Structural Empowerment, Psychological Empowerment, and Work Engagement: A Cross-Country Study

Abstract

[Abstract] In this cross-country study we drew on job demands-resources theory to investigate whether psychological empowerment mediates the positive association between structural empowerment and work engagement and, consequently, task performance and intention to quit. A total of 1033 employees working in the service sector in Spain (N ¼ 515) and the United Kingdom (N ¼ 518) participated in the study. Multi-group structural equation modeling analyses revealed that psychological empowerment partially mediated the positive relationship between structural empowerment and work engagement, and that work engagement associated positively with task performance and negatively with intention to quit. Invariance analyses suggested that the positive link between psychological empowerment and work engagement was stronger for employees working in the UK than in Spain, providing support for partial structural invariance of the hypothesized model. These findings suggest that psychological empowerment is an underlying mechanism that may explain why structural empowerment relates positively to work engagement with implications for theory (i.e., extend the nomological network of the investigated constructs) and management practice (e.g., emphasize the role of structural empowerment for work design).