The Relationship Between Psychological

Original Article

The Relationship Between Psychological Empowerment and Innovative Behavior A Dimensional Analysis With Job Involvement as Mediator Manjari Singh1 and Anita Sarkar2 1

Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India, XLRI School of Business and Human Resources, Jamshedpur, India

2

Abstract. Past studies have established the importance of psychological empowerment in fostering innovative behavior. This paper broadens the conceptual understanding by exploring the mechanisms of this linkage through dimensional analysis. The study also examines the mediating role of job involvement in this relationship. In this study of 401 women primary school teachers in India, the dimensions of psychological empowerment were self-rated whereas innovative behavior and job involvement were assessed by colleagues. Our findings show partial mediation for the meaning dimension and complete mediation for the non-work domain control dimension. Self-determination at job and organization levels have a direct effect on employees’ innovative behavior but no effect through job involvement. Competence and impact has no direct or indirect effect on innovative behavior. Keywords: innovative behavior, job involvement, psychological empowerment

Employee innovative behavior acts as preemptive resource for organizational sustenance and development. Studies (Ghani, Hussin, & Jusoff, 2009; Knol & Linge, 2009; Spreitzer, 1995) have empirically found that psychological empowerment promotes innovative behavior. Psychological empowerment being multi-dimensional (Thomas & Velthouse, 1990), there is need to examine the relationship of its individual dimensions with innovative behavior. Some critical questions that should get focus are: Are all dimensions linked to work behaviors? Do some dimensions have stronger influence on certain behaviors as compared to others? What are the causes for such variations? What are the theoretical and managerial implications of these variations? Such a study also becomes important because dimensions of psychological empowerment are context-specific and may vary across culture, geographies, industries, and jobs (Hancer, 2005; Hancer, George, & Kim, 2005). Earlier evidence of variation in the outcomes of dimensions (Spreitzer, Kizilos, & Nason, 1997) further emphasized the need for dimensional analysis. Studies have linked the dimensions of psychological empowerment to job involvement and authors (e.g., Amabile, 1988) have conceptualized that job involvement fosters innovation. However, to our knowledge, no study has examined the mediating role of job involvement from Ó 2012 Hogrefe Publishing

this perspective. This role is vital because less empowered individuals perfunctorily follow instructions to do the assigned work and job activities are not of central interest to them. In such situations they will not be innovative in their work. Job involvement gains further significance when considered from the perspective of the Gender Model (Feldberg & Glenn, 1979) that women give priority to family issues over work issues, particularly in the cultural context of India and other countries that have significant gender gap.

Innovative Behavior and Dimensions of Psychological Empowerment Innovative behavior can be defined as an employee’s ability to promote and seek new ideas, and attempts to build support for implementation of these ideas (Scott & Bruce, 1994). This differs from creativity, which denotes generation of new ideas by employees (Amabile, 1988) and is a critical driver for innovative behavior (Slatten & Mehmetoglu, 2011). Innovation entails idea generation, coalition building, idea realization, and transfer or diffusion of ideas at individual or group level (Kanter, 1988).

Journal of Personnel Psychology 2012; Vol. 11(3):127–137 DOI: 10.1027/1866-5888/a000065

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M. Singh & A. Sarkar: Psychological Empowerment and Innovative Behavior

Psychological empowerment is defined as employee experienced powerfulness (Menon, 2001). Thomas and Velthouse’s (1990) cognitive model of empowerment supported Conger and Kanungo’s (1988) theory of empowerment as a motivational construct. This got further refined by Spreitzer (1995) who developed the measures for the four workplace-related cognitions, that is, meaning, competence, impact, and self-determination. Meaning is alignment of individual’s value system with her/his work. Competence is the belief in one’s own ability to do the work and is conceptually similar to Bandura’s (1977) self-efficacy. Impact is the influence an individual believes s/he has made through her/his work. Self-determination is the scope for decision-making/ autonomy over one’s own work. In teachers’ context (Short & Rinehart, 1992), self-determination at job level is distinct from self-determination at organization level. Former is related to employee’s ability to exercise authority and take decisions at immediate job level and is similar to the autonomy dimension of Hackman and Oldham’s (1980) Job Characteristics Model; latter is based on employee’s participation in decision-making at broader organizational level and is analogous to the decision-making dimension of the teacher empowerment scale (also known as School Participant Empowerment Scale). Control in non-work domain shows employee’s ability to take decisions at household and immediate community level (Schulz, Israel, Zimmerman, & Checkoway, 1993). Thomas and Velthouse’s (1990) ‘‘global assessment construct’’ has considered self-determination from life in general. Nonwork domain cannot be ignored because individuals may not differentiate between work and non-work domains (Staines, 1980) while sensing empowerment. Dimensions of empowerment are additive, that is, absence of one dimension does not mean no empowerment; it means lower empowerment cognition (Spreitzer, 1995). Ignoring the dimension of non-work domain control may lower overall empowerment cognition of individuals who give high priority to family/community life. The theoretical framework linking empowerment to work behavior is provided by the Social Cognitive Theory, which deals with the role played by cognitive processes in human functioning (Bandura, 1986). This theory explains how individual’s behavior gets shaped and modified by relevant conditions and looks at the three-way dynamic interaction among environment, individual’s cognitive state, and individual’s behavior. The focus of this paper is on the influence of individual’s cognitive state, that is, psychological empowerment (Thomas & Velthouse, 1990) on her/his behavior. Exhibiting positive work behavior may involve extra effort or risk on part of employees and so their cognitive state may play a very critical role in motivating them toward desirable behavior. Empirical studies (e.g., Ghani et al., 2009; Spreitzer, 1995) found this relationship to be statistically significant.

Meaning and Innovative Behavior Employees’ perception regarding the meaningfulness of their task influences their innovative behavior. Employees make extra effort to be innovative to succeed if the value Journal of Personnel Psychology 2012; Vol. 11(3):127–137

of their goal is aligned to their personal values. Redmond, Mumford, and Teach (1993) found that employee creativity is more for socially valued products. Bass (1985) found employees with high meaningfulness in their tasks were innovative. Hypothesis 1: Employees who perceive greater meaning in their work exhibit more innovative behavior.

Competence and Innovative Behavior Self-efficacy will lead to positive work behavior (Chen & Kao, 2011). Zhou (1998) posited that individuals are more creative when they perceive both competence and self-determination to be high. Employees who feel they are competent to do their job and are confident of their ability to handle work-related issues (Bandura, 1977) will exhibit more innovative behavior. In Spreitzer’s (1995) study, competence has higher correlation with innovative behavior compared to other three dimensions of psychological empowerment. Highly competent employees are more likely to suggest new ways of doing things. Hypothesis 2: Employees who believe having greater competence for their work exhibit more innovative behavior.

Impact and Innovative Behavior Spreitzer (1995) found impact to be significantly correlated with innovation. Knol and Linge (2009) found that impact has the strongest influence on innovative behavior of nurses. If employees feel that their work is making a difference in others’ life then they would exhibit more innovative behavior. Hypothesis 3: Employees who perceive making greater impact through their work exhibit more innovative behavior. However, certain aspects of this dimension may weaken the above hypothesis. Effect of this dimension is likely to be stronger where output is visible in short term and easily measurable. Also, its influence on behavior may be stronger for status-conscious individuals. This may also be further affected by individualism-collectivism aspect of national culture (Kumar & Uzkurt, 2010). Since impact is perception regarding influence on work output, organizational incentives/reward systems may also play an important role.

Self-Determination and Innovative Behavior Self-determination provides flexibility and confidence to explore new opportunities. Employees having greater control over their work-related aspects feel that their job allows them to be more creative (Lawler & Hall, 1970). Ó 2012 Hogrefe Publishing


Employees find new ways of doing their work if lesser control is exerted on them regarding ways of executing their tasks (Ramamoorthy, Flood, Slattery, & Sardessai, 2005). Autonomy provides employees more opportunities to experiment with their new ideas (Ohly, Sonnentag, & Pluntke, 2006) and is positively related to innovative behavior (De Jong & Kemp, 2003). Hypothesis 4: Employees who perceive greater selfdetermination in their job context exhibit more innovative behavior. Participative and consultative approaches to team/organization-level decision-making motivate employees for incremental innovation and also provide them self-belief to put forth new ideas. Somech (2006) found direct link between participative management approach and innovative practices at school and class levels. Firestone and Pennell (1993) argued that participative decision-making may also motivate teachers to try innovative practices in their curriculum and pedagogy. Hypothesis 5: Employees who perceive greater selfdetermination in organizational context exhibit more innovative behavior. However, teachers may internalize the bureaucratic perspective of organizational structure and focus on in-class issues rather than expecting much say in the school norms, policies, and other organizational-level issues (Rice & Schneider, 1994).

Non-Work Domain Control and Innovative Behavior Gender Model (Feldberg & Glenn, 1979) attributed the different interpretation/inferences given to the gender differences in results to sex-role socialization processes, which consider men as breadwinners and women as homemakers. More control over non-work issues helps women to reduce their work-family conflict and would promote positive behavior toward discretionary work. Reis (2002) found that women’s submissive role or feeling of inferiority in the family domain negatively affects their creative output in the work domain. Hypothesis 6: Employees who perceive greater control over non-work domain exhibit more innovative behavior.

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tualization of ego involvement and Lodahl and Kejner’s (1965) notion of job as central life interest. Individuals with high job involvement are cognitively engaged with their job and they align their job with their self-concept, whereas individuals with low job involvement often get alienated from their job (Brown, 1996). Saleh and Hosek (1976) noted different approaches to the concept of job involvement: participation in job to satisfy ego needs; job being employee’s central life interest; and job performance being central to self-esteem. Kanungo (1982) pointed out that job involvement is not normative but descriptive and is based on one’s current state about her/his job. Studies on total quality management (e.g., Ooi, Arumugam, Safa, & Bakar., 2007) found that employees’ perception of their empowerment affects their job involvement. Earlier studies have separately linked meaningful work and autonomy to job involvement. Job involvement is higher for jobs providing opportunity to do personally meaningful work (Lambert, 1991) and when employees sense psychological meaningfulness in terms of making significant contribution and getting recognized for such contribution (Brown & Leigh, 1996). More autonomy leads to stronger job involvement (Kanungo, 1982) and this autonomy lies in employees having greater control over their work techniques, processes, pace, and quality (Blauner, 1964) and greater authority to take decisions (Bass, 1965). Studies have found that job involvement has significant correlation with job self-efficacy (Yang, Kao, & Huang, 2006), job characteristics such as significance and autonomy (Elloy, Everett, & Flynn, 1991), and participation in decisionmaking (Siegel & Ruh, 1973). Gender Model (Feldberg & Glenn, 1979) has been used to explain the gender difference in job involvement. Lambert (1991) reported that job involvement is affected by factors outside the workplace and these factors vary across gender. Aryee (1994) found significant gender differences in the determinants of job involvement for high school teachers in Singapore. Work-family conflict plays bigger role in case of work behaviors that are discretionary and so Gender Model becomes even more important. More control in non-work domain would help woman employee to concentrate on the job and not get overwhelmed by workfamily conflict. Overall, we can say that dimensions of psychological empowerment are related to job involvement. Hypothesis 7: Employees who perceive higher levels in the dimensions of psychological empowerment have more job involvement.

Mediating Role of Job Involvement Job Involvement and Dimensions of Psychological Empowerment Job involvement refers to the cognitive preoccupation, engagement, and concern of an employee for the present job (Kanungo, 1982). It is based on Allport’s (1943) concepÓ 2012 Hogrefe Publishing

Employees having high job involvement will exhibit behaviors that are beneficial to the organization (Diefendorff, Brown, Kamin, & Lord, 2002). Employees’ attitudes and beliefs have a stronger influence on their discretionary behavior than on their prescribed in-role tasks (Chughtai, 2008). Job involvement has been conceptualized to be Journal of Personnel Psychology 2012; Vol. 11(3):127–137

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important for promoting creativity and innovation in organizations (Amabile, 1988; Pierce & Delbecq, 1977). Hackman and Oldham’s (1980) Job Characteristics Model has been the basic foundation for exploring the mediating role of job involvement in the relationship between job characteristics (including task significance and autonomy) and extrarole behavior (Chen & Chiu, 2009). Non-work domain control will help in reducing work-family conflict and improve recovery during non-work hours, which would improve work engagement and consequently their initiatives at workplace (Sonnentag, 2003). On the whole, we can say that dimensions of psychological empowerment would increase employee’s involvement with her/his job, which in turn would lead to more innovative behavior. Hypothesis 8: Job involvement mediates the relationship between the dimensions of psychological empowerment and innovative behavior.

self-driven and psychologically involved with their job. These qualities are even more important in the context of working women in India because culturally and socially they are expected to make sacrifices in their career to suit the family needs (Dhawan, 2005). Our study was conducted for women primary school teachers. Their job is a stereotypical women’s job (ILO, 1997) and they outnumber male counterparts in the urban areas of all major Indian states with women’s representation going up to 95% (Government of India, 1997). Mean age of the teachers was 41.47 years (SD = 10 years), mean total teaching experience 13.56 years (SD = 10.58 years), with mean experience at current school 10.91 years (SD = 9 years). Among the teachers 13.9% were undergraduate, 66.9% were graduates, and 19.2% held masters’ degree; 75.6% of the teachers were married. For methodological reasons, we have included only full-time class teachers here and considered teaching to be their dominant job activity.

Measures

Method Research Design and Participants First we conducted detailed interviews of 30 primary school teachers. These interviews were the main source of inputs for adapting the established scales to our study context. After that, we gave the questionnaire to three experts for content validity and then to seven teachers to interpret the items for face validity. Next, we conducted a pilot survey with 288 respondents to pretest the instrument. Finally, we carried out our main study with the final instrument from July to December, 2008. Raters assessed on a 7-point scale with 1 indicating complete disagreement and 7 indicating complete agreement. The dimensions of empowerment were self-rated by 401 teachers from 54 schools in West Bengal. Self-reporting is considered appropriate since psychological empowerment is based on individual’s perception of reality rather than the actual scenario. Innovative behavior and job involvement were rated by two/three colleagues for each teacher, which resulted in total 1,026 colleague responses. These colleagues were selected by us based on the inputs provided by headmistresses on activities done together (such as teaching, academic events, training programmes, etc.) and lack of personal conflicts. We had assured anonymity to each respondent by clearly communicating that individual response would be confidential. A good balance of routinization and complexity in tasks promotes innovative behavior (Ohly et al., 2006) and the job of primary school teacher can have that equilibrium. There is more scope for innovative behavior in primary school because syllabus is less structured compared to higher classes, role of teacher is mainly in classroom with less direct monitoring, and innovative ways in pedagogy and class handling are appreciated. Also, each teacher is in charge of a section teaching multiple subjects, which makes external monitoring difficult and so it is imperative that they are Journal of Personnel Psychology 2012; Vol. 11(3):127–137

Established scales were adapted to the research context based on the inputs provided by the teachers. The measures of innovative behavior were contextualized version of Scott and Bruce’s (1994) six-item scale. Contextualized items included ‘‘She searches out new processes, techniques, and/or new ideas for her classes’’ and unchanged items included ‘‘She generates creative ideas.’’ Cronbach’s alpha was .94. The five items to measure job involvement were mainly taken from scales of Saleh and Hosek (1976) and Lodahl and Kejner (1965). Contextualized items included ‘‘She is very much personally involved in her teaching related work.’’ Cronbach’s alpha was .88. The measures of the dimensions of psychological empowerment were contextualized version of Spreitzer’s (1995) scale, expanded to include certain key aspects of teacher empowerment scale of Short and Rinehart (1992), teachers’ sense of efficacy scale of Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk-Hoy (2001), and contextualized version of Schulz et al.’s (1993) scale. For example, ‘‘My impact on what happens in my department is large’’ (Spreitzer, 1992) and ‘‘I see students learn’’ (Short & Rinehart, 1992) were modified to ‘‘My impact on student’s learning is large.’’ Impact was a 4-item scale with a Cronbach’s alpha of .77. Meaning had three items that included ‘‘My life’s value matches with the teaching activity that I perform in this school’’ and Cronbach’s alpha was .76. Competence was a six-item scale with items including ‘‘I have mastery over the subject(s) that I teach’’ and Cronbach’s alpha was .88. Three-item job-level self-determination scale included ‘‘I give major inputs in selection of content, topics, and skills to be taught to the students’’ and Cronbach’s alpha was .69. Organization-level self-determination had three items that included ‘‘I actively participate and give my inputs in decisions to hire new teachers’’ and Cronbach’s alpha was .74. Five-item nonwork domain control scale included ‘‘I influence decisions that affect others (e.g., members of my family, neighbors, locals) around me’’ and Cronbach’s alpha was .84. In all, there were eight latent variables in our study. Ó 2012 Hogrefe Publishing


Ó 2012 Hogrefe Publishing

0.73 0.60 0.52 0.56 0.50 0.50 0.50 0.52 Notes. N = 401. *p .05. **p .01. ***p .001. Cronbach’s alpha values are shown on the diagonal.

(.76) .49*** .46*** .47*** .20*** .38***

(.88) .63*** .66*** .32*** .41***

(.77) .65*** .45*** .34***

(.69) .43*** .35***

(.74) .32***

(.84)

0.94 0.88 0.76 0.88 0.80 0.75 0.74 0.84 (.88) .31*** .15** .15** .27*** .09 .28*** (.94) .18*** .33*** .15** .17*** .33*** .19*** .30*** 0.56 0.80 0.79 0.88 0.98 1.08 1.58 1.02

Construct reliability 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

6.15 5.69 6.34 5.81 5.67 5.62 3.85 5.60

In our study, innovative behavior is the dependent variable, dimensions of psychological empowerment are the independent variables, and job involvement is the mediating variable. We have tested our hypotheses using the software AMOS 16 for structural equation modeling (SEM) with maximum likelihood estimation. SEM is considered to be

Innovative behavior Job involvement Meaning Competence Impact Self-determination (job-level) Self-determination (organization-level) Non-work domain control

Analyses

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

All squared correlations of first-order latent variables were found less than average variance extracted as desired (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). This shows that the items share more common variance with their respective constructs. Also, factor score weights were high for their own constructs and low for other constructs, clearly establishing the discriminant validity. We also conducted Harman test for common method bias and found our eight-factor model had better fit with the data compared to alternative models.

SD

Discriminant Validity

Mean

Table 1 shows Cronbach’s alpha, construct reliability, and average variance extracted of the latent variables. All the values are above the desired cut-off, 0.7 in case of Cronbach’s alpha and construct reliability (Hair, Anderson, Tatham, & Black, 1998) and 0.5 in case of average variance extracted (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). Only exception is the Cronbach’s alpha for self-determination at job level, which is slightly less but is very close to the cut-off value. In addition, each indicator’s estimated coefficient on its posited underlying construct factor was significant at p .001 (Anderson & Gerbing, 1988).

Variables

Convergent Validity

Table 1. Means, standard deviations, correlations, Cronbach’s alpha values, construct reliability, and average variance extracted

Before aggregating colleagues’ responses we tested one-way random average measures (consistency) intraclass correlation (ICC) (McGraw & Wong, 1996). Two hundred twenty-four teachers were rated by three colleagues each and 177 teachers were rated by two colleagues each. We calculated ICC for two samples separately. For six items of innovative behavior, the values for ICCs were from 0.54 to 0.70 for the first sample and 0.33 to 0.60 for the second sample. For five items of job involvement, these values were from 0.33 to 0.63 and 0.35 to 0.50 for the two samples, respectively. ICCs for all items were significant at p .001, except for an item each of innovative behavior and job involvement for the second sample, which were significant at p .01. We followed the two-stage approach given by Anderson and Gerbing (1988): the first stage involves examining the convergent and discriminant validity of the measurement model using confirmatory factor analysis and the second stage requires examining the hypothesized model.

Average variance extracted

Preliminary Analyses

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a better statistical tool for studying multi-item latent variables. Testing mediation through SEM helps in avoiding underestimation of mediating effects by controlling for measurement error and also allows specifying all relevant paths for testing mediation (Cheung & Lau, 2008).

Results Table 1 also presents the means, standard deviation, and zero-order correlations for the study variables. Meaning has the largest mean value (6.34) and smallest standard deviation (0.79), whereas organization-level self-determination has the smallest mean value (3.85) and largest standard deviation (1.58). Innovative behavior is significantly correlated with job involvement (r = .18) at p .001 level. The correlations among the dimensions of empowerment are in the range of .20–.66 and significant at p .001 level. Innovative behavior is significantly correlated with all six dimensions, the strongest correlation is with the meaning dimension (r = .33 at p .001) and the weakest one is with the competence dimension (r = .15 at p .01). Job involvement is significantly correlated with all dimensions except organization-level self-determination (r = .09 at p > .05). Multiple fit measures are examined in SEM to mitigate the problems associated with using a single index. Figure 1 shows that fit measures such as normed chi square less than 3, TLI and CFI more than 0.9, RMSEA less than 0.05, and SRMR less than 0.08 indicate good fit (Hu & Bentler, 1999). GFI and AGFI are slightly less than 0.9. Standardized effect of job involvement on innovative behavior (b = .57 at p .001) is significant and positive. Standardized effect of meaning on innovative behavior (b = .11 at p .1) is significantly positive at p .1 but not at p .05. The above results along with positive and significant effect of meaning on job involvement (b = .17 at p .01) indicate partial mediation. Partial mediation was verified by the Sobel test (Sobel test statistic = 2.17 at p .05). Standardized effects of competence and impact on innovative behavior and job involvement are not significant at p .1. Job-level self-determination (b = .16 at p .01) and organization-level self-determination (b = .11 at p .1) have significant and positive effect on innovative behavior but their effects on job involvement are not statistically significant. Non-work domain control has significant and positive effect on job involvement (b = .19 at p .01) and no effect on innovative behavior at p 0.1, showing complete mediation. In brief, our results support Hypotheses 1, 4, and 5 and Hypotheses 7 and 8 for meaning and non-work domain control. Table 2 shows the summary of these results.

Discussion Empowered individuals’ behavior gets reflected as promoting and championing new ideas, implementation of creativity and thereby bringing much needed vibrancy in the workplace. For example, to curb students’ habit of tearing Journal of Personnel Psychology 2012; Vol. 11(3):127–137

off pages from exercise copies a teacher used to stamp each page with the pictures of animals, birds, etc., so that students treasure and retain those pages. Clever incorporation of songs, poetries, games, dramas, pictures, paper cuttings, etc., are other examples of innovative usage of teaching pedagogies at primary school level. Relationship between psychological empowerment and innovative behavior is based on the Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1986). Though earlier studies have established the importance of psychological empowerment in fostering employees’ innovative behavior, our study has attempted to analyze its dimensions to understand the mechanisms of these linkages. Highest mean value for meaning shows that teachers consider their job to be very meaningful. This dimension is intrinsic to their job because of its social importance in building future human resources of the country. This dimension links the value system rooted in socially and culturally acceptable role of homemaker to the nurturing nature of this job. In addition, teachers mostly have to deal with innocent children and their work environment is safe and corruptionfree. Analysis of the structural model showed that meaningfulness of work makes them innovative. Also, meaningfulness of their work leads to more involvement in the job, which in turn increases their innovative behavior. Our findings build up on earlier studies directly linking meaning and innovative behavior (Bass, 1985; Redmond et al., 1993) by incorporating the intervening role of job involvement. Recent studies are now focusing on the intervening attitudes/cognitions/behaviors that are mediating the relationship between psychological empowerment and innovative behavior. For example, Zhang and Bartol (2010) found that psychological empowerment is linked to employee creativity through creative process engagement and intrinsic motivation. Pierce and Delbecq (1977) conceptualized intrinsic motivation and job involvement to be positively related to innovation. Oldham and Cummings (1996) considered that employees are more creative when intrinsic motivation is high since they get more involved with the job for its own sake. Our study makes an important contribution in this respect by providing conceptual framework and initial evidence for the mediating role of job involvement. Employees are more innovative when they perceive greater meaning in their work and this innovative behavior is also because of their higher involvement with a job that is meaningful to them. Competence has second highest mean among the dimensions indicating that teachers feel they are competent to do their job. Wolters and Daugherty (2007) found that teachers in elementary school perceive higher self-efficacy compared to those in higher classes. We had hypothesized that employees perceiving higher competence show more innovative behavior (Spreitzer, 1995) through greater involvement with their jobs. However, our results showed that competence has no direct or indirect effect on innovative behavior of teachers. This result is contrary to the findings of Knol and Linge (2009) in the context of nurses. There are clear differences in the context and requirements of these two jobs. Moreover, nurse’s job needs specialized training whereas social belief is that anyone completing high school can teach primary classes. This difference Ó 2012 Hogrefe Publishing


meaning

0.11† 0.17* competence -0.10

innovative behavior

-0.08

-0.07

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Figure 1. Results of the structural model. Notes. * p .05. **p .01. ***p .001. p .10. two-tailed tests. v2/df normed chi square; SRMR, standardized root mean-square residual; RMSEA, root mean-square error of approximation; GFI, goodness-of-fit index; AGFI, adjusted goodness-of-fit index; TLI, Tucker-Lewis index; and CFI, comparative fit index.

impact 0.57***

-0.003

0.16* self-determination (job-level) 0.15 0.11

job involvement

†

-0.06

self-determination (organization-level) 0. 07 0.19**

non-work domain control

Fit Measures c / df SRMR RMSEA GFI AGFI TLI CFI 1.75 0.05 0.04 0.88 0.86 0.94 0.95 N = 401. Standardized regression weights are shown. 2

may be undermining the importance of competence dimension in teachers’ context in two ways: one, since teachers are mostly graduates and postgraduates they may consider themselves to be well qualified or even overqualified for the job and have no insecurity/doubt regarding their competence and two, they do not get enough training opportunities to upgrade their skills (Ramachandran, Pal, Jain, Shekhar, & Sharma, 2005) and so may lack exposure to techniques that may help them to be innovative or increase their involvement with the job. There may be less clarity as to what constitutes differentiating competencies for a primary school teacher. Competence dimension may be more significant to improve work behavior where specialized Ó 2012 Hogrefe Publishing

and/or high levels of competencies are required for the job; there are considerable differences in levels of competencies; and/or there are opportunities to learn and apply advanced competencies. When jobs do not meet the above conditions, greater levels of perceived competence may not lead to innovative behavior. Impact has no direct or indirect effect on innovative behavior of teachers. This dimension had strongest influence for nurses (Knol & Linge, 2009) and would perhaps encourage positive work behavior more where results are visible in short term and easily measurable. In India, students’ performance in board examinations and competitive examinations for professional studies is valued but Journal of Personnel Psychology 2012; Vol. 11(3):127–137

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Table 2. Summary of results Dimension of psychological empowerment

Direct and indirect effects on innovative behavior

Meaning

Partial mediation: both direct effect on innovative behavior and indirect effect through job involvement are present No effect on innovative behavior and job involvement No effect on innovative behavior and job involvement No mediation: only direct effect on innovative behavior is present and there is no effect through job involvement No mediation: only direct effect on innovative behavior is present and there is no effect through job involvement Complete mediation: direct effect on innovative behavior becomes insignificant and the effect is entirely through job involvement

Competence Impact Self-determination (job-level) Self-determination (organization-level) Non-work domain control

primary school teachers do not get credit for good results at that level. They are generally not paid good remunerations and are often denied appreciation for exemplary contributions. Impact gets further weakened because their job, though respected, does not provide much social status. Proper assessment of performance and linked incentive/ reward systems may increase the importance of impact dimension by helping them to perceive their contribution better and receive recognition for it. Since the outcomes are long term, not individual-specific, and are targeted toward social rather than individual good, they may form the part of meaning dimension rather than impact dimension. The contribution from our findings regarding competence and impact is twofold: (a) They show that all dimensions are not linked to work behaviors and some dimensions have stronger influence on certain behaviors as compared to others and (b) When jobs do not meet certain conditions, greater levels of perceived competence and/or impact may not lead to innovative behavior. Lowest mean value for self-determination at organizational level shows that teachers perceive comparatively low empowerment on this dimension. This reflects the ground reality of high power distance in the hierarchical structure of schools and lacunae regarding participative decision-making processes. Self-determination at job and organizational levels has only direct effect on employees’ innovative behavior and no indirect effect through job involvement. Our findings supported the earlier studies linking autonomy (De Jong & Kemp, 2003; Ramamoorthy et al., 2005) and participative decision-making (Firestone & Pennell, 1993; Somech, 2006) to innovative behavior but did not support the relation between self-determination and job involvement (Elloy et al., 1991; Kanungo, 1982; Siegel & Ruh, 1973) The flexibility available to teachers to incorporate innovative practices in their work depends on leadership style, organizational culture, and organizational processes for employee participation and decisionmaking. Participative decision-making processes are critical for both levels of self-determination. Ways of monitoring teachers’ job, particularly in classrooms, are limited and this provides them natural scope to be innovative based on their motivation. However, insignificant indirect effects in our results indicate that this motivation is not based on their involvement with the job. Journal of Personnel Psychology 2012; Vol. 11(3):127–137

Complete mediation in case of non-work domain control emphasizes the importance of job involvement. Non-work domain control leads to innovative behavior through job involvement. This dimension is important in cultures where gender gap is high. Internalization of subordinate status based on tradition and culture (Kabeer, 2001) leads to subservient mindset and reduces the ability and confidence to try out new ways. From the perspective of the Gender Model (Feldberg & Glenn, 1979) it can be argued that more control in non-work domain reduces work-family conflict for women and increases their job involvement, which in turn encourages innovative behavior. However, certain aspects of teachers’ job such as respect given to the job, more interaction with community members, more involvement in community activities through schools, and on-thejob training to take charge and to enforce discipline may contribute to increasing their empowerment in this dimension. There are clear variations in the manner in which the dimensions of psychological empowerment affect innovative behavior, so a proper understanding of the mechanisms and the context of these relationships is critical. Job involvement is an important link to enable innovative behavior in case of meaning and non-work domain control, which have close association with individual value systems, intrinsic beliefs, and societal norms; but has no role in case of organizationally-enabled dimensions like job-level and organization-level self-determination, which depends on organizational processes and work culture. The organizationally-enabled dimensions directly influence innovative behavior. The self-concept dimensions like competence and impact, which reflect self-perception of one’s own ability and performance, have higher mean values compared to other dimensions (except meaning). However, they have no significant relation with innovative behavior and job involvement in our study. As explained earlier, the relationship of self-concept dimensions is context-specific and needs to be interpreted in the light of contextual details. Since self-determination at organizational level has the lowest average but direct effect on employees’ innovative behavior, there is a lot of scope for schools to encourage innovative behavior by improving their participative decisionmaking processes. In today’s highly competitive and dynamic environment, sustainability of schools (Somech, 2010) depends on their ability to find ways of encouraging Ó 2012 Hogrefe Publishing


employee participation and consequently their innovative behavior. We have considered colleagues’ perception of individual’s behavior to overcome limitations of self-reporting. Conceptually this helped us in separating behavioral intention from actual behavior. Individuals may not clearly differentiate between their intentions and actual behavior, more so in case of results linking self-concept dimensions like competence and impact to work behaviors. Methodologywise, it helped in correcting the inherent leniency bias in selfperception (Church, 1997) and common method bias of single source data (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003). In case of single source data, association of psychological empowerment with work behaviors may get overestimated. De Jong and Den Hartog (2010) also emphasized the need for supervisory or peer ratings of employee’s innovative behavior, particularly for jobs where innovation is not a part of daily routine. There are certain limitations in this study that should be considered while interpreting the results. Although theory and past studies establish psychological empowerment as the predictor of innovative behavior, caution needs to be exercised while making causal inferences because of the cross-sectional design of the study. In future researches longitudinal studies with interventions should ideally be considered to establish causality. Second, present research involved only one woman-dominated stereotypical segment and so future studies might include other segments to test the generalizability of the findings. Third, we have included colleagues’ rating on the consideration that colleagues are able to observe coworkers for a longer duration of time. Future studies may incorporate other relevant stakeholders for a more holistic perspective.

Conclusion This paper analyzes the dimensions of psychological empowerment to understand the mechanisms by which psychological empowerment is fostering innovative behavior of employees. These mechanisms broaden the conceptual understanding of the linkage between psychological empowerment and innovative behavior. Administrators and practitioners also require a clear understanding of these mechanisms if they are looking at the vehicle of empowerment to improve innovative behavior of the workforce. Findings of the study showed that job involvement is an important link to enable innovative behavior for dimensions that have close association with individual value systems, intrinsic beliefs, and societal norms. On the other hand, dimensions that depend on organizational processes and work culture have direct effect on employees’ innovative behavior and no effect through job involvement. Acknowledgments The authors would like to express their gratitude to the reviewers of this paper and the editorial team of the Journal Ó 2012 Hogrefe Publishing

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of Personnel Psychology for their insightful comments and helpful suggestions.

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Journal of Personnel Psychology 2012; Vol. 11(3):127–137