opinions. Therefore, these employees could feel less cost to act differently than organizational change initiatives and could value lower costs in withholding support for change.
Higher psychological empowerment may be negatively related to normative commitment to
change, normative commitment reflects a sense of social obligation to provide support for the change. Psychological empowerment will lead to the perception of less obligation to support the change. Employees with a low feeling of psychological empowerment will experience lower meaningfulness of their work role. Therefore, employees feel more obligated to support the change rather than having the feeling of inner affective motivation to support the change process. When there is a high feeling of psychological empowerment, employees feel more self-determined. In other words, employees will value a sense of having choice in initiating and regulating actions and value more freedom to choose how to initiate and carry out tasks. The feeling of employees that there will be a sense of duty to work towards the change will diminish. So we expect that the higher the psychological empowerment the lower normative commitment to change will be.
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change Amelioration outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment and commitment to change
Among the important variables that influence the degree of commitment to change is employee beliefs about what they are entitled to receive in the future (amelioration outcome cognitions). Building positive expectations is essential in creating commitment to change. Change is often considered as a source of uncertainty for employees. According to Berwick (2003), the knowledge workers receive regarding the expected consequences of a change process are strongly related to the reduction of uncertainty. Expectations could be characterised as an individual’s subjective belief in the probability that a given state either already does exist or will exist in the future (Woodman & Tolchinsky, 1985). Future empowerment expectations could influence commitment to change in the same way as actual psychological empowerment improvements can influence commitment to change. Employees’ expectations of change outcomes have long been considered an important condition for increasing commitment to change (Yuan & Woodman, 2007). Yukl (1989) suggests that leaders energizes and therefore empower their followers to act providing an exciting vision for the future. When leaders provide an exciting vision for the future people can become committed without an improvement right now. However, the empowerment vision must be convincing, so that employees will accept it and believe in it.
We expect that employees who reported positive empowerment expectations will be more likely to commit affectively to the change programme, as they believed in the changes’ inherent benefits (Yuan & Woodman, 2007). For example, by providing expectation of meaning for the future empowerment can encourage followers to implement change (Sullivan & Harper, 1996). By providing a vision in which followers’ will feel an increased feeling of competence, employees are more confident that change can be positive and therefore affective commitment could be increased. A vision of increased feeling of choice (self-determination) will also lead to higher affective commitment to change, in the same way an increased feeling of impact will increase affective commitment to change.
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change
Hypotheses 3: Amelioration outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment during change are positively related to affective commitment to change (H3a) and negatively related to continuance (H3b) and normative (H3c) commitment to change
Referent outcomes and amelioration outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment as a mediating process
We described how empowering leadership could influence psychological empowerment (referent outcome cognitions and amelioration outcome cognitions). To achieve this potential, empowering leaders give extensive responsibility to employees and create an environment that enables employees to satisfy needs for growth and autonomy by exercising effective control and self-direction toward organizational objectives (Cohen et al., 1997; Manz & Sims, 1987; Sims & Manz, 1996; Yun et al., 2006; Yun et al., 2005).
We also clarified how both aspects of psychological empowerment could influence affective, continuance and normative commitment to change. The perspective of empowerment implies that empowering leadership could result in commitment to change through psychological empowered on the basis of referent outcomes and amelioration outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment.
Kanter (1984) suggests that in order to build commitment to change, leaders should allow employees to participate in the change process. Scholars have empirically found that psychological empowerment mediates between empowering leadership and outcomes (Chen et al., 2007). Hence, we propose that empowering leadership and commitment to change is mediated by employees’ referent outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment and amelioration outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment.
Hypothesis 4: Referent outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment mediate the indirect relationship between empowering leadership and affective (H4a), continuance (H4b), and normative (H4c) commitment to change
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change METHODS
Research setting and participants
This study was conducted at the office of a large financial service provider in the Netherlands. This financial service provider was in the middle of a change process; implementing flexible work arrangements instead of the traditional way of working. The implementation of this new way of working had consequences for all employees working for the company. Several changes for employees were present; customization of the spatial and temporal boundaries of their workday, including work in a different location, different work schedules and reduced hours.
We used a survey to collect data. Data was collected from all the employees (300) of this financial institute. Data collection began with a short introduction email (from the HR manager). After that the survey was spread online in the online application Qualtrics. Our goal was to get a response rate of at least 30%. We end up with a response rate of 40%. Usable questionnaires were obtained from 120 employees. The data gained from the surveys is primary data and is kept anonymous and completely confidential. We believe this had positive effects on the response rate and improved qualitative honest answers. The questionnaire includes items of empowering leadership, psychological empowerment (including referent outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment and amelioration outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment) and commitment to change. These items will be further elaborated under the measurement section. The average age of the participants was 39,4 years old (standard deviation [SD] = 10,3), 64% were woman, and the average organizational tenure was 5,7 years.
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change Measures
Empowering Leadership. In order to measure empowering leadership during the change process we
used the method of Ahearne et al. (2005). The method of Ahearne et al. (2005) uses a 12-item measure with multi-item subscales corresponding to four dimensions: (1) enhancing the meaningfulness of work, (2) fostering participation in decision making, (3) expressing confidence in high performance, and (4) providing autonomy from bureaucratic constraints. Two example items are:
- My manager helps me understand how my objectives and goals relate to that of the company.
- My manager makes many decisions together with me.
Response scales ranged from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree.
Referent Psychological Empowerment. In order to measure referent psychological
empowerment during change we adapted the “Measuring Empowerment Questionnaire” (12 items) developed by Spreitzer (1995). The four dimensions of the original model were adapted on the basis of the “Referent Cognition Theory”, implicating that there will be a part of the questionnaire about the comparison between the comparison of empowerment before change and the current state of psychological empowerment (referent outcome cognitions). And the other part of the questionnaire is about the future state of psychological empowerment (amelioration outcome cognitions).
Examples of referent psychological empowerment items are: Meaning
- In comparison with the situation before change my work is in the new flexible work structure?
Response scales ranged from 1 = A lot less important to me to 7 = Far more important to me. Competence
- In comparison with the situation before change my confidence about my ability to do my jobs?
Response scales ranged from 1 = Is strongly decreased to 7 = Is strongly increased. Self-determination
- In comparison with the situation before change my autonomy in determining how I do my job?
Response scales ranged from 1 = Is strongly decreased to 7 = Is strongly increased. Impact
- In comparison with the situation before change my impact on what happens in my department?
Response scales ranged from 1 = Is strongly decreased to 7 = Is strongly increased.
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change
Commitment to Change. In order to measure commitment to change we used the 18-item scale
questionnaire developed by Herscovitch and Meyer’s (2002). The “Commitment to Change Survey” is an extension of Meyer and Allen’s (1990) three-component model of organizational commitment. Six items assessed affective commitment to change, six items assessed continuance commitment to change, and six items assessed normative commitment to change. Participants were asked to respond to each item relating to their perceptions of the specific change that was being implemented in their organization. This model was argued to be the most reliable and valid indicator of commitment to change (Jaros, 2010).
Example items are:
Affective commitment to change - I believe in the value of this change.
Continuance commitment to change
- I have no choice but to go along with this change.
Normative commitment to change
- I feel a sense of duty to work toward this change.
Response scales ranged from 1 = Totally disagree to 7 = Totally agree.
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change Procedure and data analysis
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change RESULTS
Descriptive statistics and correlations
Table 1 presents scale means, SD’s, coefficient alphas, and correlations for the variables in the analysis. Reliability indices of the instruments have been identified by cronbach’s alpha reliabilities (see Table 1). The value of alpha coefficient ranges from 0 to 1. The higher the rate the higher internal reliability of the measure. Researchers have indicated 0.7 to be an acceptable reliability coefficient and values as low as 0.5 are considered to be acceptable in the social sciences. Reliabilities for all scales were acceptable (over 0.7). The normative commitment to change item scored a lower cronbach’s alpha of 0.42. This cronbach’s alpha was too low to accept. Therefore, we have chosen not to take into account questions 3 and 6 in the normative commitment to change questions. Those questions were one of the few questions that had reversed rating scales and probably some employees have filled them in as non-reversed rating scales. By deleting question 3 and 6 in the normative commitment to change item we improved the cronbach’s alpha from 0.42 to 0.62. We consider a cronbach’s alpha of 0.62 high enough to form a single construct.
In the control variables we found only a weak correlation between age and amelioration outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment. The other control variables indicated no significant correlation with predictors and criteria, therefore we excluded these control variables. Excluding uncorrelated control variables will increase power in analyses (Becker, 2005). We will only use the control variable “age” in further analyses. Since age is correlated with amelioration outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment.
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change
Table 1:
Means, Standard Deviations, Scale Reliabilities, and Correlation Among Study Variables
Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1. Empowering leadership 5.28 0.61 .81 2. Psychological empowerment (ROC) 4.45 0.66 .23* .92 3. Psychological empowerment (AOC) 4.43 0.58 .13 .69*** .92 4. Affective commitment to change 5.53 0.96 .29 ** .57*** .49*** .90 5. Continuance commitment to change 2.67 1.00 -.35*** -.38*** -.30*** -.51** .79 6. Normative commitment to change 3.39 1.21 -.15 -.00 -.06 -.10 .37*** .62 7. Gender 1.64 0.48 -.13 -.00 .09 .11 -.03 .03 – 8. Age 39.37 10.30 -.01 -.13 -.20* -.02 -.09 .11 -.08 – 9. Tenure 5.72 2.05 -.01 -.12 -.15 -.03 -.05 .07 .11 .64*** –
10. Tenure under manager 2.62 1.93 .04 .05 .01 .07 -.07 .04 .07 .31*** .30** –
Note: Bold numbers on the diagonal are Cronbach’s alpha reliabilities.
Response scales for variable 1 ranged from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. Response scales for variables 2-3 had custom made scales ranging from 1 to 7. Response scales for variables 4-6 ranged from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly
agree. Gender 1 = man, 2 = female
* Correlation is significant at the 0,05 level, ** Correlation is significant at the 0,01 level, *** Correlation is significant at the 0,001 level
Hypotheses testing
Hypotheses 1a predicts that empowering leadership during change is positively related to referent outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment. The control variable “age” did not significantly contribute to the prediction of referent outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment (table 2; β = -.132, p = .142). However, as expected, empowering leadership during change is significantly and positively related to referent outcomes of psychological empowerment (table 2; β = .23, p = .012). Therefore hypothesis 1a is supported.
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change Hypotheses 2a predicts that referent outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment during change are positively related to affective commitment to change. The results showed that referent outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment has a significant positive influence on affective commitment to change (table 2; β = .39, p = .000). Consequently, hypothesis 2a is supported.
Hypothesis 2b predicts that referent outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment during change are negatively related to continuance commitment to change. As expected, a negative relation was found between referent outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment and continuance commitment to change (table 2; β = -.25, p = .031). Therefore, hypothesis 2b is supported.
Hypothesis 2c predicts that referent outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment during change are negatively related to continuance normative commitment to change. The results showed that referent outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment are not significantly related to normative commitment to change (table 2; β = .113, p = .378). Therefore hypothesis 2c is rejected.
Hypothesis 3a predicts that amelioration outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment during change are positively related to affective commitment to change. A positive relation between amelioration outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment and affective commitment to change was indeed found (table 2; β = .218, p = .036). Therefore, hypothesis 3a is supported.
Hypothesis 3b predicts that amelioration outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment during change are negatively related to continuance commitment to change. No support has been found for hypotheses 3b; amelioration outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment during change are not significantly negatively related to continuance commitment to change (table 2; β = -.124, p = .175). Thus, hypothesis 3b is rejected.
Hypothesis 3c predicts that amelioration outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment during change are negatively related to normative commitment to change. Also, no support has been found for this relation (table 2; β = -.095, p = .456). Therefore, hypothesis 3c is rejected.
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change Hypothesis 4b predicts that referent outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment mediate the indirect relationship between empowering leadership and continuance commitment to change. We found evidence that referent outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment partly mediate the indirect relationship between empowering leadership and continuance commitment to change (table 3; indirect effect = -0.09, SE = 0.05, 95% CI: [-0.23, -0.02]). There is a significant direct effect of empowering leadership on continuance commitment to change (table 2; β = -.282, p = .001). Hypotheses 4b is supported, a partly mediating effect exists.
Hypothesis 4c predicts that Referent outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment mediate the indirect relationship between empowering leadership and normative commitment to change. We found no evidence that referent outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment mediate the indirect relationship between empowering leadership and normative commitment to change (table 3; indirect effect = 0.05, SE = 0.08, 95% CI: [-0.05, 0.28]). The direct effect of empowering leadership on normative commitment to change is not supported (table 2; β = -.166, p = .080). Hypotheses 4c is rejected.
Hypothesis 5a predicts that amelioration outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment mediate the indirect relationship between empowering leadership and affective commitment to change. We found no evidence that amelioration outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment mediate the indirect relationship between empowering leadership and affective commitment to change (table 3; indirect effect = 0.05, SE = 0.04, 95% CI: [-0.01, 0.16]). There is a significant direct effect of empowering leadership on affective commitment to change (table 2; β = -.172, p = .025). Hypotheses 5a is rejected, there was only found a significant direct effects of empowering leadership on affective commitment to change.
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change
Table 2:
Multiple regression factors
Mediator variable model:
Referent Outcome Cognitions (ROC) of psychological Empowerment
Mediator variable model:
Amelioration Outcome Cognitions (AOC) of Psychological Empowerment
Model Β SE T p R² Model β SE t p R²
.069* .058*
Constant .000 .089 .000 1.00 Constant .000 .089 .000 1.00
Age -.132 .089 -1.48 .142 Age -.201* .090 -2.241 .027
Empowering leadership .228* .089 2.548 .012 Empowering leadership .131 .090 1.464 .146
Dependant variable model: Affective commitment to change
Β SE t P R²
.378***
Constant .000 .073 .000 1.00
Age .080 .075 1.07 .288
Psychological empowerment (ROC) .391*** .103 3.787 .000 Psychological empowerment (AOC) .218* .103 2.21 .036
Empowering leadership .172* .076 2.27 .025
Continuance commitment to change
Β SE t P R²
.244***
Constant .000 .081 .000 1.00
Age -.147 .083 -1.779 .078
Psychological empowerment (ROC) -.248* .114 -2.182 .031 Psychological empowerment (AOC) -.124 .113 -1.098 .275
Empowering leadership -.282*** .083 -3.379 .001
Normative commitment to change
Β SE t P R²
.042
Constant .000 .091 .000 1.00
Age .102 .093 1.094 .276
Psychological empowerment (ROC) .113 .128 .885 .378 Psychological empowerment (AOC) -.095 .127 -.749 .456
Empowering leadership -.166 .094 -1.768 .080
25
Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change
Figure 2:
Standardized Path Coefficient for the Mediation Analyses
Psychologcal Empowerment Empowering Leadership
During Change
Referent Outcome Cognitions Past vs. Now
Amelioration Outcome Cognitions Now vs. Future Expectations
Affective Commitment to Change .13 .23* .39*** .22* .17* Psychologcal Empowerment Empowering Leadership During Change
Referent Outcome Cognitions Past vs. Now
Amelioration Outcome Cognitions Now vs. Future Expectations
Continuance Commitment to Change .13 .23* -.25* -.12 -.28*** Psychologcal Empowerment Empowering Leadership During Change
Referent Outcome Cognitions Past vs. Now
Likelihood of Amelioration Now vs. Future Expectations
Normative Commitment to Change .13
.23* .11
-.10
-.17
26
Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change
Table 3:
Indirect Effects of Psychological Empowerment (ROC + AOC) between Empowering Leadership and Commitment to Change aspects
Indirect Effects Bootstrap indirect effect
Bootstrap SE Bootstrap LLCI Bootstrap ULCI Empowering leadership on Affective commitment
to change through:
Psychological empowerment (ROC) .14 .07 .03 .30
Psychological empowerment (AOC) .05 .04 -.01 .16
Bootstrap indirect effect
Bootstrap SE Bootstrap LLCI Bootstrap ULCI Empowering leadership on Continuance
commitment to change through:
Psychological empowerment (ROC) -.09 .05 -.23 -.02
Psychological empowerment (AOC) -.03 .03 -.12 .01
Bootstrap indirect effect
Bootstrap SE Bootstrap LLCI Bootstrap ULCI Empowering leadership on Normative commitment
to change through:
Psychological empowerment (ROC) .05 .08 -.05 .28
Psychological empowerment (AOC) -.03 .05 -.18 .03
27
Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change DISCUSSION
This study assesses the relationship between empowering leadership and commitment to change. In addition, it was theorized that psychological empowerment (including both referent outcomes and the likelihood of amelioration) would show a mediating effect in the relationship between empowering leadership and commitment to change. The results showed that some predicted relationships were confirmed, however, other expected relationships were rejected.
Findings
The findings are consistent with the expectation that empowering leadership is related to commitment to change. Empowering leadership is positively related to affective commitment to change and negatively related to continuance commitment to change. No relationship was found between empowering leadership and normative commitment to change.
In order to test the mediating effect of psychological empowerment (including both referent outcomes and the likelihood of amelioration), we first tested the relationship between empowering leadership and referent outcomes and amelioration outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment. A positive relationship was found between empowering leadership and referent outcomes of psychological empowerment. However, no relationship was found between empowering leadership and amelioration outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment (support of hypothesis 1a, no support for hypothesis 1b). Therefore we can conclude that empowering leadership during change can influence the feeling of an improved psychological empowerment. However, empowering leadership had no relation on the future expectations of psychological empowerment.
Furthermore we tested the relationship between psychological empowerment with referent cognitions (including both referent outcome cognitions and amelioration cognitions of psychological empowerment) and the factors of commitment to change (affective-, continuance- and normative commitment to change). Referent outcomes of psychological empowerment were positively related to affective commitment to change and negatively related to continuance commitment to change (support of hypothesis 2a and 2b). No relationship was prevalent for referent outcomes of psychological empowerment and normative commitment to change (no support of hypothesis 2c).
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change amelioration outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment and continuance- and normative commitment to change (no support of hypothesis 3b and 3c).
We can conclude that positive expectations about psychological empowerment can have a positive influence on affective commitment to change. These results are in line with the results reported by Portoghese et al. (2012). This study concluded that positive change related expectations were strongly associated with affective commitment to change (β = 0.79, P < 0.001). Furthermore, we can conclude that an increased feeling of psychological empowerment can lead to higher affective commitment to change and lower continuance commitment to change.
We finally tested the mediation effect of psychological empowerment with referent cognitions (including both referent outcome cognitions and amelioration cognitions of psychological empowerment) in the relation between empowering leadership and commitment to change. Referent outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment were mediating between empowering leadership and affective- and continuance commitment to change. However, there was no mediation effect of referent outcomes cognitions of psychological empowerment between empowering leadership and normative commitment to change. Amelioration outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment were not mediating in the relationship between empowering leadership and commitment to change items (affective-, continuance- and normative commitment to change).
Implications for research
With regard to the theoretical contributions, this study links empowering leadership, psychological empowerment and commitment to change. Previously, little research integrating the three areas has been conducted. Moreover, no research has explored the relationship among these constructs in change management.
29
Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change research pointing to a positive relation between empowering leadership and the different factors of psychological empowerment (meaning; Pearce et al., 2003, competence; Bandura, 1986, self-determination; Ahearne et al., 2005 and impact; Pierce & Gardner, 2004). This paper contributes to the leadership and empowerment literature by clarifying the importance of empowering leadership in order to affect psychological empowerment during change (on the basis of referent outcome cognitions). We found a direct effect of empowering leadership and commitment to change (affective and continuance).
Secondly, this study contributes to the literature of psychological empowerment and leadership by investigating the role of referent outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment and referent ameliorations of psychological empowerment. We found a mediating effect of referent outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment in the relation between empowering leadership and commitment to change. As Menon (2001) mentioned, empowering leadership is unlikely to have its anticipated impact unless followers actual experience psychological empowerment. Our study supports this statement, since only referent outcome cognitions (experience of actual improvements in empowerment) shows to be mediating in the relation towards commitment to change. Further research could be done to investigate the underlying process of psychological empowerment (including both referent outcomes and the likelihood of amelioration) and the relation towards commitment to change.
30
Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change Managerial implications
This study provides several practical implications for leaders in change management. Our research suggests that empowering leadership during change can positively influence affective commitment to change, mediated by referent outcome cognitions of psychological empowerment. Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) state that commitment to change is associated with higher levels of support behaviour. This support turns out to be important during organizational change, when employees have to deal with different work processes, new rules and new work procedures. Therefore, companies may want to promote empowering leadership during change in order to commit employees to change. Managers and supervisors could be trained and developed by providing programs for managers to adopt new roles as coaches, mentors and facilitators (Mclean, 2006), thereby employees’ psychological empowerment can increase. The role of managers will increasingly shift from the traditional hierarchical director to being a supportive leader, or a manager as coach (Hargrove, 1995). A manager as coach can be defined as a leadership approach based on the condition of constructive feedback designed to bring the most out of people by showing that they are respected and valued (Hargrove, 1995). We approve this perspective and consider this kind of leadership behaviours increasingly important in change management. To become even more successful, leaders need to know on what dimensions of commitment to change they need to focus. Affective commitment to change will probably have the greatest impact on employees’ change related behaviour (Meyer & Allen, 1991). Leaders and organizations can influence affective commitment to change by providing jobs that are challenging for employees and aligned with the goals of employees. In this manner, goal alignment will positively influence psychological empowerment.
31
Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change important than empowerment expectations. Therefore, empowering leaders may want to focus on actual improvements of psychological empowerment instead of proclaiming psychological empowerment improvements for the future. Empowering leaders could stimulate psychological empowerment during change in numerous ways. They could promote self-leadership within change by creating positions or task teams in which employees can influence the change process (meaning). Empowering leaders could involve employees in the change processes and ask them for their opinions (competence), give employees responsibilities to determine by themselves how to implement the organizational changes that are need to be made into their job and day-to-day work activities (self-determination) and enhance the feeling of employees’ impact during change, by transforming employees into change agents.
Referent outcomes cognitions of psychological empowerment are negatively related to continuance commitment. We can state that when employees will value higher referent outcomes cognitions of psychological empowerment, they value less cost in making decisions different than the organization does. Hence, empowered employees that are sceptical of the changes will sooner fight back implementation, try to slow it down or push it back. Leaders therefore have to communicate a convincing change management vision so that employees will accept the change and believe in it. Otherwise, empowerment could influence commitment to change negatively.
This study shows evidence of the importance of empowering leadership and psychological empowerment during change, however it does not imply that empowerment is always the right thing to do. We do not believe in a best practice approach. Instead, we believe that it is important to look at the specific situation and then determine if empowerment is required. When contingencies support the requirement of empowerment, empowering leadership could be essential. At that point, it is important that organizations have invested in the empowerment qualities of superiors and managers in organizations.
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Empowerment and the Effects on Commitment to Change Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research
A main limitation of this study is that we collected data from highly educated employees at a single financial company at national level (the Netherlands). This may limit the generalizability of our research. For example, national cultural differences or organizational cultural differences are not taken into account. Perhaps less educated employees in other organizations will value psychological empowerment as less important and will be less committed to the change than was the case in our research. Younger people nowadays want to express their opinion more often than older employees. It is therefore possible that they will value psychological empowerment as more important than their elderly colleagues. Organizational structure could influence this as well. For example, empowerment in a flat structure organization could be valued as more important than hierarchical structured organizations. Generalizability of this research may also be limited because data has been collected in a specific change process from a traditional way of working towards a flexible way of working. In a different change process outcomes could be different. For example, psychological empowerment could be valued as less important in a change processes that will have fewer practical consequences for employees. Research has to be done in many different change processes to see if there are general implications for change management of this theory.
Another limitation could be that all measures relies on self-reports. It is important to note that empowering leadership was measured at employee level whereby employees were asked questions about their direct supervisors to measure employee perceived empowering leadership. Our findings were therefore substantially influenced by single-source biases. However results from this study do not show indications of problems in single source measurements; results show differentiated effects of empowering leadership, psychological empowerment and commitment to change.
Future research could adopt a longitudinal approach whereas this study makes use of single time measurement. Therefore empowering leadership, psychological empowerment and commitment to change could be analysed over time.
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