Exploring the Link of Empowering Leadership and Employees Innovative Work Behavior: The Mediating Role of Job Crafting and Proactive Personality as Moderator

Abstract

Employees' innovative work behaviors are pivotal in driving organizational growth and development by providing a nurturing environment for the inception, maturation and implementation of novel ideas. Existing literature offers limited insights into the underlying psychological factors that influence individuals' propensity to engage in innovative work behaviors. Through the lens of job demands and resources framework, we propose that employees who work with empowering leaders are more likely to engage in job crafting, which, in turn, fosters innovative work behavior. We further suggest that this link is moderated and contingent of the proactive personality of the employees. Using Smart PLS 3.2, a moderated mediation was tested on multi-organizational data of 362 subjects collected from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Results showed that job crafting partially mediates the relationship of empowering leadership and employees’ innovative behavior. Findings not only confirmed the moderating effect of employees’ proactive personality on the link of empowering leadership and job crafting, but also the entire indirect effect of empowering leadership and employees' innovative work behaviors via job crafting was found contingent on employees’ proactive personality. We discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of the findings along with the limitations.

Keywords: Empowering leadership, employees innovative work behavior, job crafting, proactive personality, moderated mediation