임파워링 리더십이 구성원들에게 미치는 부정적인 영향 - 임파워링 리더십의 통제권 부여 특성을 중심으로 -

According to previous research that investigated the relationship between empowering leadership and job stress, empowering leadership decreases job stress by elevating psychological empowerment of members. However, some studies demonstrated that empowering leadership has caused to psychological burden of members and increases job stress. However, most of previous studies have focused on the positive effects of empowering leadership on the members. However, we have interested in the claim that authority, autonomy, and responsibility generated from empowering leadership can cause negative impacts on members by increasing physical and psychological burden of members. Therefore, in current paper, we assumed that empowering leadership will increase job stress by generating work overload. In addition, we expected that emotions and attitudes toward both authority and autonomy induced from empowering leadership will depend on power distance orientation of each member. Therefore, this paper tried to examine whether the power distance orientation plays a role of both moderation and moderated mediation in the relationship between empowering leadership and work overload. In order to achieve the purpose of this study, this study conducted structural model and conditional process analysis of survey data collecting by 401 members who are working in domestic companies and organizations. The result of the analyses are as follows: First, empowering leadership had a significant positive effect on work overload. Second, work overload had a significant positive effect on job stress. Third, in the relationship between empowering leadership and job stress, the mediating effect of work overload was significant. Fourth, in the relationship between empowering leadership and work overload, the moderating effect of power distance orientation was not significant. Fifth, the moderated mediation role of power distance orientation on the mediating effect of work overload was not significant. However, the results of examining the conditional indirect effect on the moderated mediation effect of the power distance orientation showed that the moderated mediation role of the power distance orientation was significant in the both middle and low conditions. Further, the effect of leadership on job stress which is mediated by work overload was stronger in low (vs. middle) power distance orientation. Based on these results, this study suggests meaningful theoretical contributions and practical implications in terms of human resource management, such as enhancing understanding of empowering leadership and establishing strategies to reduce the negative influences of empowering leadership. First, in order to offset work overload by focusing on the positive role of empowering leadership such as reducing job stress, organizations need to provide additional job resources, growth opportunities, and an acceptable level of empowering based on the job proficiency and experience of the members. Furthermore, in the conditional indirect effect of the power distance orientation, the effect of empowering leadership on increasing job stress through work overload was higher in the low (vs. middle) power distance orientation. This results displayed that empowering leadership may have various causes and intensity that lead to work overload, depending on the individual characteristics of the members. Therefore, leaders need to listen to the subordinates' opinion to find a cause of increased work overload by empowering leadership and also need to explore and provide the resources needed for subordinates to eliminate the cause.