Does Leader Empowering Behavior Promote Or Discourage Employee Voice Behavior?

To cope with the complex and dynamic competitive environment,organizations require both leaders to show more empowering behaviors and employees to show more voice behaviors.Leader empowering behavior is often considered an effective measure to mobilize employees’ enthusiasm and initiative.Nevertheless,more and more research conclusions and management practices have shown that empowering does not always work,and employees are not always happy to be authorized.Under such circumstances,can organizations always achieve a win-win situation between empowering and voice?The literature review shows that existing research lacks the discussion on the negative impact mechanism of leader empowering behavior inhibiting employee voice behavior.Based on this,this study explores the specific effects of leader empowering behavior on employee voice behavior from the perspective of stress interaction theory,in which stress appraisal is an important mechanism of action in the relationship between the two.In addition,this study also investigates the boundary conditions of the relationship between leader empowering behavior and stress appraisal by introducing a moderating focus as a moderating variable,and finally constructs a mediating model of a moderated double-edged sword.Through both online(Credamo)and offline methods,this study conducted a two-stage questionnaire survey on 273 employees in the enterprise,and used SPSS 22.0 and Mplus 7.4 to conduct statistical analysis on the recovery data and verify the research hypothesis.The following conclusions were drawn:(1)Stress from leader empowering behavior can be assessed as challenging and hindering by different employees at the same time,and challenge appraisal has a facilitating effect on employee voice behavior,while hinderance appraise has an inhibiting effect on employee voice behavior.(2)Stress appraisal is an important mechanism for linking leader empowering behavior and employee voice behavior.Challenge appraisal and hinderance appraisal play a special mediating role("suppressing effects")between the two.(3)Moderating focus moderates the relationship between leader empowering behavior and stress appraisal,and further moderates the mediating role of stress appraisal between leader empowering behavior and employee voice behavior.Compared to employees with low levels of promotion regulatory focus,employees with high levels of promotion regulatory focus had a stronger positive effects of their leader empowering behavior and challenge appraisal,and a stronger the mediating role of challenge appraisal between leader empowering behavior and employee voice behavior.Compared to employees with low levels of prevention regulatory focus,employees with high levels of prevention regulatory focus had a stronger positive effects of their leader empowering behavior and hindrance appraisal,and a stronger the mediating role of hindrance appraisal between leader empowering behavior and employee voice behavior.This study theoretically enriches the research on leader empowering behavior in the Chinese context and provides a more complete perspective and a more integrated framework on the relationship between leader empowering behavior and employee voice behavior.The findings have implications for how organizations can apply empowerment more rationally,how employees can cope with stress more effectively,and how organizations can gain more voice and other beneficial behaviors.