The role of transformational leadership, organization structure, job characteristics, trust, and job involvement towards psychological empowerment among bank managers

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the antecedents and outcome of psychological empowerment among bank managers in Peninsular Malaysia. Specifically, it aimed at investigating the effect of transformational leadership, organization structure, and job characteristics on psychological empowerment; the effect of psychological empowerment on job involvement; and the moderating effect of trust on the relationships between transformational leadership, organization structure, and job characteristics on psychological empowerment. The attitudes and behaviours of employees in organizations that had undergone restructuring program such as mergers or downsizing, are found to be negatively affected. During economic downturn, intrinsic motivation is consider to be an alternative to extrinsic motivation. Acknowledging the importance of psychological empowerment as an intrinsic motivation, this study was carried out to investigate its antecedents and its outcome; and to include trust as a moderating variable. Accordingly, this study was based on social exchange theory to map and position the possible relationships between the variables in the research framework. A total of 164 bank managers, representing a response rate of 41% participated in this study. Data were collected via questionnaires. PLS-SEM was used to analyse the data and test the hypotheses. Statistical results showed that transformational leadership, organization structure, and job characteristics were directly and positively related to psychological empowerment. Psychological empowerment was also found to be positively related to job involvement. However, no empirical support was found for the moderating effect of trust on the relationship between transformational leadership, organization structure, and job characteristics on psychological empowerment. This study offers theoretical and practical contributions, implications, limitations of the study and suggestions for future research