How does empowering leadership motivate employee innovative behavior: A job characteristics perspective

Drawing on self-determination theory and job characteristics theory, this study proposed a theoretical hypothesis model to explore the mediating and moderating mechanisms of empowering leadership on employee innovative behavior (EIB) by introducing meaningful work as mediating variable and job complexity as moderating variable. By collecting two-wave time lagged data (N = 272) with an interval of three months from 6 private enterprises in China, this study conducted hierarchical regression analysis, structural equation model analysis and bootstrap analysis to test the hypothetical model. The results revealed that empowering leadership positively impacted EIB both directly and indirectly via meaningful work. Moreover, job complexity positively moderated not only the association between empowering leadership and EIB, but also the association between meaningful work and EIB. This study offers the academia with a new perspective to explain the association between empowering leadership and EIB.