‘To empower or not to empower, that’s the question’. Using an empowerment process approach to explain employees’ workplace proactivity

Figures & data

Table 1. Overview descriptive, reliability and convergent validity scores.

	Actual range	Mean	Standard deviation	Cronbach’s alpha	AVE
Workplace proactivity	1.71 − 5.00	3.44	0.52	0.85	0.50
Workplace flexibility	1.33–7.00	5.50	1.26	0.79	0.71
Professional autonomy	1.75–6.88	4.95	1.01	0.88	0.54
Access to knowledge via ICT	2.00 − 7.00	5.79	0.79	0.73	0.56
Empowering leadership	1.36 − 5.00	3.85	0.52	0.95	0.50
Psychological empowerment	2.25 − 7.00	5.13	0.88	0.87	0.50

Table 2. Correlations.

Construct	PWB	WF	PA	AICT	EL	PE
Workplace proactivity (PWB)	0.70
Workplace flexibility (WF)	0.29**	0.84
Professional autonomy (PA)	0.29**	0.71**	0.74
Access to knowledge via ICT (AICT)	0.17**	0.53**	0.53**	0.75
Empowering leadership (EL)	0.12	0.24**	0.24**	0.29**	0.71
Psychological empowerment (PE)	0.24**	0.48**	0.73**	0.48**	0.28**	0.71

Note. ^**p < 0.01 numbers shown in boldface denote the square root of the average variance extracted.

Table 3. Structural relationships with path coefficients (γ) and predicting power f² .

	f ^2 values	Coefficient (γ)	T statistics	P values	Hypothesis tested
Workplace flexibility -> workplace proactivity	0.01	0.09	1.14	0.256	1a
Professional autonomy -> workplace proactivity	0.02	–0.19	2.15	0.031	1b
Access to knowledge via ICT -> workplace proactivity	0.01	–0.08	1.29	0.196	1c
Empowering leadership -> workplace proactivity	0.00	–0.01	0.20	0.845	2
Workplace flexibility -> psychological empowerment	0.01	–0.11	1.95	0.051	3a
Professional autonomy ->psychological empowerment	0.53	0.71	13.74	0.000	3b
Access to knowledge via ICT-> psychological empowerment	0.02	0.13	2.11	0.035	3c
Empowering leadership -> psychological empowerment	0.02	0.11	2.64	0.008	4
Psychological empowerment -> workplace proactivity	0.26	0.65	10.52	0.000	5
Workplace flexibility -> psychological empowerment -> workplace proactivity		–0.07	1.92	0.054	6a
Professional autonomy -> empowerment -> workplace proactivity		0.46	8.80	0.000	6b
Access to knowledge via ICT-> psychological empowerment -> workplace proactivity		0.08	1.98	0.048	6c
Empowering leadership -> psychological empowerment -> workplace proactivity		0.07	2.55	0.011	7

Table 4. Interactions HRM practices and empowering leadership and the relation with workplace proactivity.

	Coefficient (γ)	SD	T statistics	P values
Professional autonomy × empowering leadership -> workplace proactivity	–0.02	0.09	0.15	0.88
Access to knowledge via ICT × empowering leadership -> workplace proactivity	0.03	0.06	0.48	0.63
Workplace flexibility × empowering leadership -> workplace proactivity	0.05	0.09	0.46	0.65

Table 5. Interactions HRM practices and empowering leadership and the relation with psychological empowerment.

	Coefficient (γ)	SD	T statistics	P values
Professional autonomy × empowering leadership -> psychological empowerment	0.09	0.05	1.71	0.09
Access to knowledge via ICT × empowering leadership -> psychological empowerment	–0.031	0.05	0.69	0.49
Workplace flexibility × empowering leadership -> psychological empowerment	–0.07	0.04	1.80	0.07

Figure 1. Research model. HRM practices (workplace flexibility, professional autonomy, access to knowledge via ICT), empowering leadership, psychological empowerment and workplace proactivity.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to restrictions e.g. their containing information that could compromise the privacy of research participants.

Figure 1. Research model. HRM practices (workplace flexibility, professional autonomy, access to knowledge via ICT), empowering leadership, psychological empowerment and workplace proactivity.