Year: 2012
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Psychological empowerment, described as constellation of experienced cognitions manifested as sense of meaning, competence, impact, and self-determination has been\nidentified as an important motivating force in teams with performance consequences\nfor individuals and teams. Prior research have therefore sort to identify factors from\nthe individual-, team-, project- and organisation-levels that impact empowerment\ncognitions with the hope of providing concrete targets for promoting psychological\nempowerment. One constituency that has been overlooked is the likelihood that\npsychological empowerment in teams may be capable of being transmitted from one\nteam member to another. This paper reports a study investigating whether\npsychological empowerment cognition in project teams is contagious. Using survey\nresponses from 380 individuals, nested in 115 project management teams, we test the\npsychological empowerment contagion hypothesis using analysis of variance,\ninterrater agreement and hierarchical linear modelling as proxies. Analysis of variance\nindicates that the between-team variance of team psychological empowerment is\nstatistically significant and substantially larger than the within-team variance. Several\nmeasures of interrator agreement also show considerable agreement (consensus)\nwithin teams, further confirming the prevalence of psychological empowerment in\nteams. Team psychological empowerment also has a significant positive and\nindependent impact on individual psychological empowerment, even after controlling\nfor the impact of variables previously identified as influencing psychological\nempowerment. Team members who reported higher levels of team psychological\nempowerment were also more likely to experience higher levels of individual\npsychological empowerment themselves. Psychological empowerment is contagious\nand can be transmitted from one team member to another. These findings supplement\nthe traditional sources of antecedents of empowerment and suggest that team\nmembers play an important multiplier role in engendering feelings of psychological\nempowerment both consciously and unconsciously.
Authors: Martin Morgan Tuuli, Sylvia Acquah
Institution: Loughborough University
Language: English
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2161846470