A Study On The Influence Mechanism Of Employee's "Ethics" And"Ability" On Empowering Leadership Behavior

In today's increasingly competitive society,empowering is not only a common management method used by organizational managers,but also an important means that can enhance competitiveness of organizations.The important difference between empowering leadership and other types of leadership(e.g.transformational leadership,supportive leadership,transactional leadership,etc.)is that empowering leaders pay more attention to sharing power with subordinates in order to help subordinates self-lead themselves,make autonomous decisions and finish jobs independently.To improve flexibility,efficiency and their competitiveness,enterprises need to cultivate empowering leaders with a sense of power sharing and willingness to display empowering behavior.The academia has gradually shifted her researching focus from the influencing mechanism of empowering leadership to the antecedents of empowering leadership,but at present the research on antecedents of empowering leadership is relatively single and scattered,mainly from the perspective of managers.In the context of China,this study took rooted theoretical research method and constructed a CWS(“I can”,“I am willing to”,“I should”)model to define the influencing factors of empowering leadership behavior-.Based on CWS model and according to Chinese traditional view on“ethics” and “ability”,this study tested the relationship between employee's "ethics"(employee's ethical behavior),“ability”(employee's job performance)and empowering leadership behavior.The author tested the hypotheses proposed in the conceptual model using data collected from 420 employees and their supervisors in 11 hotels in Xiamen,Quanzhou,Fuzhou,Which are located in Fujian Province.The results of data analysis indicated that(1)Employees' ethical behavior and job performance have significant positive effect on empowering leadership behavior,and leader's trust in employees partially mediates the relationship between them;(2)The leader's power risk considerations moderates the relationship between leader's trust in employees andempowering leadership behavior.That is,in the case of low power risk considerations,there has a stronger positive relationship between leader's trust in employees and empowering leader behavior.According to the qualitative and quantitative research,this study puts forward four suggestions about how to cultivate empowering leadership for enterprises:(1)to establish and improve the supervision mechanism,prevent the abuse of employee's power;(2)to strengthen staff training,and improve employee's ability in all aspects;(3)to establish a trust relationship between leaders and subordinates;(4)to create a good environment for empowering.Finally,a discussion of the findings,a summary of conclusions,a statement of the theoretical contribution,managerial implication,and the limitations of the present study,and suggestions for future research.