Executive coaching : investigating effects of leader-empowering behaviours and psychological empowerment

Executive coaching is a rapidly expanding approach to leadership development which has grown at a rate that warrants extensive examination of its effects (Wasylyshyn, 2003). This thesis has therefore examined both behavioural and psychological effects based on a nine month executive coaching intervention within a large not-for-profit organisation. The intervention was a part of a larger ongoing integrated organisational strategy to create an organisational coaching culture. In order to examine the effectiveness of the nine month executive coaching intervention two studies were conducted. A quantitative study used a pre and post questionnaire to examine leaders and their team members‘ responses before and after the coaching intervention. The research examined leader-empowering behaviours, psychological empowerment, job satisfaction and affective commitment. Significant results were demonstrated from leaders‘ self-reports on leader-empowering behaviours and their team members‘ self-reports revealed a significant flow on effect of psychological empowerment. The second part of the investigation involved a qualitative study which explored the developmental nature of psychological empowerment through executive coaching. The examination dissected psychological empowerment into its widely accepted four facets of meaning, impact, competency and self-determination and investigated, through semi-structured interviews, leaders‘ perspectives of the effect of executive coaching upon them (Spreitzer, 1992). It was discovered that a number of the common practices within executive coaching, including goal-setting, accountability and action-reflection, contributed to the production of outcomes that developed higher levels of psychological empowerment. Careful attention was also given to organisational context and its influence upon the outcomes.

Citizen motivation on the go : the role of psychological empowerment

Although advances in technology now enable people to communicate 'anytime, anyplace', it is not clear how citizens can be motivated to actually do so. This paper evaluates the impact of three principles of psychological empowerment, namely perceived self-efficacy, sense of community and causal importance, on public transport passengers' motivation to report issues and complaints while on the move. A week-long study with 65 participants revealed that self-efficacy and causal importance increased participation in short bursts and increased perceptions of service quality over longer periods. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for citizen participation projects and reflect on design opportunities for mobile technologies that motivate citizen participation.

A study on the Effect of Psychological Empowerment on Job Satisfaction and Job Related Stress Among the Bank Employees

The present research is carried out to understand how psychological empowerment, job satisfaction and job related stress are related.In banking sector, employees are less satisfied and less motivated than employees in other lines of work (Kelley, 1990; Bajpai, Naval and Deepak, 2004). The banking industry also suffers from high employee turnover rate (Branham, 2005; Nelson, 2007) and high level of stress (Chen and Lien, 2008). There are no adequate studies linking psychological empowerment and job satisfaction, stress, turnover etc. among employees of banking sector. Lack of psychological empowerment could be a reason for these problems faced by banking sector. Further majority of studies in psychological empowerment are carried out in manufacturing sector and studies in service sector are concentrated on hotel industry and hospitals. Empowerment takes different forms in different contexts (Zimmerman, 1995). In the light of above discussion, the present research is directed to explore the dimensions of psychological empowerment of employees in banking sector and to find out whether high psychological empowerment can increase job satisfaction and reduce job related stress among employees in banking sector

A study on the Effect of Psychological Empowerment on Job Satisfaction and Job Related Stress Among the Bank Employees

This study focuses on psychological empowerment of employees in banking sector because of the reasons stated below: Firstly, very little research has been conducted in understanding empowerment as a psychological construct. Majority of the studies have been conducted on the various empowerment practices in the organizations. Secondly, there is no empirical evidence that the empowerment practice will create a subjective feeling of empowerment within the individual. Employee empowerment will be effective only if the employees actually experience the empowerment. Even if the organizations have the empowerment practices like providing power and open communication it is not necessary that the employee is empowered. Empowerment describes only the condition of work environment. It does not describe employees’ response to these conditions. These responses form the basis for psychological empowerment

Leader-member exchange in a Chinese context:antecedents, outcomes and mediating role of psychological empowerment

This study examines organizational antecedents of LMX and the mediating influence of empowerment on the relationships between LMX and the work outcomes of job satisfaction, task performance and psychological withdrawal behavior. Data were obtained from employees of a listed Chinese company in Guangdong Province, People's Republic of China. The results revealed that: (a) supervisor control of rewards and work unit climate were related to LMX and (b) empowerment fully mediated the relationship between LMX and the work outcomes as hypothesized.

Empowerment and intentions to resist future change: the moderating effect organization-based self-esteem

Nowadays, organizations face a constant need for adaptability, increasing the importance of change management. Our study focuses of how empowering leadership influences intentions to resist future changes, mediated by the effects of psychological and structural empowerment. From the responses of the two questionnaires (N1=230; Ntf=113), we found that empowering leadership fosters psychological and structural empowerment. Structural empowerment was the main driver in reducing intentions to resist future change when an employee has high organization-based self-esteem. Our findings add to the literature by examining how we can anticipate and manage change under an empowering context, building on social exchange and uncertainty reduction theories

Organizational memory and empowerment

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to test a model of the relationship between organizational memory and empowerment. The model posited that organizational memory would be related to requests to share knowledge, psychological empowerment in the workplace (meaning, competence, self-determination and impact), and organization-based self-esteem. Design/methodology/approach – The model was tested with 134 employees representing six companies using hierarchical regression analysis. Findings – Significant relationships were found between organizational memory and requests to share knowledge, empowerment, and organization-based self-esteem. Findings indicated that a positive stereotype may exist towards older workers and the frequency they are requested to share knowledge, and that a halo-type effect may operate, where knowledge of an organization's history is generalized to other knowledge domains. Research limitations/implications – Causal implications cannot be made as this was correlational research. Some of the research measures while achieving acceptable to good reliability were in an early development stage. The study utilized a convenience sample that may limit how the results can be generalized. Practical implications – The paper indicates that organizations can emphasize positive outcomes for those who are knowledge repositories and mentors. It is also important to consider possible “positive stereotypes” which may be operating when organizational members evaluate older workers as knowledge repositories and mentors. Originality/value – The paper addresses the assumptions in the human resources literature concerning the role of older workers as repositories of organizational memory and suitable mentors. The study introduces the “requests to share knowledge scale”.

Indicators for evaluating cancer organizations' support services: performance and associations with empowerment

Community-based cancer organizations provide services to support patients. An anticipated benefit of these services is patient empowerment. However, this outcome has not been evaluated because of the lack of validated health-related empowerment questionnaires in the cancer context. In this validation study, the authors assessed the extent to which 16 indicators used by the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) and the Cancer Council Victoria, Australia (CCV) to evaluate their services were associated with health-related empowerment.

Health-related empowerment in cancer: validity of scales from the health education impact questionnaire

Empowerment refers to an individual's feelings of being able to manage the challenges of the cancer experience and of having a sense of control over one's life. However, empowerment questionnaires that have been validated for the cancer setting are lacking. The objective of this study was to validate scales from the Health Education Impact Questionnaire (heiQ), which assesses the effects of health education programs among individuals with chronic conditions. The heiQ scales Social integration and support, Health service navigation, Constructive attitudes and approaches, Skill and technique acquisition, and Emotional distress were identified as key dimensions of empowerment for the cancer context.

How servant leadership influences organizational citizenship behavior: the roles of LMX, empowerment, and proactive personality

© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht While the link between servant leadership and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) has been established, the individual-level mechanisms underlying this relationship and its boundary conditions remain poorly understood. In this study, we investigate the salience of the mediating mechanisms of leader–member exchange (LMX) and psychological empowerment in explaining the process by which servant leaders elicit discretionary OCB among followers. We also examine the role of followers’ proactive personality in moderating the indirect effects of servant leadership on OCB through LMX and psychological empowerment. Analysis of survey data collected from 446 supervisor–subordinate dyads in a large Chinese state-owned enterprise suggests that while servant leadership is positively related to subordinate OCB through LMX, psychological empowerment does not explain any additional variance in OCB above that accounted for by LMX. Moderated mediation tests confirm the moderating effect of proactive personality through LMX. By providing a nuanced understanding of how and when servant leadership leads followers to go above and beyond their job role, our study assists organizations in deciding how to develop and utilize servant leaders in their organizations.

Empowerment effects across cultures

It is evident that empowerment is in widespread use as a management tool in international organisations. A comprehensive literature review identified that empowerment exists as two distinct constructs: relational empowerment and psychological empowerment. Building on this delineation, existing literature was used to develop a conceptual model of the antecedents and consequences of the two empowerment constructs. Furthermore, the impact of national culture was considered, resulting in a set of testable hypotheses concerning the cross-cultural differences in the relationships between empowerment and its antecedents and consequences. A quantitative study was undertaken to test the hypothesised conceptual model. Data were collected from India and the UK, via drop-off self-administered surveys from front-line employees of both an indigenous and multinational bank in the two cultures, achieving a total of 626 fully usable responses across the four samples. Rigorous scale development for all samples was undertaken and measurement invariance examined. Following this, the conceptual model was tested using latent variable path analysis. The results for the model were both encouraging and surprising. Similar results regarding the effects of relational empowerment and psychological empowerment were found across the two cultures. However, an examination of the antecedents to relational empowerment produced significantly different results across the cultures. Relational empowerment was found to have higher practical value as it had a significant positive effect on employee job satisfaction levels across both cultures.

Significados de empowerment psicológico na experiência de doença oncológica: Reiki como técnica promotora: Um estudo exploratório

Dissertação de Mestrado apresentada no ISPA – Instituto Universitário para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Psicologia especialidade de Psicologia Comunitária.

Perceção do empowerment dos enfermeiros numa organização de saúde

Introduction: O conceito de Empowerment na Enfermagem tem sido utilizado e analisado na literatura académica, conceito digno de exploração e interesse para os enfermeiros, chefes e gestores das organizações de saúde. A perceção dos Enfermeiros acerca do Empowerment é determinante nos resultados organizacionais, no aumento da autonomia profissional, no ganho do poder individual e coletivo e nos cuidados ao utente. Objetivos: Avaliar a perceção dos Enfermeiros acerca do Empowerment (Psicológico e Estrutural), identificar os fatores que influenciam essa perceção e analisar e refletir sobre as consequências dessa perceção. Métodos: Estudo quantitativo, numa amostra de 269 enfermeiros predominantemente o sexo feminino (76,6%), faixa etária entre os 21 e os 59 anos, cuja média das idades se situa nos 40,36 anos, 68,8% dos participantes licenciados, em exercício de funções num hospital da região da Beira Alta, Portugal. Resultados: Nos enfermeiros, a perceção de Empowerment Psicológico está relacionado com a perceção de empowerment Estrutural. Os enfermeiros com mais idade e maior tempo de exercício profissional revelaram maior competência e menor oportunidade. Os enfermeiros com maior tempo no atual serviço, apresentam maior competência, mas menor oportunidade, informação, suporte e globalmente, Empowerment Estrutural. Na categoria profissional há diferenças na informação, recursos e poder informal dos Enfermeiros Especialistas. Conclusão: Os Enfermeiros revelaram bons níveis de Empowerment Psicológico e baixos níveis de Empowerment Estrutural.