The Double-edged Sword Effect Of Empowering Leadership On Service Performance

The external environment is constantly changing,and enterprises face increasingly fierce competition.The centralized leadership style no longer meets the needs of the rapid development of modern enterprises.The empowering leadership pattern characterized by encouraging employees’ to self-management,self-leadership and participation in goal setting” came in.With the rapid development of the service industry on a global scale,the service performance level of employees increasingly affects customer satisfaction and loyalty,and determines the performance level of the organization.Therefore,how to improve the service performance of employees in the service industry become a hot spot in the theoretical and practical circles.It has been found that empowering leadership is one of the pivotal approaches to improve employees’ service performance,and it has been proved that the empowering leadership has a positive impact on subordinate job performance.However,leadership style often has two sides,and empowering leadership is no exception.According to the Conservation Of Resource Theory(COR),for employees,the leadership empowerment behavior is a resource for them.On the one hand,the resource supply by the empowering leaders can motivate employees to work,and then produce positive psychology,such as thriving at work.On the other hand,the leadership empowerment behavior increase the employees’ responsibility and burden,which could lead to role overload.Therefore,based on the COR,this study explores the double-edged sword effect of empowering leadership on subordinate service performance from the perspectives of thriving at work(positive impact)and role overload(negative impact).The main research contents include: the relationships among empowering leadership,thriving at work and role overload;the relationships among thriving at work,role overload and service performance;the double mediating effect of thriving at work and role overload;the regulating effect of skill variety(job characteristics)and proactive personality(personality traits).Previous studies found that leadership empowerment behaviors,employees’ service performance,thriving at work and role overload are variable.The leadership behavior perceived by the employees in the workplace and employees’ attitudes and behaviors fluctuate every day.Therefore,it is necessary to use the diary study to collect data and test the hypothetical model.In this study,a state-owned expressway company was selected as the research unit,and the front-line service employees(including toll collectors,team leaders and members in service areas,etc.)were taken as subjects.Data were collected once a day for 10 consecutive working days,and 1320 valid questionnaires from 132 employees were collected.Through data analysis and hypothesis verification,the conclusions are as follows: daily empowering leadership has a positive impact on daily thriving at work and daily role overload of subordinate staff;daily thriving at work has a positive impact on daily service performance;daily role overload has a negative impact on daily service performance;daily thriving at work of subordinate staff plays an mediating role between daily empowering leadership and subordinate daily service performance;daily role overload of subordinates plays an mediating role between daily empowering leadership and daily service performance of subordinates;skill variety plays a moderating role in the relation between empowering leadership and employees’ thriving at work;more skill variety indicates that the regulating effect plays a bigger role,and vice versa;skill variety plays a moderating role in empowering leadership and role overload,more skill variety delivers a stronger moderating effect,and vice versa;skill variety regulates the mediating effect of thriving at work,empowering leadership and employee service performance: increasing skill variety delivers a stronger mediating effect,and vice versa;skill variety regulates the mediating effects among role overload,empowering leadership and employee service performance: increasing skill variety deliverers a stronger mediating effect,and vice versa;proactive personality plays a regulating role between empowering leadership and employees thriving at work,a higher degree of proactive personality delivers stronger regulating effect,and vice versa;proactive personality plays a regulating role in empowering leadership and role overload of employee,a higher degree of proactive personality delivers a stronger regulating effect,and vice versa;proactive personality regulates the mediating effect of employees’ thriving at work,daily empowering leadership and daily service performance: a higher degree of proactive personality brings stronger mediating effect,and vice versa.The theoretical significance of this study: First,it verifies the double-edged sword effect of empowering leadership on subordinate service performance.Research on the relationship between empowering leadership and employees’ attitudes and behaviors has attracted much attention.At first,scholars confirmed that empowering leadership has a positive effect on individual attitude,behavior and performance,such as job involvement,innovation,organizational citizenship behavior,and performance level.However,leadership style often has two sides,even empowering leadership is no exception.With the deepening of the research on empowering leadership,its negative effects have also attracted scholars’ attention.Based on the COR,this study verified the double-edged sword effect of empowering leadership on subordinate service performance from two paths: thriving at work(value-added spiral,positive impact)and role overload(loss spiral,negative impact).Previous studies mostly focused on the positive effects of empowering leadership,ignoring the negative effects or carried out research on the influence of empowering leadership on employees from a single dimension.This study explores the positive and negative effects of empowering leadership,and constructs a “double-edged sword” influencing mechanism of empowering leadership on subordinate service performance.Secondly,it expands the transmission mechanism of empowering leadership to subordinate performance.In the past,most studies explored the influence of empowering leadership on subordinate performance from the perspectives of intrinsic motivation,self-efficacy,identity perception and psychological empowerment.Given the shortcomings of previous studies,this study also discusses the promotion effect of empowering leadership on employee service performance through thriving at work and the inhibition effect of empowering leadership on employee service performance through role overload.It explores the transmission mechanism of empowering leadership on subordinate service performance from two paths,and finds a new key to open the black box between empowering leadership and employee service performance,and it also expands the research approach of empowering leadership theory.Thirdly,it reveals the boundary conditions of the mechanism of empowering leadership’s influence on service performance.Situational conditions can explain the inconsistent phenomena and rules in the mechanism of empowering leadership effect on employee service performance.Job characteristics and personality traits are the common boundary conditions of the influencing mechanism of employee performance,but they have not been verified in researches on the influencing mechanism of empowering leadership on employee service performance.On the one hand,with different job characteristics,the effect of empowering leadership is different;on the other hand,different personality traits have different responses to leadership empowerment.Therefore,this study explores the boundary conditions of the mechanism of empowering leadership on service performance from the perspectives of job characteristics(skill variety)and personality traits(proactive personality),which more accurately explains the inconsistent research conclusions in the mechanism of empowering leadership on employee service performance.Fourthly,it enriches the research methods of empowering leadership theory.Most of the existing empirical studies on leadership empowerment behaviors are measured at a single time point,but the leadership empowerment behavior varies according to the actual situation every day,so it is difficult to accurately describe the influence of leadership empowerment behavior by single time point measurement.At present,in the empirical research on the service performance level of empowering leaders or employees,the static data collection method is mostly adopted,while the dynamic diary study method is used to study the influencing mechanism of empowering leadership and service performance in this study.Previous studies have shown that leadership empowerment behaviors are changing almost every day,which should be adjusted according to different organizational situations,team atmosphere,subordinate abilities and job characteristics.Therefore,this study adopts the dairy study method,which can more accurately explore the changing rules of empowering leadership and enrich the research methods of empowering leadership theory.The practical significance of this study: First,for leaders,it provids new working ideas to their scientific leadership empowerment behavior.According to the double-edged sword effect of empowering leadership,organizations should adopt the differentiated management method of “loose and tight management”.Organizations should not only include leadership empowerment behavior into their management method,but also be skilled at what they do.Secondly,it provids new solutions for effectively improving service performance.On the one hand,organizations should always pay attention to the stress management of employees and remove their mental barriers.On the other hand,organizations should enhance employees’ thriving at work and positive psychology.Thirdly,it provids a new theoretical basis for “person-post matching” in management practice.To achieve “person-post matching”,it is necessary to conduct in-depth research on the personality traits of employees and the job characteristics of posts.In terms of personality traits of employees,organizations should make good use of the staff and give full play to employees with high proactive personality.In terms of job characteristics,organizations should adapt to local conditions and grant different levels of rights according to different job characteristics.The innovation of this study is as follows: First,the novelty of the research perspective.This study explores the influencing mechanism of empowering leadership on employees service performance from both positive and negative perspectives.Most previous studies only discussed the influence of empowering leadership on employees’ behavior and attitude from the positive perspective,while the negative influence of the empowering leadership was not discussed enough,let alone the positive and negative influences in a simultaneous way.This study transcends limitations of the previous single research perspective,and discusses the positive impact(thriving at work)and negative impact(role overload)of empowering leadership on employees’ service performance from two perspectives.Second,the pioneering research content.This study explores the new transmission mechanism and boundary conditions between empowering leadership and employee service performance.On the one hand,this study constructs a dual mediation model of thriving at work and role overload,which broadens the transmission path between empowering leadership and employee service performance.On the other hand,this study also confirms the regulating role of job characteristics(skill variety)and personality traits(proactive personality)in the mechanism of empowering leadership’s influence on employee service performance,and broadens the research scope of its boundary conditions.Third,the innovation of research methods.Most of the existing empirical studies on leadership empowerment are measured by static data collection at single-point,which is difficult to accurately describe the influence of leadership empowerment.In this study,the dynamic dairy study is used to study the influencing mechanism of empowering leadership and service performance,which can more accurately explore the changing rules of empowering leadership and enrich the research methods of empowering leadership theory.