LHS 24,3. Simon L. Albrecht and Manuela Andreetta School of Psychology and Psychiatry, Monash University, Caulfield, Australia

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1 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at LHS 24,3 228 Received 8 September 2010 Accepted 30 November 2010 The influence of empowering leadership, empowerment and engagement on affective commitment and turnover intentions in community health service workers Test of a model Simon L. Albrecht and Manuela Andreetta School of Psychology and Psychiatry, Monash University, Caulfield, Australia Abstract Purpose This study seeks to extend research on the relationship between empowering leadership, empowerment and outcome variables by examining the mediating role of employee engagement. More specifically, the study sets out to test whether employee engagement mediates the effects of empowering leadership and empowerment on affective commitment and turnover intention. Design/methodology/approach The sample on which conclusions are based consisted of 139 employees of a community health service. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equations modelling (SEM) were used to test the measurement and structural models proposed. Findings CFA showed acceptable fit indices for the measurement model after respecifying a reduced number of items for the explanatory variables. Structural equations modelling of a respecified model also yielded acceptable fit indices and showed that empowerment mediated the influence of empowering leadership on engagement. Engagement was shown to partially mediate the influence of empowerment on affective commitment, which in turn influenced turnover intentions. Research limitations/implications The use of cross-sectional self-report data suggests the need to replicate the findings in a longitudinal design with additional samples. Practical implications Results are discussed in terms of the importance of training and development initiatives aimed at promoting empowering leadership, empowerment and engagement in health service contexts. The results will be of interest to practitioners and researchers. Originality/value The research provides new insights in to the relationships between empowering leadership, empowerment, engagement, affective commitment and turnover intentions in health service contexts. Keywords Empowerment, Engagement, Leadership, Commitment, Turnover intention, Employees turnover Paper type Research paper Leadership in Health Services Vol. 24 No. 3, 2011 pp q Emerald Group Publishing Limited DOI / Introduction Organizations invest significant effort and resources to attract, select and retain conscientious, proactive, engaged and committed employees (Macey et al., 2009). There is therefore a need for ongoing research directed toward identifying the organizational

2 factors that best promote positive employee attitudes and behaviour and positive organizational performance. Consistent with this argument, the present research aimed to test a model (see Figure 1) which shows how empowering leadership influences employee empowerment, which in turn influences employee engagement, which in turn influences affective commitment and turnover intentions. The model is designed to provide an account of the direct and indirect mechanisms by which empowering leadership, empowerment and engagement influence affective commitment and turnover intentions. Figure 1 shows empowering leadership directly influencing psychological empowerment. Empowering leadership, drawing as it does from high-involvement management research (e.g. Lawler, 1993), emphasises the importance of leaders actively encouraging and enabling followers to lead themselves (Manz and Sims, 1987). Empowering leaders, by definition, attempt to empower their employees by providing them with, what is variously referred to as, autonomy, discretion, control, decision latitude or power. Examples of empowering leader behaviours include encouraging participative decision making, leading by example, sharing information, coaching, and demonstrating concern for employees (Pearce and Sims, 2002). In response to these behaviours, employees can be expected to feel more empowered and to have enhanced role-related feelings of contribution, control, competence, connectedness and meaningfulness. Somewhat surprisingly, despite the self-evident conceptual link between empowering leadership and empowerment, there has been limited empirical research linking empowering leadership and empowerment. Beyond its direct effect on empowerment, empowering leadership may also have indirect or downstream effects on engagement, affective commitment and turnover intentions. Avolio et al. (2004, p. 951) argued that while leadership, broadly defined, has been shown to be positively associated with work attitudes and behaviors at both an individual and organizational level [...] the mechanisms and processes by which... leaders exert their influence on their followers motivation and performance have not been adequately addressed in the literature. It is here argued that leadership, and more specifically empowering leadership, will indirectly influence follower commitment and turnover intention through psychological empowerment and employee engagement. In effect, empowerment and engagement function as two key psychological states (Schaufeli et al., 2006; Spreitzer, 1995) which serve as the mechanisms through which empowering leadership influences important outcomes such as employee commitment and turnover intentions. Such indirect, mediated or partially mediated effects can be extrapolated from previous research which has demonstrated significant relationships between empowering leadership and engagement (Ahmad et al., 2005), affective commitment (Pearce and Sims, 2002), and turnover intentions (Meyerson and Kline, 2008). The influence of empowering leadership 229 Figure 1. Proposed research model

3 LHS 24,3 230 Figure 1 shows employee empowerment having a direct influence on employee engagement. Interest in empowerment has increased over the years as organizations have become leaner, flatter, and structured with fewer layers of middle management. A number of different conceptualisations and measures of empowerment have emerged in the literature (e.g. Menon, 2001; Spreitzer, 1995). Spreitzer, drawing in part from Thomas and Velthouse (1990), conceptualised empowerment as a multidimensional construct consisting of four psychological states: impact, competence, meaningfulness and self-determination. Spreitzer (1995) argued that empowerment can best be conceptualised as a higher order construct which subsumes the four first order dimensions and which explains and accounts for the associations among the four psychological states. As per the modelling in Figure 1, there is research to support the direct influence of empowerment on engagement and its indirect influence on commitment and turnover intentions. Autonomy, one of the core dimensions of empowerment, has been identified in recent meta-analyses and reviews to be a robust predictor of work engagement (Halbesleben, 2010; Mauno et al., 2010). Self-efficacy, a construct similar to the competence dimension of empowerment, and meaningfulness have also been found to be associated with engagement (Halbesleben, 2010; May et al., 2004). There is, however, less evidence to support an association between impact and engagement, and similarly the association between empowerment, conceptualised as a higher order construct, and engagement has not been the subject of significant empirical research. There is however, a considerable amount of published research linking empowerment and commitment. Liden et al. (2000), for example, in a large study of service workers showed that affective commitment had moderate to strong associations with meaning (r ¼ 0:59), self-determination (r ¼ 0:43), and impact (r ¼ 0:42) but a les strong association with competence (r ¼ 0:16). Additionally, empowerment has been shown to have indirect effects on outcomes such as commitment (Avolio et al., 2004) and turnover intentions (Yang and Lee, 2009). There has been a very significant spike in academic and practitioner interest in employee engagement over the past five to ten years (Albrecht, 2010) and there is increasing evidence linking employee engagement to a range of important organizational outcome variables. Consistent with the modelling in Figure 1, employee engagement has been shown to influence affective commitment across a diverse range of occupations. Hallberg and Schaufeli (2006), for example, reported moderately strong correlations between engagement and commitment (r ¼ 0:46) within a sample of 176 Swedish ICT consultants and a sample of 150 police officers (r ¼ 0:55). Furthermore, and again consistent with the modelling in Figure 1, meta-analyses have firmly established a strong association between affective commitment and turnover intention. Meyer et al. (2002), drawing on the results from 24 studies with over 8,000 employees, reported a corrected correlation of r c ¼ 20:51 between the constructs. While the associations between turnover intentions and empowering leadership, empowerment and engagement have not been established as clearly, their association with commitment clearly suggests the plausibility of mediated or partially mediated effects. The above discussion aimed to integrate a number of lines of theoretical and empirical research to examine the separate and combined effects of empowering leadership, psychological empowerment, and employee engagement on affective

4 commitment and turnover intentions. Given the average correlation between turnover intention and actual turnover has been estimated to be between 0.38 (Griffin et al., 2000) and 0.65 (Tett and Meyer, 1993) and given that turnover imposes very significant costs and disruptions in healthcare contexts it remains important to identify the factors and processes which predict commitment and turnover intentions in the healthcare contexts. The proposed associations are modelled in Figure 1. Method Participants Survey data were collected from employees of a community health service delivering dental, community nursing, physiotherapy, counselling, speech therapy, psychology, social work and occupational therapy services across seven sites. Of the 424 surveys distributed to all employees, 158 (41 per cent) usable surveys were returned. Most respondents (110, 70 per cent) were female and 19 (12 per cent) were male. A total of 28 respondents did not record their gender. Most respondents (85 per cent) were aged between 29 and 40 years, were employed full-time (89 per cent). Respondents had an average organizational tenure of 4.1 years. The influence of empowering leadership 231 Measures Pearce and Sims (2002) six-item Empowering Leadership sub-scale was used to assess empowering leadership behaviours. The behaviours encompass the subscales of encouraging independent action, opportunity thinking, and self-development. An example item for encouraging independent action is: My manager encourages me to search for solutions without supervision. Responses were rated on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (Definitely not true) to 5 (Definitely true). Pearce and Sims advocated full scale scores be used to measure empowering leadership and reported an alpha of a ¼ 0:91 for the full scale. Spreitzer s (1995) 12-item scale was used to measure psychological empowerment. The scale consists of four dimensions, each containing three items: meaning (a ¼ 0:87), self-determination (a ¼ 0:81), competence (a ¼ 0:81), and impact (a ¼ 0:88). An example meaning item is: The work I do is meaningful to me. Responses were rated on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 5 (Strongly agree). Avolio et al. (2004) reported alpha coefficients of 0.84 and 0.75 for the full 12-item scale. Spreitzer provided evidence in support of conceptualising empowerment as a higher order construct. Employee engagement was measured with the nine-item form of the Utrecht work engagement Scale (Schaufeli et al., 2006). The UWES-9 measures absorption, dedication, and vigour on a seven-point scale from 1 (Never) to 7 (Always). A sample item is: I am immersed in my work. Alpha reliabilities higher than 0.90 have been reported for the full nine-item scale (Hallberg and Schaufeli, 2006; Schaufeli et al., 2006). Affective organizational commitment was measured with the six-item affective commitment scale from Allen and Meyer (1990). Responses were rated on a seven-point scale from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 7 (Strongly agree). A sample item is: I feel like a part of the family at this organization. Acceptable alpha reliability estimates have been reported for the scale (e.g. a ¼ 0:87 (Allen and Meyer, 1990)). Turnover intentions were measured with three items adapted from Seashore et al. (1982) and Vigoda-Gadot and Kupin (2005). A sample item is I am looking for a new

5 LHS 24,3 232 job outside this organisation. Stallworth (2003) reported an alpha of 0.87 for a similarly constructed scale. Results Measurement model As a first step in the analyses the dimensionality of the measurement model was tested with confirmatory factor analysis. An initial CFA using AMOS 7.0 and the raw data as the input, conducted on the 139 cases having no missing data on any of the variables of interest, showed that the competence dimension of empowerment did not significantly correlate with any of the other study variables. Competence was therefore omitted from subsequent analyses. The initial CFA also enabled identification of a reduced set of items that best reflected each construct of interest. Given that three items are sufficient to define a construct and given the modest sample size within which to run a quite complex structural equations model, a decision was taken to, where possible, reduce the number of items per construct and to model empowerment as a higher order construct. Having deleted some items on the basis of their low parameter loadings and on the basis of modification indices, the final respecified measurement model consisted of five latent constructs: (1) empowering leadership the three items highest loading items from the preliminary CFA; (2) a higher order empowerment factor indicated by the subscale means for autonomy, impact and self-determination; (3) engagement the six items comprising the two highest loading items for each of the three subscales; (4) affective commitment the three items highest loading items; and (5) turnover intentions the three original items. The CFA fit indices for the respecified five-factor measurement model provided acceptable fit to the data. While the Goodness of Fit Index (0.84) and the Normed Fit Index (0.86) did not achieve criterion levels, the Tucker-Lewis Index (0.91) exceeded the criterion value of 0.90 and the Comparative Fit Index matched the criterion value of The RMSEA point estimate (0.059) and its associated confidence intervals ( ) also suggested a good fitting model (MacCallum et al., 1996). In contrast, neither the null model nor a one-dimensional model, provided for purposes of comparison, yielded an acceptable fit to the data. Means, standard deviations, bivariate correlations, and Cronbach s alpha reliabilities, for all variables included in the respecified measurement model are reported in Table I. Consistent with the CFA results, the correlations, ranging from r ¼ 20:03 to 20.74, did not suggest threats to discriminant validity and all scales demonstrated acceptable alpha reliability. Structural model Structural equations modelling on the proposed model (see Figure 1) suggested a reasonably good fitting model: x 2 =df ¼ 1:654, GFI ¼ 0:84, NFI ¼ 0:86, CFI ¼ 0:93, RMSEA ¼ 0:070 ( ). All standardised path estimates representing the strength and direction of influence between the constructs, ranging from 0.36 to 20.77,

6 Variable M SD Empowering leadership Meaning ** 0.88 Self-determination ** 0.25 ** 0.82 Impact ** 0.22 ** 0.52 ** 0.90 Engagement ** 0.58 ** 0.38 ** 0.46 ** 0.93 Commitment ** 0.30 ** 0.35 ** 0.48 ** 0.58 ** 0.95 Turnover intent ** ** ** ** ** ** 0.75 Note: * p, 0:01 The influence of empowering leadership 233 Table I. Means, standard deviations, correlations, and Cronbach s alphas (on the diagonal)

7 LHS 24,3 234 were statistically significant. As shown in Figure 2, on the basis of modification indices, the path from empowerment to commitment was added to the proposed model. The respecified model provided a marginally better fit to the data compared to the proposed model: x 2 =df ¼ 1:610, GFI ¼ 0:86, NFI ¼ 0:88, CFI ¼ 0:94, RMSEA ¼ 0:067 ( ). Again, all path estimates were statistically significant, with all but one at p, 0:001. In addition empowering leadership, empowerment and engagement were found to exert significant indirect effects on commitment and/or turnover intentions. Overall, the squared multiple correlations showed that approximately 19 per cent of the variance in empowerment, 44 per cent of the variance in engagement, 51 per cent of the variance in affective commitment, and 59 per cent of the variance in turnover intentions was explained by the model. Discussion The results of the present study extend previous research findings by pointing toward a comprehensive understanding of how empowering leadership, empowerment and engagement inter-relate to influence affective commitment and turnover intentions in community health service workers. More specifically, the results indicate that when employees perceive that their leaders and managers have an empowering style of leadership they will feel empowered. Such feelings of empowerment will lead employees to feel motivated and engaged and also lead to feelings of connection and belongingness to their organization. Furthermore, when employees experience such affective commitment they will be less inclined to entertain thoughts of leaving the organization. Overall, the findings suggest that empowering leadership, empowerment and engagement provide the enabling conditions for employees to experience affective commitment and the propensity to stay engaged in their organizational context. Importantly, the results go some considerable way toward explaining the influence that empowering leadership may have on important outcome variables such as affective commitment and turnover intentions. In effect empowerment and engagement serve as explanatory variables helping us understand how leadership behaviour influences the attachment of health care employees to their organizational context. The results both extend and corroborate many previous findings in an expanded and theoretically grounded context. Beyond contributing an integrative model, the present research also makes a contribution to the literature with respect to the measurement of empowerment and engagement related constructs. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that respondents were clearly able to distinguish between the constructs and alpha reliabilities for each of the original and abbreviated measures met criterion levels. Such brief measures of Figure 2. Respecified model

8 these key constructs can therefore be used with a degree of confidence in future research settings. There are a number of practical implications that can be derived from the present findings. First, it appears that providing leaders and managers with empowering leadership training and development programs might have positive outcomes in terms of employee empowerment and employee engagement. By helping managers enhance employee decision-making, opportunity thinking, and self-development organizations can directly and indirectly increase employee engagement and commitment. Furthermore, the provision of empowerment programs, helping to facilitate employee cognitions about the meaning of work and making a difference will also promote employee engagement and affective commitment. Similarly, interventions aimed at developing employee engagement will likely result in increased commitment and reduced turnover in healthcare contexts. There is an increasing literature describing how to intervene at the individual, job and organizational levels to develop engagement (e.g. Schaufeli and Salanova, 2010). While the present research has provided new insights in to the relationships between empowering leadership, empowerment, engagement, affective commitment and turnover intentions, some limitations need to be acknowledged. Although rigorous confirmatory and structural modelling technologies were used, the cross-sectional data do not enable the determination of causal relations. Longitudinal analyses, preferably drawn over three time periods, would enable much stronger claims to be made about causality and potential reciprocality of influence among the variables. Additionally, given that all of the data were collected through self-report procedures, the usual caveats around common method variance apply. However, given that the measurement model demonstrated acceptable fit to the data, and given that the correlations between the measured constructs were moderate and varied quite considerably, the issue of common method variance appears not to be overly problematic. Overall, given the increasing status of empowerment and engagement in understanding the motivational underpinnings of employee work attitudes and behaviours additional research on a more fully elaborated model is indicated. The influence of psychological contract, transformational leadership, and procedural justice could be included in the model. The influence of personality variables such as extraversion, openness to experience, and altruism could also be modelled. Similarly, additional mediating variables such as positive mood and leader-member exchange could usefully be modelled. Researchers should also look to link such constructs with additional important outcome variables such as attitudes toward change and with more objectively defined criteria such as absence and turnover. Structural equations modelling within longitudinal designs would provide the most appropriate means of testing these potential relationships within alternative and expanded models. The influence of empowering leadership 235 References Ahmad, S.J., O Regan, N. and Ghobadian, A. (2005), Leadership, decision making and internal stakeholder engagement, International Journal of Management and Decision Making, Vol. 6 Nos 3-4, pp Albrecht, S.L. (Ed.) (2010), Handbook of Employee Engagement: Perspectives, Issues, Research and Practice, Edward Elgar Publishers, Cheltenham.

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