Impact's Negative Effect and Its Boundary Condition: An Idiosyncrasy of Psychological Empowerment in Chinese Context

Abstract

Abstract:

By carefully examining the results in the existing psychological empowerment studies that use Chinese samples, we find that impact (one of the dimensions of psychological empowerment) typically does not associate with positive outcome variables. This is in stark contrast to the findings in western societies. In light of power distance theory and psychological empowerment literature we propose that in Chinese high power distance cultural context, employees' impact is likely to be resisted by organizations' sociopolitical system and therefore will manifest negative rather than positive effects when boundary condition is matched. We conduct two empirical studies which test impact's effects on turnover intention and job burnout, and two moderators' (LMX and leader's performance evaluation) moderating effects on these relationships. The results show no beneficial effects of impact on turnover intention and job burnout, rather, manifest deteriorating effects on turnover intention and burnout when the moderators are at low level. The findings indicate that impact functions differently in China comparing with the west. It also demonstrates that managers in Chinese organizations usually dislike employees with high impact, and this finding has useful implications for practitioners to pursue effective empowerment by overcoming the encumbrance from the traditional cultural factor.

Key words: impact, psychological empowerment, Chinese context, turnover intention, LMX

Jiang Xinhui, Zhong Changbiao, Zhang Qiang, Wang Zhen. Impact's Negative Effect and Its Boundary Condition: An Idiosyncrasy of Psychological Empowerment in Chinese Context[J]. , 2016, 28(3): 139-153.

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