Empowerment and Employee Well-Being: A Mediation Analysis Study

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between structural and psychological empowerment and its effects on employees' psychological, physical, and social well-being. Despite the quantity of previously published works, empirical evidence about these relationships in the workplace is scarce. We developed a mediation model in which structural empowerment predicts employee well-being via psychological empowerment. We based our study on the EU-27 data from the 6th European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS). Data were collected from a questionnaire administered face-to-face to a random sample of employees and the self-employed representative of the working population in the European Union (number of valid responses in this study: 23,468). The effects of the relationships among the variables considered were evaluated using Partial Least Squares (PLS). Results indicate that structural empowerment was positively related to psychological empowerment, which was positively related to job satisfaction, work engagement, and social well-being. The expected relationships for work stress and physical well-being were not found.

Keywords: Europe; empowering leadership; empowerment at work; physical health; psychological health.

Figure 1

Simplified model representation. Values inside circles are R2. All paths are statistically significant. H3 was tested comparing direct paths from SE to well-being variables with the corresponding indirect paths (H1xH2a; H1xH2b and H1xH2c).