Empowering leadership and employee work engagement : a diary study using self-determination theory

Knevelsrud, Hans-Christian (author), Hetland, Jørn (author), Bakker, Arnold B. (author), Krabberød, Tommy (author), Sørlie, Henrik O. (author), Espevik, Roar (author), Olsen, Olav K. (author)

Empowering leaders delegate authority, grant autonomy, and assign responsibilities to individuals or teams. Drawing on empowerment theory and self-determination theory (SDT), the present study hypothesizes that daily empowering leadership is related to employee work engagement through (a) psychological empowerment, and (b) the satisfaction of basic psychological needs. We col- lected data among 86 Norwegian Navy cadets during a 30-day transatlantic voyage (response = 97%; n = 2022 observations). Consistent with hypotheses, results of multilevel mediation path analysis showed that daily leader autonomy support and development support were positively related to daily employee work engagement through psychological empowerment and satisfac- tion of the needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence. Moreover, leaders’ autonomy- supportive behaviour was most strongly related to psychological empowerment (not need satis- faction) and indirectly to work engagement when development support was high (vs. low). We discuss how these findings support and contribute to empowering leadership literature, as well as the practical implications.

• Language: English
• Keywords: organization, leadership, empowerment, engagement, basic needs, empowering leadership, self-determination theory, psychological empowerment, work engagement
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: EF - School of Economics and Business
• Publication status: In print
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2025
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-179906
• UDC: 658.3
• ISSN on article: 1359-432X
• DOI: 10.1080/1359432X.2025.2594485
• COBISS.SI-ID: 261254915
• Publication date in RUL: 26.02.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: European journal of work and organizational psychology
• Shortened title: Eur. j. work organ. psychol.
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• ISSN: 1359-432X
• COBISS.SI-ID: 11626594

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: organizacija, vodenje, opolnomočenje, zavzetost