Psychological Empowerment: Antecedents from Goal Orientation and Consequences in Public Sector Employees

Abstract

Recent research has encouraged the study of psychological empowerment in public organizations owing to its benefits for optimum service delivery and performance improvement in the public context. This study analyzes how learning goal orientation, proveperformance goal orientation, and avoid-performance goal orientation are related to psychological empowerment and how such empowerment influences well-being outcomes within the context of public employees. Analyses of data from 553 public-sector employees showed that only learning goal orientation strongly and positively influences psychological empowerment. Furthermore, the results support the positive and significant relationship between psychological empowerment and both job satisfaction and affective commitment, and the negative link with job anxiety levels. Theoretical and practical implications, as well as future directions for the psychological empowerment issue, are discussed.