The Effect of Empowering Leadership on Work Engagement in an Organizational Change Environment. An Investigation of the Mediating Roles of Self-Efficacy and Self-Esteem

As modern organizations seek for changes to enhance their competitive positions and their survivability in global markets, the successful implementation of organizational change has become an important management task. But still, many companies are unable to succeed in change processes. Failures show that there is considerable room for researchers to provide insights into opportunities for improving the success of organizational change events. Given the fact that individuals are the most important units in organizational change, a successful implementation requires employees' acceptance and support. Hence, employees ¿ positive attitudes and their Work Engagement are considered to be fundamental requirements. Nevertheless, there is limited understanding of the multitudinous factors associated with employees ¿ decision to support organizational change. Basically, organizational change is stressful as it requires the readiness to embrace change and the readjustment of employees' routine tasks. In this regard, leadership is considered to be one of the most important variables affecting the attitudinal dimension of organizational processes. In respect of the types of leadership behavior and their exchange relationship with followers, several reviews and meta-analyses have shown that Empowering Leadership can result in individual, group and unit performance beyond expectations. Empowering Leadership implies sharing power to foster employees' motivation and engagement in their work. Empowering Leadership emerges when supervisors foster trust-based relationships with followers, show interest in their personal problems, facilitate participative decision-making and coach them to be more self-reliant. These specifications show that this leadership style is highly relevant to Employee Work Engagement. However, relatively few studies have tested how and why Empowering Leadership relates to Follower Work Engagement in organizational change environments.

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Chapter 2.1 Empowering Leadership and Work Engagement:
Empowering Leadership aims at the development of follower self-management / self-leadership skills. The historical roots of Empowering Leadership are found in behavioral self-management (Mahoney & Thoresen, 1974), social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), cognitive behavior modification research (Meichenbaum, 1977) and participative goal-setting research (Erez & Arad, 1986). Representative behaviors imply encouraging independent action, opportunity thinking, self-development, self-reward as well as using participative goal-setting and decision-making.
Macey and Schneider (2008) specified different definitions of Work Engagement. According to Schaufeli and Bakker (2004), Work Engagement is a positive, affective-motivational and work-related state that is characterized by vigor, dedication and absorption. Vigor refers to high levels of energy, the willingness to invest effort in one s tasks and mental resilience while working. Dedication is characterized by a strong involvement in one s work, accompanied by feelings of enthusiasm and significance and by a sense of inspiration and pride. Absorption refers to a pleasant state of total captivation in one s work, which is characterized by time passing quickly and being unable to disengage oneself from the it. Work Engagement can be enhanced by autonomy and responsibility, social support and coaching, performance feedback, high levels of perceived fairness as well as task variety (these aspects can be developed by empowerment).
Empowering Leadership can play an intrinsic and an extrinsic motivational role to stimulate engagement. Intrinsically, Empowering Leadership behavior facilitates employees meet the fundamental need for self-determination and control (Ryan & Deci, 2000). By encouraging followers to use self-rewards, allow for follower self-leadership, engaging in participative goal-setting and encouraging teamwork as well as independent action, empowering leaders transfer power to their subordinates (Manz & Sims, 1987). In doing so, they foster followers' capacity for self-determination and feelings of mastery, which in turn, reduce change-related stressors, such as fear or mistrust. Extrinsically, the outcome of an increased feeling of mastery and self-determination fosters motivation for task accomplishment (Conger & Kanungo, 1988). Due to delegation, consultation and support, this enhanced level of motivation is combined with the capacity to succeed and achieve work- as well as change-related goals. Thus, Empowering Leadership is supposed to foster Employee Work Engagement via intrinsic and extrinsic motivational processes, which leads to the first assumption.
Hypothesis 1: There is a direct positive relationship between Empowering Leadership and Employee Work Engagement.
2.2 The Mediating Roles of Self-Efficacy:
According to Baron and Kenny (1986), the role of Self-Efficacy (SLF in the following) as a mediator of the EL - WE relationship is supported, in part, by the links between: (1) EL and WE, (2) EL and SLF, (3) SLF and WE. The mentioned links, except the link between EL and WE, which was discussed above, are discussed as follows.
2.2.1 Empowering Leadership and Self-Efficacy:
As a key element in Bandura's (1977) theory of social learning, SLF refers to an individual's belief in his or her capability to achieve a course of action needed to adhere the demands of a specific work situation. Bandura (1977) stated that SLF should not be conceptualized and measured in terms of generalized feelings of mastery, but rather in reference to dealing with a specific situation or performing a specific behavior. In regard with the Change Management Study, SLF is related to organizational change. Change-related SLF can be defined as an employee s perceived ability to function well on the job, despite the demands of a changing work environment (Wanberg & Banas, 2000). Employees who doubt their ability to respond