Structural empowerment and organisational performance: the mediating role of employees’ well-being in Spanish local governments

Abstract

We extend the ‘black box’ picture of public management and the ‘balanced view’ of HRM literature to explore, in the public context, the impact of structural empowerment on organisational performance and the mediating role of three employee outcomes: job satisfaction and affective commitment as attitudinal variables related to eudaimonic well-being, and job anxiety as an employee health variable related to hedonic well-being. Using multilevel methodology on a sample of 103 local authorities, results show that structural empowerment is positively associated with organisational performance, both directly and indirectly, via employee health. This evidence supports the mutual gains perspective, but not as intensely as expected (empowerment does not affect attitudinal variables) and differently to the traditional perspective, since empowerment contributes to reduce job anxiety in Spanish local governments.