心理授权研究进展

Development of Research on Psychological Empowerment

二十多年来,心理授权受到研究者的广泛重视。在以往研究中,研究者提出了心理授权的单维结构说、三维结构说、四维结构说和六维结构说,并在此基础上开发了相应的测量工具。在心理授权的影响因素方面,已有研究主要考察了个体变量和组织变量对心理授权的影响;在后果变量方面,主要探讨的是心理授权与工作满意度、组织承诺、职业承诺、绩效、心理健康等方面的关系。针对现有研究中存在的问题,本文在最后提出了未来研究的一些建议。

Psychological empowerment has attracted attention in the past 20 years from both researchers and practicers for its important role in an organization＇s development. In China, research on psychological empowerment is still at initial stage. This paper arialyzed literature on psychological empowerment from the following aspects： structure of psychological empowerment, antecedents and outcome variables of psychological empowerment. Specifically, with regard to the structure of psychological ernpowerment, different opinions have been put forward. The single-dimension concept holds that psychological empowerment is the motivational component of self-efficacy. The three-dimension concept holds that psychological empowerment is composed of three dimensions including the intrapersonal component, the interactional component, and the behavioral component. The four-dimension concept holds that psychological empowerment includes working meaning, self-efficacy, self-detemaination, and impact. The six-dimension concept holds that psychological empowerment includes decision-making involvement, professional development, status, self-efficacy, determination, and impact. As to the relationship among psychological empowerment and its antecedents and outcome variables, three theoretical models were proposed. The first model is the five-stage model by Conger and Kanungo, which analyzed the development of psychological empowerment from a five-stage perspective, with each stage having their own missions such as identification of factors hindering development of psychological empowerment, eliminating these factors, self-efficacy promotion, empowerment feeling promotion, and the emergence of positive outcomes. The second model was proposed by Thomas and Velthouse, which analyzed the relationship among organizational environment, cognitive style, psychological empowerment, and individual behavior. The third model was proposed by Spreitzer, which focused on the relationship among individuals＇ locus of control, self-esteem, access to information, rewards, psychological empowerment, organizational management efficiency, and organizational innovation. From the empirical perspective, researchers have examined the effects of individual variables （mainly including socioeconomic variables and personality variables） and organizational variables （mainly including team spirit, leadership, organizational culture, access to information, role clarity, decision-participation, span of control, et al. ） on psychological empowerment. As to its outcome variables, previous studies have found that psychological empowerment is positively related with individuals＇ job satisfaction, professional commitment, organizational commitment, performance and mental health, but inconsistent findings still exist in the respect of the impacts of psychological empowerment＇ s dimensions on these outcomes . Previous research also suggested that the relationship among psychological empowerment and its antecedents and outcome variables might be influenced by some mediators and moderators. For instance, the tension between employees and their supervisors might moderate the relationship between employees＇ psychological empowerment and their commitment to the organization. Leadership support and organizational commitment were suggested as mediators between psyehological empowerment and organizational citizenship behavior. Although lots of studies have been done on psychological empowerment, a close inspection on literature reveals that limitations still exist. First, the measurement needs to be further developed since so far no measurement has fully captured the phenomenon of psychological empowerment. Second, few studies have designed interventions to improve psychological empowerrnent. Third, there is a lack of research conducted from a perspective of social cognitive process perspective. Researchers may consider these limitations in their future research and enrich our understanding on psychological empowerment.