Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
888651 | Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes | 2012 | 14 Pages |
We examined how procedural fairness interacts with empowering leadership to promote employee OCB. We focused on two core empowering leadership types—encouraging self-development and encouraging independent action. An experiment revealed that leaders encouraging self-development made employees desire status information more (i.e., information regarding one’s value to the organization). Conversely, leaders encouraging independent action decreased employees’ desire for this type of information. Subsequently, a multisource field study (with a US and German sample) showed that encouraging self-development strengthened the relationship between procedural fairness and employee OCB, and this relationship was mediated by employees’ self-perceived status. Conversely, encouraging independent action weakened the procedural fairness-OCB relationship, as mediated by self-perceived status. This research integrates empowering leadership styles into relational fairness theories, highlighting that multiple leader behaviors should be examined in concert and that empowering leadership can have unintended consequences.
► We integrate empowering leadership into relational fairness models. ► Encouraging self-development instilled a wish for status information in a lab study. ► It also strengthened the procedural fairness–OCB link, via status, in a field study. ► Encouraging independent action decreased the desire for status information. ► It also weakened the procedural fairness-OCB link, via status.