社会与工程心理学研究室知识库

通过回顾和总结领导行为与员工绩效的相关研究，我们发现授权赋能领导行为与员工绩效之间的关系存在争论。尽管有大量研究关注授权赋能领导行为对员工绩效的积极的预测作用，但现有研究多为横断面的研究，难以做出因果推论。此外有研究证实员工的高绩效能够引发管理者更多的授权赋能领导行为，并且也有学者提出现有的授权赋能领导行为与员工绩效关系的研究无法排除相反的因果关系以及互为因果关系的存在。而从社会交换的视角来看，工作自由度、工作支持等授权赋能领导行为和员工绩效分别为员工和领导所看重的资源，在领导与员工之间不断发生着社会交换。基于互惠原则，授权赋能领导行为作为一种领导的资源投入行为能够引发员工产生回报义务感，进而获取来自员工的绩效回报;同时员工表现出的更高的工作绩效作为一种资源投入行为能够引发领导产生回报义务感，进而使领导给予员工更多的自由度、支持等资源。本研究通过三个子研究对授权赋能领导行为与员工绩效之间的关系及其作用机制进行验证。

研究一旨在验证授权赋能领导行为与员工绩效之间的关系。基于180名企业员工以及其直接领导的三阶段重复测量问卷数据，多层交叉滞后模型检验结果表明授权赋能领导行为对员工绩效具有显著的正向滞后效应，而员工绩效对授权赋能领导的滞后效应不显著。两者之间的动态互惠关系未能验证。研究一的结果支持了假设1，即授权赋能领导行为对员工绩效具有正向的滞后影响。

研究二进一步从社会交换的视角探讨授权赋能领导行为对员工绩效影响的作用机制，基于171名企业员工及其直接领导的问卷调查数据，1-1-1中介模型检验的结果表明授权赋能领导行为能够通过使员工产生回报义务进而影响员工绩效。多层调节模型的结果未能支持员工情感信任对授权赋能领导行为与员工绩效之间间接效应的调节作用。

研究三的主要目的是探讨授权赋能领导行为与员工绩效之间的社会交换关系在周水平上的动态变化。并且本研究引入身份认同理论对授权赋能领导行为与员工绩效之间关系的作用机制进行进一步的探索。在研究三中，对于员工绩效的测量采用工作努力这个更容易捕捉到动态变化的指标。研究三为一个持续五周的经验取样设计，被试是来自于多种行业背景的企业员工，最终获得有效个案数100个，共计有效数据点336个。多层结构方程模型的结果显示周水平上授权赋能领导行为能够通过员工回报义务影响员工工作努力。并且该效应只在个体身份认同水平低的个体身上发生，而对于个体导向身份认同水平高的个体则该效应不显著。

本研究从社会交换视角探讨授权赋能领导行为与员工绩效之间的关系以及其背后的作用机制，具有重要的理论意义。首先，本研究从社会交换的视角验证了授权赋能领导行为的作用机制，为理解授权赋能领导行为与员工绩效的关系提供了新的解释。二是从身份认同导向与社会交换形式交互的视角验证了授权赋能领导行为与员工绩效之间发生社会交换的条件。此外，本研究具有一定的实践意义。在管理实践中，管理者授权赋能于员工有助于促进员工的工作绩效和工作努力程度，这一举措的效果在低个体身份认同的员工身上会更加明显。因此，管理者在实践中应注意管理方式的因人而异。

After reviewing and summarizing the relevant research on leadership behavior and employee performance, we find that the relationship between empowerment leadership behavior and employee performance is controversial. Although there are a lot of studies focusing on the positive role of empowerment leadership behavior on employee performance, the existing studies are mainly cross-sectional and thus difficult to make a causal inference. In addition, some studies have confirmed that the high performance of employees can lead to more empowering leadership behavior of their managers. Also, there are some scholars proposed that the existing research on the relationship between empowering leadership behavior and employee performance cannot exclude the existence of reversed causality and reciprocal causality. From the perspective of social exchange, empowering leadership behaviors such as work freedom, work support, and employee performance are the resources valued by employees and leaders respectively, and social exchange constantly occurs between leaders and employees. Based on the principle of reciprocity in social exchange theory, empowering leadership, as a kind of leader's resource input behavior, will cause employees to generate higher employee performance as a return. At the same time, employees' higher work performance, as a kind of resource input behavior, may cause leaders to give employees more freedom, support, and other resources as a return. In this study, three sub-studies were conducted to verify the relationship and mechanism between empowerment leadership and employee performance.

The first study aims to verify the reciprocal relationship between empowerment leadership behavior and employee performance. Based on the three-stage repeated measurement questionnaire data of 180 employees and their direct leaders, the results of multi-level cross-lagged model test show that empowering leadership behavior has significantly lagged positive effect on employee performance, while employee performance has no significant lagged effect on empowering leadership. The dynamic reciprocal relationship between them was not verified. The results of study 1 support hypothesis 1，that is, empowering leadership has a lagged positive effect on employee performance.

The second study further explores the mechanism behind the relationship between empowering leadership and employee performance from the perspective of social exchange. Based on the same sample data as study 1，the results of the 1-1-1 mediation model test show that empowering leadership behavior has a positive effect on the mediating role of employees felt obligation to return. However, the moderating role of affect-based trust was not supported.

The main purpose of the third study is to explore the dynamic nature of the social exchange relationship between empowering leadership behavior and employee performance at the weekly level. In this study, we introduced the identity theory to further explore the mechanism of the relationship between empowerment leadership behavior and employee performance. Through an empirical sampling design lasting for five weeks, a total of 100 effective cases, 336 effective data points were reached. The results of the multi-level structural equation model show that the empowering leadership behavior at the weekly level can affect employees' work effort through employees' obligation of return. And this effect only occurs in individuals with a low level of identity, but not in individuals with a high level of identity.

This study explores the relationship and mechanism between empowering leadership and employee performance from the perspective of social exchange, which is theoretical significance. First of all, we use cross-lagged design to verify the causal relationship between empowering leadership behavior and employee performance, which contributes to solving the dispute between the two. Secondly, this study provides a new perspective for understanding the effect of empowerment leadership behavior. Firstly, it verifies the mechanism of empowerment leadership behavior from the perspective of social exchange; secondly, it verifies the conditions of social exchange between empowering leadership behavior and employee performance from the perspective of identity orientation and social exchange. In addition, this study has some practical significance. In the management practice, the empowering of managers can help employees to improve their work performance and work hard. The effect of this measure will be more obvious in individuals with low personal identity. It is also indicated in this study that managers should pay attention to the different ways of management in practice in facing different employees.