Empowering employees through communicative leadership
Year: 2015
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: In 21st century organizations, the need for empowering approaches to leadership, such as coach and facilitator of dialogue has been advocated and the traditional command- and control-management challenged. A concept characterized by dialogue and inclusive and responsive forms of communication as well as involvement in decision-making is “communicative leadership”, used since a decade in Swedish private and public organizations. This study analysed how leaders perceive the contribution of communicative leadership to employee empowerment in a multinational business organization. Findings illustrate that leaders’ communication strategies in relation to employee participation, engagement and empowerment diverge in important ways. A communicative leadership strategy including an informal bottom-up approach involving dialogue and responsive communication behaviours invited employees to make their voices heard and participate in decision-making, and thus contributed to a higher level of employee empowerment. The findings of this study contribute to extend and modulate previous research on the outcomes of leaders’ communication, particularly transformational leadership communication behaviours. A communication-based conceptualization of employee empowerment is contributed, including employees’ abilities to voice concerns, influence work in dialogue and take individual action.
Author: Catrin Johansson
Institution: Mid Sweden University
Language: English
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1277716196