The Effects Of Empowering Leadership On Self-efficacy

Previous research on the empowering leadership has mainly focused on its consequences and few on its applied situation. Under this situation, we put forward a process model to illustrate the relationship between empowerment and employees'self-efficacy, which tests the moderating role of person-job fit between empowering leadership and self-efficacy; this is the main contribution of this paper.With scientific method, this research carries the survey in the form of questionnaires. We set the target at the 227 frontline employees in 15 real estate enterprises in Shenzhen. The data is analyzed by SPSS 16.0 and AMOS 5.0. First, the reliability of the scales is processed. Then, the descriptive analysis and correlation analysis of the 3 variables are assessed as well as confirmatory factor analysis. Finally, two hypotheses are tested by regression analysis.This study arrives at two conclusions. First, empowering leadership is positively related to self-efficacy; second, the moderating effect of person-job fit is validated: empowering the employee with lower level of person-job fit is more effective in increasing their self-efficacy than those with higher level of person-job fit.The main theoretical significance of this research is that we investigate the context of empowering leadership and test its impact on employees'self-efficacy in different level of person-job fit. The main practical significance of this paper is that it provides constructive advice and implications for managers applying empowerment. Managers can consider implanting empowerment in employees with low level of person-job fit to strengthen their self-efficacy at work.