Empowering leadership and its impact on work-family interaction : a study on employees in higher education

Abstract

Academic employees work in a demanding work environment where they are sensitive to experiencing work- family conflicts. The goal of this study was to investigate whether empowering leadership had an impact on work- family interactions among employees in the higher education sector. Additionally, the study investigated whether social support from supervisor and job autonomy would moderate the effects of empowering leadership on work- family interactions. Using the JD-R model and work- family enrichment theory, this study adds to the literature by studying work- family interactions in the higher education sector. Moreover, this is the first study to investigate the effects of empowering leadership on work- family interactions. Based on a self- reported questionnaire, collected by ARK Intervention Programme, data from 12159 respondents from the higher education sector in Norway were analysed. A PLS- SEM analysis was conducted with work- family facilitation and work- family conflict as the dependent variables. The results showed that empowering leadership had a positive effect on work- family facilitation. However, there were no significant findings of the effects of empowering leadership on work- family conflict. Nevertheless, the results indicate that social support from supervisor may enhance the negative effect of empowering leadership on work- family conflicts. Additionally, social support negatively moderated the positive effects of empowering leadership on work- family facilitation. Finally, job autonomy reduced the effects of empowering leadership on work- family conflict. More research is requested on what factors affect work- family interaction in the higher education, and additionally studies on group differences between academic and administrative employees.