Influence of psychological empowerment on employee competence in Nigerian universal basic education system: The mediating role of work engagement

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of work engagement (WE) on the link between psychological empowerment and employee competence (EC). The Ability Motivation Theory (AMO) stress the importance of practices that are capable of enhancing individual’s competence towards the achievement of organizational objectives. While considering psychological empowerment as one of the best practices influencing employee competence in an organization, some previous studies only considered other internal resources such like human resource practices. Studies that attempt to investigate the effect of psychological empowerment on EC and the mechanism through which it influences employee’s competence seem to be scarce in the existing literature. In this paper, work engagement is considered as mediator variable in explaining relationship between psychological empowerment and EC and also establish the link between the two variables. The paper applied AMO theory in highlighting the importance of practices that are capable of enhancing employee’s competence towards achievement of organizational objectives. Quantitative survey technique was utilized, and data was collected from the Nigerian universal basic education system administration (UBESA) in six states (Jigawa, Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Sokoto, Zamfara) of the North Western region of the country. A total of 428 questionnaires were analyze using SPSS-AMOS software version 24. The statistical findings revealed that WE mediate the relationship between psychological empowerment and EC. The study also made some suggestions for future research