Linking empowering leadership with workplace proactivity: the mediating role of psychological safety and knowledge sharing
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EBHRM-07-2021-0140 |
| Published date | 19 August 2022 |
| Date | 19 August 2022 |
| Pages | 177-195 |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Global HRM |
| Author | Abhishek Singh |
Linking empowering leadership
with workplace proactivity: the
mediating role of psychological
safety and knowledge sharing
Abhishek Singh
Indian Institute of Management Rohtak, Rohtak, India
Abstract
Purpose –This study aims to explore the association between empowering leadership and workplace
proactivity.
Design/methodology/approach –The data have been collected through questionnaires from both the
medical and non-medical staff members working in four National Accreditation Board for Hospitals &
Healthcare (NABH)–accredited private hospitals in India. Confirmatory factor analysis has employed test
reliability and validity and PROCESS MACRO (model 6) to test the proposed serial mediation model.
Findings –The results support the proposed hypotheses of the serial mediation model. Additionally, the
authors have also found that psychological safety is a strong mediating variable than knowledge sharing
between empowering leadership and workplace proactivity.
Research limitations/implications–The findings should be interpreted by considering the cross-sectional
research design and self-reported measures.
Practical implications –An organization can use the findings to promote employee proactivity at the
workplace.
Originality/value –The study makes an attempt to explore the underdeveloped relationship between
empowering leadership and workplace proactivity in the context of Indian NABH-accredited hospitals based
on the self-determination theory.
Keywords Empowering leadership, Psychological safety, Knowledge sharing, Proactivity,
Indian NABH-accredited hospitals
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
In the last decade, constructs such as empowerment, proactivity have gained a lot of research
attention in the service organization context because the empowered and proactive
employees can provide a competitive advantage to an organization (Grant and Ashford, 2008)
and may ensure the long-term survival of an organization in a volatile business environment
(Crant, 2000). Employees’proactive behavior at workplace is useful for themselves as well as
organizations (Parker et al., 2019). Employees’proactivity is likely to increase job capability
(Zhang and Edgar, 2021), reduce employees’perception of supervisor ostracism (Jahanzeb
et al., 2021), enrich work–family relationship (Cui and Zhang, 2021), increase employee
initiatives (Gorgijevski et al.,2019), enhance j ob crafting (Jiang et al.,2021), build
meaningfulness at work (Wong et al., 2020), develop career adaptability (Green et al., 2020),
augment firm profitability (Brulhart et al., 2019), bring organization change and development
(Presbitero and Teng-Calleja, 2017) and develop organizational resilience (Cruickshank,
2020). According to the proactivity literature, it can be concluded that employees’proactivity
not only helps to achieve an individual’s goals but also ensures the accomplishment of
organizational goals. Moreover, rapidly growing organizations face more business
challenges and issues every day than the average growing organizations (Barringer and
Jones, 2004). Due to rapid privatization and huge opportunities in the healthcare sector in
India, Indian healthcare organizations are growing very fast (Srinivasan and Chandwani,
Empowering
leadership and
workplace
proactivity
177
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/2049-3983.htm
Received 15 July 2021
Revised 17 March 2022
9 June 2022
Accepted 24 June 2022
Evidence-based HRM: a Global
Forum for Empirical Scholarship
Vol. 11 No. 2, 2023
pp. 177-195
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2049-3983
DOI10.1108/EBHRM-07-2021-0140
2014). Thus, individual proactivity can be very crucial for addressing the issues and
challenges of growing healthcare organizations. Therefore, it is important to study
employees’proactivity at workplace in the Indian healthcare organizations (see Figures 1
and 2).
The existing research studies on employees’workplace proactivity have suggested that
employees’proactive behavior is influenced by m ultiple factors such as individual
differences, contextual variables and motivational and goal processes (Parker et al., 2010,
2019). For example, employee workplace proactivity is influenced by perceived power (Pai
et al., 2021), job insecurity and commitment (Huang et al., 2021), peer coaching (Fey et al.,
2021), HRM system (Zhang and Edgar, 2021), employee emotions (Bindl, 2019), training and
development (Strauss and Parker, 2018), perceived overqualification (Zhang et al., 2016) and
work engagement and learning goal orientation (Maden, 2015). However, limited studies are
available in proactivity literature that explains the way in which employee proactivity
increases at workplace. Thus, this study aims to study the underlying mechanism through
which employee proactivity has increased at workplace.
Past researchers have reported that leadership is an important antecedent of an
individual’s proactivity at the workplace (do Nascimento et al., 2018;Cranmer et al., 2019;Li
et al., 2021). For this reason, employees’interaction with their leaders can influence their
perception, attitude and values, which might influence the motivational processes and may
increase or decrease employees’proactive behavior at workplace. For example, respectful
leadership (Vogt et al., 2021), empowering leadership (Jiang et al., 2021;JH Coun et al., 2021)
and transformational leadership (Wu and Wang, 2015) have positive impact on employees’
Psychological
safety
Knowledge
sharing
Workplace
proactivity
Empowering
leadership
(β = 0.591**)
(β = 0.606**)
(β = 0.640**) (β = 0.240**) (β = 0.277**)
(β = 0.287**)
(β = 0.150**)
Note(s): N = 294, **p < 0.01
Empowering
Leadership
Workplace proactivity
Empowering
leadership
Workplace
Proactivity
Psychological safety
Knowledge sharing
Figure 1.
Three-path
mediation model
Figure 2.
The sequential
mediation model
EBHRM
11,2
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