The bright and dark sides of empowerment: Linking psychological empowerment and job stressors to proactive and counterproductive work behaviors

Abstract

Recently, organizational scholars have stressed the importance of employee proactivity in today's dynamic and uncertain work environment. As such, research has investigated employee proactivity in two similar ways but disconnected ways. Whereas some research focuses on the psychological conditions that give rise to employee proactivity, other research investigates the behavioral manifestations of proactivity. This dissertation integrates the behavioral and psychological approaches to proactivity with a sample of 423 non-profit employees. I first developed a generic scale to represent personal, interpersonal, and organizational dimensions of proactive work behavior. Results indicate that the three proposed beneficiary dimensions of proactive work behavior are distinct from one another, yet together identify a higher-order category of proactive work behavior. Additional findings indicate that proactive work behaviors are empirically distinguishable from task, citizenship, and counterproductive work behaviors. Next, I develop a theoretical model that links psychological empowerment and job stressors to proactive and counterproductive work behaviors. These results indicate that challenge (hindrance) stressors are positively (negatively) associated with psychological empowerment. Additional findings revealed a positive association between psychological empowerment and proactive work behaviors, as well as interpersonal counterproductive work behaviors. Finally, the results suggest that psychological empowerment mediates the relationships between stressors and proactive work behaviors, but not counterproductive work behaviors.