Interactional justice and cognitive rumination explain effects of empowering leadership on home life

Abstract

Based on conservation of resources theory, the present study examines a serial mediation model in which empowering leadership predicts the nature of work-home interfaces via cognitive states and processes (interactional justice and work rumination). Two waves of data with a one-month interval were obtained from 195 full-time Korean employees. Structural equation modeling assessed mediation, first by two forms of interactional justice (interpersonal and informational) and then by two forms of work rumination (positive and negative). The results generally supported the mediation model showing that empowering leaders helped subordinates’ work-home enrichment, because they enhanced both interpersonal and informational justice, resulting in positive rumination about their work experiences. Empowering leaders also helped reduce subordinates’ work-home conflict through enhancing informational justice, which made employees ruminate less about negative aspects of work during off-job time. Testing alternative models that added more direct paths did not improve model fit. Overall, the study contributed to understanding the underlying cognitive mechanisms explaining the effect of empowering leadership on work-home spillover.

Keywords:

• empowering leadership
• interactional justice
• work rumination
• work-home interface
• spillover

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.