In the current context of work, where productivity is a priority, companies look for solutions to promote this productivity, but sometimes at the expense of workers’ health. These last decades, health at work has been highlighted and must be assured by employers. In order to reconcile performance and employees’ health – by reducing their job strain level -, nowadays, different directions can be investigated: the development of an affective organizational commitment and the implement of an empowering leadership.
Job strain is a concept firstly developed by Karasek (1979). It refers to the interaction of strong job demands (i.e., job demands are linked to stressors like work load or intensity) and a weak level of job decision latitude (i.e., autonomy in work, employees can participate to decision taking, apply and develop their competences). Later, Karasek and Theorell (1990) improved the model and added a third dimension, the social support which means that if people do not perceive a social support from their colleagues and hierarchy, job strain level is increased.
According to Meyer and Allen (1991), affective organizational commitment refers to employee’s emotional attachment, to his identification and his involvement to the organization (Meyer & Allen, 1991). Many researchers proved that this form of commitment has benefits both for employees (e.g., less stress and family conflicts) and companies (e.g., better performance and productivity, lower level of turnover).
Empowering leadership is a complex concept and it does not have a consensual definition. However, it is admitted that this form of leadership is characterized by managers who give meaning to work, have faith in their subordinates, foster good relationships with them. Moreover, employees’ autonomy and responsibilities are developed, they can participate to decisions making, they are recognized and their skills are enhanced (Arnold, Arad, Rhoades, & Drasgow, 2000 ; Boudrias & Savoie, 2006). This managerial practice has effects that are relevant for the worker and the organization: a better job satisfaction (Boudrias & Savoie, 2006), a better performance (Vecchio, Justin & Pearce, 2010), a decrease of the impact of negative stressors (e.g. ambiguous roles) and a protection of employees’ innovation potential (Ahmed-Yahia, Montani & Courcy, 2017).
Starting from this review of the literature, we made three hypothesis. More precisely, we hypothesized that empowering leadership is positively linked to affective organizational commitment (hypothesis 1), that affective organizational commitment is negatively correlated with job strain (hypothesis 2), and that job strain level is lower with an empowering leadership and an affective organizational commitment (hypothesis 3).
In order to assess these three variables, we circulated a questionnaire on line through Google Form to 272 people, who have at least 18 years old, without taking into account their profession. We used a questionnaire which contained three scales: The Job Content Questionnaire (Karasek & Theorell, 1990), the scale of empowering leadership (Ahearne, Mathieu & Rapp, 2005) and the scale of organizational commitment (Meyer & Allen, 1991). We made statistics test on data collected to verify our hypothesis: Pearson correlations (first hypothesis), a Student’s T-test (second hypothesis), and a logistic regression (third hypothesis).
Analyzes on data indicate three interesting results. Firstly, affective organizational commitment is higher when empowering leadership is strong. In fact, factors which facilitate the development of an affective organizational commitment correspond to characteristics of empowering leadership. Secondly, job strain is less strong when people are committed. Indeed, affective organizational commitment has a “buffer effect” on job strain, therefore employees perceive or feel less work stressors (Schmidt, 2007). Thirdly, job strain is lower with an affective organizational commitment and an empowering leadership, since workers have more job decision latitude with this managerial practice, and according to Karasek (1979), when we increase the level of decision latitude, job strain is reduced. Nevertheless, several limits and biases were identified during this study like a non-homogeneity between the number of men (n = 81) and women (n = 191) and an empowering leadership scale which is not appropriate for all workers.
To conclude, results are interesting for organizations. Indeed, when a manager adopt an empowering leadership, affective organizational commitment seems to be stronger, knowing that this form of commitment has positive effects for the organization and employees. Consequently, directors could participate to the economic health of their company and at the same time, they could promote psychosocial risks, especially stress. However, despite benefits of empowering leadership, it is also important to consider its limits. It can be argued that employees may not find satisfaction in having decision-making power, more responsibility or autonomy. In addition, it must be ensured that, for example, participation in decisions is not superficial, in other words that opinions of employees are really taken into account.
769 Words
Key words: Organizational commitment ; Affective organizational commitment ; Empowering leadership ; Job strain
Bibliography
Ahearne, M., Mathieu, J., & Rapp, A. (2005). To empower or not to empower your sales force? An empirical examination of the influence of leadership empowerment behavior on customer satisfaction and performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(5), 945-955.
Ahmed-Yahia, N., Montani, F., & Courcy, F. (2017). Le rôle des stresseurs sur le comportement d’innovation : Quand le leadership habilitant du supérieur protège le potentiel d’innovation des travailleurs. Psychologie du Travail et des Organisations. doi: 10.1016/j.pto.2017.05.005.
Arnold, J. A., Arad, S., Rhoades, J.A., & Drasgow, F. (2000). The empowering leadership questionnaire: The construction and validation of a new scale for mesuring leader behaviors. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 21, 249-269.
Boudrias , J., & Savoie, A. (2006). Les manifestations comportementales de l’habilitation au travail: développement d’un cadre conceptuel et d’un instrument de mesure. Psychologie du Travail et des Organisations, 12(2), 119-138.
Karasek, R. A. (1979). Job demands, job decision latitude, and mental strain: Implications for job redesign. Administrative Science Quarterly, 24(2), 285-308.
Karasek, R.A., & Theorell, T. (1990). Healthy Work: stress, productivity, and the reconstruction of the working life. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Meyer, J. P., & Allen, N. J. (1991). A three-component conceptualization of organizational commitment. Human Resource Management Review, 1(1), 61-89.
Schmidt, K. H. (2007). Organizational commitment: A further moderator in the relationship between work stress and strain?. International Journal of Stress Management, 14(1), 26-40.
Vecchio, R. P., Justin, J. E., & Pearce, C. L. (2010). Empowering leadership: An examination of mediating mechanisms within a hierarchical structure. The Leadership Quarterly, 21(3), 530-542.
« Words I have learned »:
– “empowering leadership” : « leadership habilitant » or « leadership d’habilitation » (however, it does not exist a faithful translation in French for this concept)
– “foster [sth]” : « encourager/ favoriser »
– “self-reliant” : « autonome » (word discovered in this sentence : “a set of behaviors that educate team members and help them to become self-reliant”)
– “to buffer [sth]” : « amortir/ avoir un effet de « tampon » »
– “willingness” : « volonté » (word discovered in this sentence: “the more employees receive developmental support from empowering leaders, the more they will likely have a favorable exchange relationship with the leader or organization, developing positive mood and feelings of obligation, willingness to emotionally bond with their organization”)
– “Accountable” : « Responsable » (word discovered in this sentence: “Empowering leadership […] lead team members to feel more personally accountable and emotionally engaged with work processes and outcomes in their team and organization”)