Multi-level And Dual-Path Mechanism Of Empowering Leadership Behavior In Predicting Employee Silence Behavior

Based on the conservation of resources theory,employee silence behavior happens because of lacking resource for voice,or perceiving voice as resource consumption,which can be reduced by supplement of resource.Empowering leadership behavior offers power and resource to employees so that it would help reduce silence.Taking into account the new "double-edged sword" view,this research explores the negative as well as positive effects of empowering leadership behavior on predicting employee silence behavior.Involving psychological empowerment and role ambiguity as the opposite mediating variables,we construct a two-way multilevel mediation model.A three-stage research design was conducted including final valid questionnaires from 247 employees in 67 teams in different industries.The empowering leadership behavior is aggregated into a team-level variable.We launched statistical analyses by SPSS and Mplus software including reliability and validity analysis,data aggregation analysis,descriptive analysis,correlation analysis and multi-level linear model analysis.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)Empowering leadership behavior negatively predicts employee silence behavior;(2)Employee psychological empowerment is positively predicted by empowering leadership behavior as also mediates the relationship between empowering leadership behavior and employee silence behavior;(3)Role ambiguity is positively predicted by empowering leadership behavior but fails to mediate the relationship between empowering leadership behavior on employee silence behavior,partially proving the "double-edged sword" effect.This research provides empirical support for the predicting mechanism of employee silence behavior from the conservation of resource theory perspective,confirming the positive effect of empowering leadership behavior on reducing silence behavior through enhancing psychological empowerment,partially verifying the existence of its "double-edged sword" effect for increasing role ambiguity,providing direction for future negative effect exploring as well as guidance for organizations practice to reduce silence behaviors in perspectives of leadership.