Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 155 (2019) 20–30

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/obhdp

A paradox perspective on the interactive effects of visionary and T

empowering leadership
Eric Kearneya, , Meir Shemlab, Daan van Knippenbergc, Florian A. Scholza
⁎

a
Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Potsdam, Germany
b
Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands
c
LeBow College of Business, Drexel University, United States

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: In a multi-source, lagged design field study of 197 leader-follower dyads, we test a model that predicts positive
Visionary leadership interactive effects of visionary and empowering leadership on follower performance. Based on the paradox
Empowering leadership perspective, we argue that visionary and empowering leadership are synergistic in that their combination en-
Goal clarity ables leaders to address a key paradox inherent to leader behavior identified by Waldman and Bowen (2016):
Performance
Maintaining control while simultaneously letting go of control. We argue that visionary leadership addresses the
Paradox
former and empowering leadership addresses the latter pole of this pair of opposites. Hence, in line with paradox
thinking, we posit that leaders will engender more positive effects on follower performance when they enact
visionary and empowering leadership behaviors simultaneously and adopt a “both-and” approach, rather than
focus on one of these behaviors without the other. Our results support our hypothesized interactive effect of
visionary and empowering leadership on goal clarity, as well as a conditional indirect effect such that goal clarity
mediates the interactive effect of visionary and empowering leadership on individual follower performance.

1. Introduction
Although scholars and practitioners alike have devoted much effort
to identifying leadership behaviors that foster performance (Vroom &
Jago, 1988; Yukl, 2012), several authors have lamented the fragmen-
tation in the leadership literature and called for a better integration of
constructs and a more holistic view of leadership (e.g., DeRue,
Nahrgang, Wellman, & Humphrey, 2011; Yukl, 2012). The growing
attention to paradoxes in organizations, or the contradictory demands
that are inherent to organizations (Miron-Spektor, Gino, & Argote,
2011; Miron-Spektor, Ingram, Keller, Smith, & Lewis, 2018; Putnam,
Fairhurst, & Banghart, 2016; Schad, Lewis, Raisch, & Smith, 2016;
Smith & Lewis, 2011), highlights one particularly important challenge –
but also opportunity – in coming to a more holistic understanding of
leadership. Specifically, in their interactions with followers, leaders
need to attend to opposing objectives simultaneously (Waldman &
Bowen, 2016). Paradox theory posits that such opposing demands are
ultimately complementary in that only by combining and reconciling
these opposites can leaders hope to attain optimal levels of desired
outcomes in the long term (Smith & Lewis, 2011). Although most of the
work on paradoxes in organizations has addressed the organizational
level of analysis, recent work has also turned to examining the
paradoxes that are inherent to leader behavior toward individual fol-
lowers (e.g., Zhang, Waldman, Han, & Li, 2015). The present article
builds on and advances this recent work.
Waldman and Bowen (2016, p. 318) have argued that, more
broadly, tensions exist between agency and communion. Bakan (1966)
proposed these two concepts as basic modalities of how humans func-
tion within their social environments. Agency pertains to how a person
asserts him- or herself and his or her goals and self-interests, whereas
communion refers to how a person relates to and merges with others
(also see McAdams, 1993). In the context of leadership, agency is about
how a leader asserts values and goals around which followers should
align, while communion is about the leader deferring to the needs and
interests of followers (Waldman & Bowen, 2016). Based on this more
general distinction, Waldman and Bowen (2016) have identified the
more specific key leadership paradox of maintaining control while
letting go of control. Simultaneously addressing both of these opposites
requires a shift from an “either-or” to a “both-and” approach (Zhang
et al., 2015). We propose that the combination of visionary and em-
powering leadership holds much promise in regard to meeting these
opposing, yet ultimately complementary demands.
We contend that visionary leadership – that is, the communication
of a future image of a collective with the aim of persuading others to

⁎
Corresponding author at: University of Potsdam, August-Bebel-Str. 89, 14482 Potsdam, Germany.
E-mail address: kearney@uni-potsdam.de (E. Kearney).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2019.01.001
Received 1 March 2018; Received in revised form 26 December 2018; Accepted 3 January 2019
Available online 15 January 2019
0749-5978/ © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
E. Kearney, et al.
Fig. 1. Research model.
contribute to its realization (Carton, Murphy, & Clark, 2014; Stam,
Lord, van Knippenberg, & Wisse, 2014; Sully de Luque, Washburn,
Waldman, & House, 2008; van Knippenberg & Stam, 2014) – is a pro-
totypical instantiation of agentic leadership. By instilling a sense of
orientation with respect to what the future may bring and what specific
future should be worked toward, visionary leaders exert control.
Moreover, we argue that empowering leadership – that is, granting
autonomy and shifting power and responsibilities from the leader to the
followers (Chen, Sharma, Edinger, Shapiro, & Farh, 2011; Cheong,
Spain, Yammarino, & Yun, 2016; Lorinkova, Pearsall, & Sims, 2013;
Sharma & Kirkman, 2015) – is a prototypical instantiation of communal
leadership. By communicating trust in followers, granting freedoms,
and enabling followers to, in large part, lead themselves (Manz & Sims,
1987), empowering leaders let go of control.
Empowering and visionary leadership are distinct both conceptually
(e.g., Arnold, Arad, Rhoades, & Drasgow, 2000; Martin, Liao, &
Campbell, 2013) and empirically (Pearce et al., 2003). Leaders can be
empowering without articulating a vision; or they can be visionary, yet
neither ask their followers for input nor grant them autonomy or in-
volve them in decision-making. Visionary and empowering leadership
appear to be particularly suitable to meet key demands arising from the
contexts within which many organizations are embedded. In dynamic
environments with frequent change, visionary leadership can provide
much-needed orientation and reduce uncertainty about the future.
Moreover, given that many, if not most, jobs are becoming increasingly
complex, leaders cannot have all the answers themselves (Lovelace,
Manz, & Alves, 2007: 375). It thus appears sensible to more strongly
involve followers in decision-making and psychologically empower
them in their work. This is what empowering leadership can provide.
Not surprisingly, therefore, scholars are currently showing great in-
terest in studying (e.g., Kim, Beehr, & Prewett, 2018; van Knippenberg
& Stam, 2014) these two leadership approaches. Thus far, however,
these two types of behaviors have been examined separately and re-
searchers have not explored how they may complement each other and
interact to predict follower performance. We propose that they are
particularly well suited to be enacted simultaneously and, from a
paradox perspective, may therefore be a particularly promising “both-
and” combination of agentic and communal forms of leadership.
In line with the respective literatures on visionary and empowering
leadership (Sharma & Kirkman, 2015; van Knippenberg & Stam, 2014),
we argue that they are both positively related to follower performance,
but in going beyond extant work, we posit that the most positive effect
on follower performance results from their combination. Moreover, we
submit that the interactive effect of empowering and visionary leader-
ship on follower performance is mediated by goal clarity. Goal clarity is
the extent to which a follower knows exactly what his or her objectives
are and what he or she should accomplish (Sawyer, 1992). We propose
that goal clarity is a function of the interaction of visionary leadership
and empowering leadership because having a clear sense of team or
21
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 155 (2019) 20–30
organizational goals and what they mean for one’s own work does not
just require receiving information about these goals (i.e., which vi-
sionary leadership may deliver on). It also requires the motivation to
carefully consider these goals and their implications for one’s own job,
which may best be achieved through the combination of visionary and
empowering leadership because empowering leadership helps foster the
follower buy-in and psychological ownership required to attend to and
embrace visionary goal communication (cf. Stam et al., 2014). Con-
versely, empowering leadership fosters goal clarity by enhancing in-
trinsic motivation and psychological ownership of goals that are in part
self-determined (e.g., Zhang & Bartol, 2010). Although this psycholo-
gical ownership may make followers more goal-focused, in and of itself
empowering leadership does not ensure that these goals are aligned
with leader expectations or explicate how they are part of the bigger
picture. This is what visionary leadership provides. Hence, we predict
that visionary and empowering leadership have mutually enhancing
effects on follower goal clarity, and, as a result, on follower perfor-
mance. Fig. 1 depicts our research model, which, in line with paradox
theory (e.g., Waldman & Bowen, 2016; Zhang et al., 2015), emphasizes
the symmetrical interaction effects of two opposing, yet ultimately
complementary leadership behaviors.
This research offers two central contributions. First, we contribute
to the paradoxical leadership literature by specifying a concrete com-
bination of agentic and communal leadership behaviors that can help
meet the key paradoxical demand of maintaining control while si-
multaneously letting go of control (Waldman & Bowen, 2016). Aside
from other measures such as implementing structural changes, leader
behaviors are needed to reconcile these opposites and meet these de-
mands (Waldman & Bowen, 2016). We offer a specific way in which
leaders may accomplish this and, in so doing, draw on major perspec-
tives in the more traditional leadership literature (i.e., the respective
streams on visionary and empowering leadership). Our approach thus
complements earlier work that has treated paradoxical leadership as a
more broadly defined construct (e.g., Zhang et al., 2015) and reveals
how adopting a paradox lens can help integrate previously distinct
perspectives and thus facilitate a more holistic understanding of lea-
dership.
Second, our focus on interacting elements of leadership enriches the
respective fields from which we draw. Earlier work has established that
the effects of empowering leadership are moderated (Stewart, 2006),
but the focus in this research has been on contextual moderators and
not on other leader behaviors (Kim et al., 2018). A similar observation
holds for visionary leadership, where the focus on the interaction with
another aspect of leadership likewise adds to a broader understanding
of the kind of factors that may moderate visionary leadership effects (cf.
van Knippenberg & Stam, 2014). The current study thus helps paint a
fuller picture of the contingencies of empowering leadership and of
visionary leadership, respectively, by demonstrating that these include
other leader behaviors.
E. Kearney, et al.
2. Theory and Hypotheses
In recent years, the paradox lens has become a popular new per-
spective in management, with paradox being defined as “contradictory
yet interrelated elements that exist simultaneously and persist over
time” (Smith & Lewis, 2011, p. 382). The main idea of this approach is
that organizations and the people working in them face numerous
tensions and opposing demands that need to be addressed simulta-
neously and reconciled (Waldman & Bowen, 2016; Zhang et al., 2015).
Whereas contingency theories propose choosing one pole from each of
these, as called for by the respective situational conditions (an “either-
or” approach), the paradox perspective argues that organizations and
individual actors within organizations should attend to competing de-
mands simultaneously (a “both-and” approach). Although choosing one
alternative from a pair of seeming opposites may enable short-term
performance, paradox theory posits that long-term outcomes are best
enhanced by meeting divergent and contradictory demands simulta-
neously (Smith & Lewis, 2011; Zhang et al., 2015). Hence, organiza-
tions are assumed to be more successful if they, for example, pursue
exploration and exploitation simultaneously, rather than focus on one
for some time and then, when situational conditions change, switch to
the other (March, 1991). Similarly, leaders may be more successful if
they simultaneously exhibit behaviors that provide and restrict free-
doms, for example, rather than enact only one of these opposites (e.g.,
Gebert, Boerner, & Kearney, 2010).
The literature on leadership of individual followers (as opposed to
organizational or strategic leadership) has been dominated by work
that has focused on isolated leadership behaviors without considering
how these behaviors interact with additional leadership behaviors. This
is true both for situational or contingency theories of leadership as well
as for research that focuses on the effects of one focal leadership style
such as transformational leadership. We will examine these streams in
the literature in turn and subsequently propose an alternative based on
the paradox perspective.
Situational or contingency theories of leadership are based on the
premise that for every configuration of situational conditions, there is
one appropriate leadership behavior, for example directive or partici-
pative (e.g., Hersey, Blanchard, & Johnson, 1996). These approaches
generally do not accommodate “both-and” possibilities. This is un-
fortunate given that, many decades ago, Blake and Mouton (1964) had
proposed a “both-and” idea by claiming that leaders might be well
advised to combine person-oriented with task-oriented leadership. By
and large their idea was rejected by other scholars (e.g., Larson, Hunt, &
Osborn, 1976), but on closer inspection, it appears that the negative
verdict on the “high-high leader” concept may have been premature.
Most of the studies based on the “high-high leader” idea were based on
a model in which person-oriented and task-oriented behaviors are as-
sumed to have additive main effects (Yukl, 2010). Only few studies
have actually been based on a model that posits beneficial effects of
simultaneously enacting high levels of these two leadership behaviors
that may together constitute a whole that is more than the sum of its
parts – an interaction model. And of the few studies that have tested
interactive effects, most have drawn highly questionable conclusions.
For example, Larson et al. (1976) claimed that increases of explained
variance in the order of 2–8 percent do not justify the greater com-
plexity that a multiplicative model entails. Arguably, most leadership
researchers today would disagree with this position. Nevertheless, ra-
ther than following up on this – or other “both/and” approaches – many
leadership scholars subsequently adopted the view that the respective
situational contingencies determine which leadership behavior (e.g.,
directive or participative) is called for, without exploring how see-
mingly opposite behaviors could be combined and how such a combi-
nation of seeming contradictions could help meet conflicting demands
that persist over time.
Another, even more popular approach has been to start with a focus
on a particular leadership style and then examine its effects. For
22
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 155 (2019) 20–30
example, the literature on transformational leadership (Bass & Riggio,
2006) has been based on the notion that this leadership style is con-
ducive to desired outcomes in nearly all situations and that moderators
may only slightly enhance or diminish its generally positive effects.
However, it is surprising that scholars have not explored how trans-
formational leadership effects are contingent on their interaction with
other leadership behaviors, even though this issue has been addressed
theoretically by leading scholars within this paradigm (see, for ex-
ample, Bass & Riggio, 2006, p. 11).
In the present paper, we depart from situational and contingency
approaches and their “either-or” thinking and instead adopt a “both-
and” paradox perspective. Moreover, we do not examine broad, multi-
faceted constructs such as transformational leadership and instead
follow Yukl’s (2012: 76) advice: “To understand why a leader is effec-
tive requires that we examine how different behaviors interact in a
mutually consistent way.” Specifically, we argue that leadership actions
with seemingly opposite objectives can have synergistic effects that
enable leaders to meet competing demands. This synergy results from
opposing actions complementing each other regarding their respective
strengths and from each behavior curtailing the potential negative ef-
fects of a unitary focus on only one pole of a pair of opposites. In the
following, we develop this line of reasoning for the combination of
visionary and empowering leadership.
2.1. Visionary leadership
Visionary leadership has been described as one of the most pro-
mising leadership approaches (Conger & Kanungo, 1998; van
Knippenberg & Stam, 2014) and is viewed positively across different
cultures (Dorfman, Hanges, & Brodbeck, 2004). Articulating an ap-
pealing and inspiring vision is a central element in charismatic-trans-
formational leadership theory (Bass & Riggio, 2006; Bass, 1985), which
has been the basis for literally hundreds of empirical studies and has
arguably been the most prominent perspective in the leadership lit-
erature for several decades beginning in the 1980s (Lord, Day, Zaccaro,
Avolio, & Eagly, 2017). According to Bass and Avolio (1995), trans-
formational leadership consists of the four dimensions idealized influ-
ence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and in-
dividualized consideration. However, visionary leadership itself –
defined more narrowly as the communication of a vision, an image of
the future of a collective (van Knippenberg & Stam, 2014) – is not a
distinct dimension in the typical measurement of transformational
leadership (Bass & Avolio, 1995). Moreover, transformational leader-
ship combines several leadership elements, including attributions and
evaluations as well as behaviors, into a broader construct, without
conceptually and methodologically specifying the unique effects of
these elements (van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013). As a consequence,
scholars have argued in favor of studying visionary leadership by itself,
without embedding it within a broader, multi-faceted construct that
also includes other behaviors that are different from communicating a
vision (Greer, Homan, de Hoogh, & den Hartog, 2012; van Knippenberg
& Stam, 2014).
If visionary leadership is conceptualized as a more circumscribed
variable, that is, as being merely the communication of a future image
of a collective with the intention of motivating others to contribute to
its realization, one finds that there is surprisingly little empirical re-
search on how it affects outcomes (van Knippenberg & Stam, 2014).
Scholars have argued theoretically that the communication of a vision
is essential for leaders to mobilize and motivate followers (Berson,
Shamir, Avolio, & Popper, 2001; Conger & Kanungo, 1998; Shamir,
House, & Arthur, 1993) to, for example, engage in extra effort (Sully de
Luque et al., 2008). Visionary leadership can enhance follower efficacy
and identification with tasks and the organization by providing a sense
of meaning and purpose (House & Shamir, 1993; Shamir et al., 1993;
Stam, van Knippenberg, & Wisse, 2010). These effects help explain why
visionary leadership may foster performance outcomes (van
E. Kearney, et al.
Knippenberg & Stam, 2014). Based on this previous work, we posit:
Hypothesis 1. Visionary leadership is positively related to individual
follower performance.
However, just as only a few studies have examined performance
effects of visionary leadership as a more circumscribed variable, as
opposed to being one of several elements within the broader construct
transformational leadership, only a few studies have investigated
moderators of the visionary leadership-performance link (van
Knippenberg & Stam, 2014). These moderators include, for example,
aspects of how the vision is communicated (e.g., Carton et al., 2014;
Carton & Lucas, 2017) and the extent to which the vision resonates with
the respective followers (e.g., de Hoogh & den Hartog, 2009; Griffin,
Parker, & Mason, 2010; Sosik & Dinger, 2007; Stam et al., 2010). Some
of these and other studies have shown that, under some circumstances,
visionary leadership may have weak or no effects on performance
outcomes (e.g., Greer et al., 2012; Griffin et al., 2010). We will argue
below that adopting a paradox lens may shed new light on why this
might be so.
2.2. Empowering leadership
The increasing interest in empowering leadership in recent years
(Kim et al., 2018; Sharma & Kirkman, 2015) has been driven by the
objective to leverage the potential of better educated and more skilled
followers (Ahearne, Mathieu, & Rapp, 2005; Arnold et al., 2000). Em-
powering leaders develop and express trust in their followers and
provide them with the necessary advice and resources, but then “get out
of the way” to let their followers do their work with a high degree of
discretion (Kirkman & Rosen, 1999). As work is becoming more com-
plex and challenging, leaders stand to benefit from delegating authority
to their followers, asking them for input, and allowing them to plan
their work and make decisions themselves. Not surprisingly, therefore,
empowering leadership is often positively related to performance out-
comes at both the individual (e.g., Raub & Robert, 2010; Vecchio,
Justin, & Pearce, 2010; Zhang & Bartol, 2010) and the team level of
analysis (e.g., Chen et al., 2011; Lorinkova et al., 2013; Martin et al.,
2013).
At the individual level, one of the direct effects of more strongly
involving and engaging followers through empowering leadership is a
heightened sense of psychological empowerment (e.g., Zhang & Bartol,
2010). This construct comprises the four subjective elements of “im-
pact” (i.e., having an influence on outcomes), “competence” (i.e., being
able to accomplish goals), “autonomy” (i.e., having freedoms in regard
to how to perform work), and “meaningfulness” (i.e., viewing one’s
work as having a purpose and as being in line with one’s beliefs and
values). Researchers have identified psychological empowerment as a
mediator linking empowering leadership to individual-level perfor-
mance outcomes (e.g., Zhang & Bartol, 2010). Studies have also re-
vealed positive effects of empowering leadership on other motivational
variables such as self-efficacy (Zhang & Zhou, 2014), intrinsic motiva-
tion (Zhang & Bartol, 2010), and engagement (Tuckey, Bakker, &
Dollard, 2012), as well as behavioral variables including adaptability
(Ahearne et al., 2005), voice (Raub & Robert, 2013), and organizational
citizenship behaviors (Raub & Robert, 2010). All of these effects help
explain the generally positive effects of empowering leadership on
follower performance (e.g., Kim et al., 2018; Sharma & Kirkman, 2015).
In line with this prior research, we posit:
Hypothesis 2. Empowering leadership is positively related to
individual follower performance.
However, in their recent review, Sharma and Kirkman (2015, p.
195) have noted that “growing evidence indicates that empowering
leadership is not advantageous in all organizational contexts and that
not all followers are universally receptive to empowering initiatives”
(see also Cheong et al., 2016; Humborstad & Kuvaas, 2013; Lorinkova
23
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 155 (2019) 20–30
et al., 2013; Martin et al., 2013; Yun, Cox, & Sims, 2006) and that there
has been “scant attention to the less positive and unintended, negative
effects of empowering leadership” (Sharma & Kirkman, 2015, p. 194).
They conclude that “theoretical ambiguity remains as to why, how, and
when empowering leadership is most likely to benefit work settings and
employees” (Sharma & Kirkman, 2015, p.195). We will propose below
that a paradox perspective can offer new insights in this regard.
2.3. The interactive effects of visionary and empowering leadership and the
mediating role of goal clarity
As noted above, several studies have shown that both visionary and
empowering leadership have weak or no effects in some contexts (e.g.,
Sharma & Kirkman, 2015; van Knippenberg & Stam, 2014). From a
situational or contingency perspective, one might conclude that, under
certain circumstances, visionary (or empowering) leadership – or, more
broadly, agentic (or communal) leadership – may be inappropriate. The
resulting recommendation would be to refrain from enacting agentic
(or communal) leadership and instead exhibit its opposite, communal
(or agentic) leadership. A typical example of this line of reasoning is the
advice to either practice directive or participative/delegative leader-
ship, depending upon the respective contextual conditions (e.g., Hersey
et al., 1996).
From a paradox perspective (e.g., Waldman & Bowen, 2016; Zhang
et al., 2015), emphasizing one pole of a pair of opposites (e.g., either
agentic leadership and its emphasis on control, or communal leadership
with its focus on letting go of control) may lead to diminishing returns if
leaders do not simultaneously attend to the opposite pole. Agentic
forms of leadership may engender suboptimal effects in a particular
situation not only because agentic leadership is not called for in this
context (as a situational or contingency perspective would suggest), but
also because it may have been enacted in isolation, without being
combined with its opposite, communal leadership, and vice versa. If
both agentic and communal leadership are practiced together, their
respective strengths can complement each other and the potential ne-
gative effects of each may be held in check by its respective opposite.
What would thus facilitate the most positive effects on outcomes is the
simultaneous maximization of complementary opposites (a “both-and”
approach), rather than finding a middle ground or switching back and
forth (an “either-or” approach) (Waldman & Bowen, 2016). A basic
assumption in paradox theory is that opposing and seemingly contra-
dictory forms of behaviors can be synergistically combined such that
the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts (e.g., Smith &
Lewis, 2011; Zhang et al., 2015). Specifically, agentic and communal
forms of leadership by themselves may be incomplete as means to foster
performance. Although each may have positive effects by itself, their
combination with the respective opposite behavior may not only en-
gender additive effects on outcomes, but also a mutually reinforcing
interaction effect.
We propose that visionary and empowering leadership constitute a
viable and promising combination of agentic and communal leadership.
The former enables leaders to exercise control by creating alignment
around shared objectives, whereas the latter allows leaders to let go of
control. Both can be practiced simultaneously, even in the same com-
munication with a follower. A leader can articulate an image of the
future that is to be worked toward and at the same time provide a
follower with autonomy, greater responsibilities, and decision-making
power.
Both visionary and empowering leadership have specific strengths
and specific weaknesses, with the strengths of one arguably being a
viable complement to the weakness of the other. Visionary leadership
can promote orientation, alignment, and convergence, which tend to be
positively related to performance (e.g., Carton et al., 2014; Stam et al.,
2014). However, vision communication cannot be equated to followers’
carefully considering the visionary message and its implications for
their job. Absent influences that motivate such careful consideration,
E. Kearney, et al.
visionary leadership may be less effective (Stam et al., 2014; cf. De
Dreu, Nijstad, & van Knippenberg, 2008; Kruglanski, 1989). Such im-
pediments to visionary leadership’s effectiveness can be addressed by
sharing power and responsibilities with followers; in other words, by
simultaneously enacting empowering leadership. Empowering leader-
ship is important to foster the careful consideration and buy-in of fol-
lowers to stimulate them to take ownership of the visionary goals.
Conversely, empowering leadership fosters autonomy, self-de-
termination, and psychological empowerment, which tend to be posi-
tively associated with performance (e.g., Maynard, Gilson, & Mathieu,
2012; Zhang & Bartol, 2010). However, empowering leadership in the
absence of complementary opposite behaviors can lead to a lack of
coordination and may create a situation in which a follower uses his or
her freedom in ways that are misaligned with the shared objectives the
leader envisions. These undesired effects may be prevented by speci-
fying what future a followers’ contributions should help build and thus
providing orientation. Hence, we contend that the impediments to the
effectiveness of empowering leadership may be addressed by leadership
to align people around shared objectives; in other words, by simulta-
neously exhibiting visionary leadership.
Key in our theory of the interactive influence of visionary and em-
powering leadership is the notion of goal clarity and its motivational
and guiding influence on performance. Goal clarity captures the extent
to which followers are aware of how their everyday efforts are con-
nected to superordinate objectives (Sawyer, 1992). Given high goal
clarity, followers know what their duties and responsibilities are, what
goals they should strive for, and what is expected of them (Sawyer,
1992). Visionary leadership can promote goal clarity by explicating
ultimate ends and thus providing orientation and alignment. Such
leader behaviors help followers understand how their everyday work
activities contribute to a particular future that these activities are in-
tended to bring about. However, as Stam et al. (2014) outline in their
theoretical analysis of visionary leadership, followers will only take
ownership of the vision and develop an understanding of the implica-
tions of visionary goals to the extent that they carefully consider the
visionary goals and the implications for their job. That is, vision com-
munication does not equate to followers’ careful consideration of the
vision, and visionary leadership will be more effective in a context that
fosters such careful consideration. When practiced by itself, visionary
leadership may engender suboptimal levels of goal clarity because
followers may not engage with the visionary goals, and performance is
less driven by visionary leadership as a result. We propose that em-
powering leadership addresses exactly this issue. Empowering leader-
ship creates a sense of ownership and self-determination that should
foster the more careful consideration of team and organizational goals
(i.e., that are experienced more as own goals with higher empower-
ment) and that thus renders followers more receptive to visionary
leadership.
Moreover, empowering leadership may foster goal clarity by en-
hancing followers’ intrinsic motivation and psychological ownership of
their work efforts, which would motivate them to more carefully con-
sider their tasks and goals. Such leader behaviors are likely to motivate
followers to engage with and internalize their objectives. However, if
only communal empowering leadership is exhibited with a lopsided
emphasis on letting go of control, followers may act in ways that are not
in line with what the leader had expected or hoped for. If leaders
myopically promote autonomy and follower self-determination, they
run the risk of creating or exacerbating coordination problems (Yukl,
2012). In other words, if enacted by itself, empowering leadership may
foster suboptimal goal clarity because followers may not fully under-
stand the larger objective or vision toward which they should be
working.
In sum, visionary leadership without empowering leadership is
suboptimal in providing goal clarity, because even while it commu-
nicates information about shared objectives it may by itself be in-
sufficient to motivate the careful consideration and ownership of these
24
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 155 (2019) 20–30
objectives. Conversely, empowering leadership without visionary lea-
dership inspires a sense of ownership that motivates the consideration
of work objectives, but without the guidance provided by visionary
leadership on how to understand these objectives may result in a lower
understanding of these objectives; that is, less goal clarity. We thus
argue that visionary and empowering leadership interact in promoting
goal clarity such that they mutually enhance each other’s effects.
Specifically, visionary leadership is more effective in creating goal
clarity in combination with empowering leadership, and empowering
leadership is more effective in fostering goal clarity in combination
with visionary leadership.
Hypothesis 3. Visionary and empowering leadership interact to predict
follower goal clarity such that the relationship between visionary
(empowering) leadership and goal clarity is more strongly positive
when empowering (visionary) leadership is high, rather than low.
Goal clarity directs followers’ attention and helps them focus on
what is relevant (Quinn, 2005). In the absence of goal clarity, followers
can get overwhelmed or distracted by activities that are irrelevant to
the overall objectives and do not contribute towards performance on
their assigned tasks (Quinn, 2005). Not surprisingly, therefore, scholars
have found positive effects of goal clarity on individual follower out-
comes (e.g., Shalley, 1991, 1995; Quinn, 2005). Based on our above
line of reasoning, we propose that goal clarity is a specific mechanism
that helps explain how visionary and empowering leadership behaviors
complement each other in predicting follower performance. Specifi-
cally, we argue that goal clarity mediates the synergistic interactive
effects of visionary and empowering leadership on follower perfor-
mance. We posit:
Hypothesis 4. There is a conditional indirect (moderated mediation)
effect such that the interactive effect of visionary leadership and
empowering leadership on follower performance is mediated by
follower goal clarity.
3. Method
3.1. Sample and procedure
Our sample comprised 197 leader-follower dyads from a wide range
of different organizations in Germany. Examples of the represented
industries include automotive, insurance, banking, education, retail,
construction, health care, law, real estate, IT, consulting, law enforce-
ment, fashion, logistics, pharmaceuticals, media and entertainment,
energy, manufacturing, engineering, chemical, event management, and
various other types of services. Hierarchically, the leaders in our sample
were at middle levels. In response to an open question in our survey, we
had both the leaders and the followers describe specifically the types of
tasks with which they are charged. Participants were recruited with the
help of students in an undergraduate course on organizational behavior
at a large German university. Students received partial course credit in
exchange for their help with the data collection, and each student was
able to recruit a maximum of three dyads. Each participant was a
member of only one dyad.
The survey was conducted online. Students sent the participants
who they recruited a link to an online platform on which we described
the general aims of our study and guaranteed anonymity. Data were
collected at three different times. At time 1 (T1), followers provided
data on their respective leader’s leadership behaviors, demographics,
and several other variables that were intended as potential controls (see
Measures below). Leaders likewise filled out a T1 questionnaire that
featured potential control variables. At time 2 (T2), one month after T1,
followers filled out a questionnaire that included our goal clarity scale.
Finally, at time 3 (T3), one month after T2, leaders rated their fol-
lowers’ performance. The questionnaires were in German. For the
translation from the original English scales (see Measures below), we
E. Kearney, et al. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 155 (2019) 20–30

used Brislin’s (1980) commonly used translation-back translation pro-
cedure.
Out of 344 contacted dyads (the students who helped with re-
cruiting participants contacted either the leader or the follower of a
dyad), 225 agreed to participate (65%). Leaders were asked to identify
a follower with whom they interacted regularly and who was in a po-
sition to evaluate their leadership behaviors. In all dyads, leaders and
followers interacted at least several times per month. For our final
sample, we excluded all those dyads that provided incomplete in-
formation (because either the follower or the leader did not submit
data), extreme outliers (e.g., dyads with leaders who reported to have
more than 200 direct followers), or dyads whose supposed leaders
provided descriptions of their tasks that made it clear that they did not
actually have leadership responsibilities. Moreover, we excluded 23
dyads whose genuineness we were unable to confirm and/or whose
response behaviors were suspect (e.g., when clearly random responses
were provided). This yielded a final sample of 197 leader-follower
dyads (57% of the originally contacted 344 dyads). With the exception
of one dyad from Austria, all of the members of our dyads were phy-
sically located and performed their work in Germany. The mean age
was 45.81 years (s.d. = 10.25) for leaders (with a range from 21 to
72 years), and 37.38 years (s.d. = 12.24) for followers
(range = 18–64 years). With respect to gender, 81 out of 197 (i.e., 41%)
of the leaders were female and 116 (59%) were male; among the fol-
lowers, 126 out of 197 (i.e., 64%) were female and 71 (36%) male.
3.2. Measures
We measured all survey items described below with Likert-type
scales ranging from 1 for “strongly disagree” to 7 for “strongly agree.”
Empowering leadership (T1). We measured empowering leader-
ship with eight items previously used by Chen et al. (2011) and
Kirkman and Rosen (1999). Items were adapted to capture the in-
dividual, rather than the team level of analysis. Respondents were
asked, for example, about the extent to which their leader “shares
power and responsibility with me,” “allows me to make many decisions
on my own,” and “lets me define some goals all by myself.” Cronbach’s
alpha for this scale was 0.90.
Visionary leadership (T1). To measure visionary leadership, we
used five items that asked about the extent to which the leader “talks
about the future,” “communicates a clear idea about what should be
accomplished,” “has a clear idea about what the future should look
like,” “communicates his/her vision of the future,” and “states clearly
where we are going.” Although these items were based on items used in
prior work (e.g., Sully de Luque et al., 2008; Podsakoff, Mackenzie,
Moorman, & Fetter, 1990), we made the effort to avoid adjectives with
positive denotations such as “inspiring,” “optimistic,” or “compelling”
that would already constitute attributions of leader effects and blur the
line between predictor and criterion (see van Knippenberg & Sitkin,
2013). For this scale, we calculated a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.88.
Goal clarity (T2). We used four items based on Sawyer (1992) to
measure goal clarity. Respondents were asked about the extent to which
they felt clarity about the following items: “my duties and responsi-
bilities;” “the goals and objectives for my job;” “how my work relates to
superordinate objectives;” and “the expected results of my work.”
Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was 0.89.
Individual follower performance (T3; leader-rated). To measure
our dependent variable job performance, we employed Baer et al.’s
(2015) scale, which is based on a scale originally developed by
MacKenzie, Podsakoff, and Fetter (1991). The items are, “All things
considered, this employee is outstanding at his/her job,” “Compared to
his/her peers, this employee is an excellent worker,” “This employee is
one of the best at what he/she does,” and “This employee is very good
at his/her daily job activities” (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.90).
Control variables (T1). Given that a wide range of diverse tasks in
numerous organizations and industries were represented in our sample,
we included follower task complexity (rated by followers at T1) to ac-
count for the influence that differences in tasks may have on our
findings. We measured task complexity with three items based on
Morgeson and Humphrey’s (2006) Work Design Questionnaire. Cron-
bach’s alpha was 0.92. Moreover, we included follower workload (rated
by followers at T1) as a control, given that it has been theorized to
influence the effects of empowering leadership (Sharma & Kirkman,
2015). We measured this variable with six items (Illies et al., 2007) that
we adapted to reflect more stable, rather than daily evaluations. For
this scale, Cronbach’s alpha was 0.86. Finally, we controlled for leader
decision-making autonomy (rated by leaders at T1) so as to account for
the possibility that leader behaviors may be due more to situational
pressures rather than personal choice. To measure this variable, we
used three items from Morgeson and Humphrey’s (2006) Work Design
Questionnaire (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.81).
Confirmatory factor analysis. We assessed the discriminant va-
lidity of our scales via confirmatory factor analysis (CFA; Hu & Bentler,
1999), which we conducted with the Lavaan package (Rosseel, 2012)
for R (Core Team, 2017). We ran two separate analyses because vari-
ables were rated by two different types of respondents (followers and
leaders) and common-method bias may exist among variables rated by
the same source. For the variables rated by the followers, the expected
five-factor model (follower task complexity, follower workload, em-
powering leadership, visionary leadership, goal clarity) yielded an
adequate fit to the data (x2 (289) = 561.54; CFI = 0.91;
RMSEA = 0.07; SRMR = 0.06) that was significantly better than the fit
of conceivable alternative models. For example, the fit of a four-factor
model in which empowering and visionary leadership were combined
as one factor was: x2 (293) = 997.53; CFI = 0.77; RMSEA = 0.11;
SRMR = 0.10; and the fit of a three-factor model with empowering
leadership, visionary leadership, and goal clarity combined as one
factor was: x2 (296) = 1440.35; CFI = 0.62; RMSEA = 0.14;
SRMR = 0.13. With respect to the variables rated by the leaders, the
expected two-factor model (leader decision-making autonomy and fol-
lower performance) exhibited an excellent fit to the data (x2
(13) = 17.83; CFI = 0.99; RMSEA = 0.04; SRMR = 0.04), whereas the

Table 1
Means, standard deviations, and correlations.
M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6

1. Follower task complexity 5.02 1.34 –

2. Follower workload 4.12 1.10 0.36** –
3. Leader decision-making autonomy 5.60 1.00 0.09 −0.01 –
4. Empowering leadership 5.30 1.00 0.33** 0.02 0.03 –
5. Visionary leadership 5.14 1.06 0.16* −0.03 0.08 0.37** –
6. Goal clarity 6.28 0.77 0.27** −0.06 0.01 0.20** 0.15* –
7. Follower performance 5.39 0.94 0.13 0.03 0.13 0.28** 0.23** 0.19**

Note. N = 197 dyads.

* p < .05.
** p < .01.

25
E. Kearney, et al. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 155 (2019) 20–30

one-factor model exhibited a poor fit (x2 (14) = 500.88; CFI = 0.31; Table 2
RMSEA = 0.42; SRMR = 0.30). In sum, these CFA results confirm the Results of regression analysis.
discriminant validity of our variables. Variables Dependent variable: goal clarity

Step 1 Step 2 Step 3

4. Results
Controls
Table 1 presents the means, standard deviations and correlations Follower task complexity 0.19** (0.04) 0.17** (0.05) 0.17** (0.04)
Follower workload −0.13* −0.12* −0.12*
among our study variables. The correlation between empowering and
(0.05) (0.05) (0.05)
visionary leadership was modest (i.e., r = 0.37, p < .01), which lends Leader decision-making −0.02 (0.05) −0.02 (0.05) −0.02 (0.05)
support to our assumption that these are distinct leadership behaviors. autonomy
As expected, both were positively related to goal clarity (r = 0.15, Step 2: Main effects
p < .05, for visionary leadership, and r = 0.20, p < .01, for empow- Visionary leadership (VL) 0.05 (0.05) 0.07 (0.05)
ering leadership) and follower performance (r = 0.23, p < .01, for Empowering leadership (EL) 0.07 (0.06) 0.08 (0.06)
visionary leadership, and r = 0.28, p < .01, for empowering leader- Step 3: Interaction
ship), with the latter results being in support of Hypotheses 1 (which VL × EL 0.10* (0.04)
predicts a positive relationship between visionary leadership and fol- R2 0.10 0.12 0.14
ΔR2 0.10** 0.01 0.02*
lower performance) and Hypothesis 2 (which predicts a positive asso-
F 7.37** 5.06** 5.15**
ciation between empowering leadership and follower performance).
Moreover, goal clarity was positively associated with follower perfor- Note. N = 197 dyads.
mance (r = 0.19, p < .01). Unstandardized regression coefficients are reported (with standard errors in
To test our Hypothesis 3, which posits a positive interaction effect of parentheses).
visionary and empowering leadership on goal clarity, we performed a * p < .05.
hierarchical regression analysis with goal clarity as the dependent ** p < .01.
variable and mean-centered predictor variables to facilitate interpret-
ability (Aiken & West, 1991). In the first step of the analysis, we entered
the control variables (follower task complexity, follower workload, and
leader decision-making autonomy) into the regression equation; in the
second step, we added visionary and empowering leadership; and in the
third step, we entered the interaction between visionary and empow-
ering leadership. Table 2 summarizes the results. Adding the interaction
term into the regression equation explained a significant amount of goal
clarity variance over and above the variance explained by the control
variables and the main effects (ΔR2 = 0.02, p = .03).1
In support of Hypothesis 3, the interaction between visionary and
empowering leadership was significant (ß = 0.16, t = 2.25, p = .03).
Simple slope tests (Aiken & West, 1991) revealed that, as shown in
Fig. 2, visionary leadership was only related to goal clarity when em-
powering leadership was high (b = 0.17, SE = 0.08, β = 0.23, p = .03),
but not when empowering leadership was low (b = −0.03, SE = 0.06,
β = −0.04, p = .64). Conversely, empowering leadership was only re-
lated to goal clarity when visionary leadership was high (b = 0.19,
SE = 0.08, β = 0.24, p = .02), but not when visionary leadership was
low (b = −0.03, SE = 0.07, β = −0.03, p = .72).
To test Hypothesis 4, which proposes a contingent indirect effect
such that goal clarity mediates the interactive effect of visionary and
empowering leadership on follower performance, we performed a re-
gression analysis with the PROCESS macro for SPSS (Hayes, 2013). Our Fig. 2. The interactive effect of visionary and empowering leadership on goal
research model corresponds to a model 7 in PROCESS (a first-stage clarity.
moderation model in the terminology of Edwards & Lambert, 2007).
However, in line with paradox theory (e.g., Waldman & Bowen, 2016;
mean): b = 0.03, s.e. = 0.02, 95% CI: 0.01; 0.08. This indirect effect
Zhang et al., 2015), in our interpretation of results we examined the
was non-significant when empowering leadership was low (i.e., one
symmetrical interaction effects, rather than framing one of our two
standard deviation below the mean): b = −0.01, s.e. = 0.02, 95% CI:
focal variables (visionary and empowering leadership) as the in-
−0.04; 0.02. Similarly, the indirect effect of empowering leadership on
dependent variable and the other as the moderator.
follower performance mediated by goal clarity was positive when vi-
The index of moderated mediation was significant (0.02,
sionary leadership was high (b = 0.03, s.e. = 0.02, 95% CI: 0.01; 0.09),
s.e. = 0.01), as the 95% bias-corrected bootstrap confidence interval
but not when visionary leadership was low (b = −0.00, s.e. = 0.02,
did not include zero (0.001; 0.048 for visionary leadership as the in-
95% CI: −0.04; 0.02). These results, which are shown in Table 3 and
dependent variable, and 0.001; 0.045 for empowering leadership as the
illustrated in Figs. 3 and 4, confirm Hypothesis 4.2
independent variable). The indirect effect of visionary leadership on
follower performance mediated by goal clarity was positive when em-
powering leadership was high (i.e., one standard deviation above the

1 2
When either only visionary or only empowering leadership was entered into Our figures only depict the interaction effects with visionary leadership as
the regression equation together with our three control variables, neither lea- the predictor and empowering leadership as the moderator. Reversing these
dership behavior significantly predicted goal clarity. variables yields highly similar figures.

26
E. Kearney, et al. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 155 (2019) 20–30

Table 3
Direct and indirect effects of visionary leadership (VL) and empowering leadership (EL) on follower performance.
Direct effect of VL on follower performance Direct effect of EL on follower performance

Effect SE t p LLCI ULCI Effect SE t p LLCI ULCI

0.17 0.06 2.71 < 0.01 0.05 0.29 0.23 0.07 3.40 < 0.01 0.10 0.37

Conditional indirect effect of VL at different values of EL Conditional indirect effect of EL at different values of VL

Mediator Value of EL Effect SE LLCI ULCI Mediator Value of VL Effect SE LLCI ULCI

Goal clarity Low (4.30) −0.01 0.02 −0.04 0.02 Goal clarity Low (4.09) −0.00 0.02 −0.04 0.02
Goal clarity Mean (5.30) 0.01 0.01 −0.00 0.05 Goal clarity Mean (5.14) 0.01 0.01 −0.00 0.05
Goal clarity High (6.30) 0.03 0.02 0.01 0.08 Goal clarity High (6.20) 0.03 0.02 0.01 0.09

Index of moderated mediation

Mediator Index SE LLCI ULCI Mediator Index SE LLCI ULCI

Goal clarity 0.02 0.01 0.001 0.048 Goal clarity 0.02 0.01 0.001 0.045

Note. N = 197 dyads. Number of bootstrap samples for calculating 95% bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals: 50,000.

Fig. 3. The conditional indirect effect of visionary leadership on follower per-

formance via goal clarity. Note. Depicted is the indirect effect of visionary
leadership on follower performance via goal clarity at low (−1 SD) and high
(+1 SD) levels of empowering leadership. The figure shows that when vi-
sionary leadership increases by one standard deviation, follower performance
increases by 0.03 units when empowering leadership is high.
5. Discussion
The main contribution of our study lies in providing theory and
offering empirical support for the proposition that the paradoxical de-
mand of maintaining control while simultaneously letting go of control
(Waldman & Bowen, 2016) can be met through the interactive effect of
visionary and empowering leadership (as evidenced in follower per-
formance). We argued that this combination of opposing, yet com-
plementary leadership behaviors thus enables leaders to address a key
paradox inherent in the leadership of followers (Waldman & Bowen,
2016). Visionary leadership helps the leader to exercise control. It
provides orientation and fosters alignment around shared objectives,
which prior research has shown to be conducive to performance (e.g.,
Carton et al., 2014; Stam et al., 2014). But visionary leadership does not
speak to the simultaneous needs for autonomy, self-determination, and
psychological empowerment, which previous work has also shown to
foster performance (e.g., Maynard et al., 2012; Zhang & Bartol, 2010).
Conversely, empowering leadership helps the leader to let go of control.
It provides followers freedom, greater responsibilities, and psycholo-
gical empowerment. But it does not address the simultaneous needs for
orientation and coordination. Hence, we argued that, together,
Fig. 4. The magnitude of the conditional indirect effect of visionary leadership
on follower performance via goal clarity at different levels of empowering
leadership. Note. The figure depicts how many units follower performance
changes when visionary leadership increases by one unit, depending on the
level of the moderator empowering leadership. The solid line depicts indirect
effect estimates and the dashed lines depict 95% confidence intervals based on
50,000 bootstrap samples.
visionary and empowering leadership form a whole that is greater than
the sum of its parts. Each complements and, in a certain sense, com-
pletes the other. Our results confirm the predictions of our theoretical
model that specified goal clarity as a mediator of the interactive effects
of visionary and empowering leadership on follower performance.
5.1. Theoretical implications
Paradox theory argues that various tensions between opposites
pervade organizations and affect the persons working in them (Smith &
Lewis, 2011; Zhang et al., 2015). Whereas most of the work on para-
doxes has been conducted at the organizational level of analysis, our
work contributes to the nascent literature on paradoxes that exist in the
leadership of followers (Waldman & Bowen, 2016). Our research shows
that addressing one of the key paradoxes inherent to leader behavior,
maintaining control while letting go of control (Waldman & Bowen,

27
E. Kearney, et al.
2016), may be achieved by drawing on the constructs discussed in the
more traditional leadership literature; specifically, the respective
streams on visionary and empowering leadership. In this way, our re-
search opens up a new avenue to studying paradoxes in leadership that
complements recent work in which paradoxical tensions were oper-
ationalized within the same measure (e.g., Zhang et al., 2015).
We argue that examining tensions as interactions between tradi-
tional constructs and studying tensions within the same measure are
conceptually similar and mainly differ in regard to how these ap-
proaches measure paradoxes in leadership. Each of these approaches is
viable and offers important insights into how leaders can succeed in
meeting contradictory demands. The methodological focus on oper-
ationalizing paradoxical tensions within the same measure (e.g., Zhang
et al., 2015) has the obvious advantage of explicitly putting paradoxes
center-stage. However, our approach has the advantage of examining
combinations of leadership behaviors that are typically studied sepa-
rately by researchers, which thus can contribute to a better integration
of diverse streams within the traditional leadership literature (DeRue
et al., 2011; Yukl, 2012).
In sum, it is likely that the effects of many leadership behaviors are
in part contingent on how they are combined with other leadership
behaviors. Thus, it is all the more surprising that there is scant theo-
retical and empirical work on such combinations. With this study, we
respond to calls (e.g., van Knippenberg, De Cremer, & van Knippenberg,
2007; Yukl, 2012) for research on combinations and interactions of
conceptually distinct leadership behaviors that are typically studied
separately. Yukl (2012: 76) has argued that a deeper understanding of
effective leadership may require going beyond a focus on isolated
constructs and entail the use of “complementary behaviors woven to-
gether into a complex tapestry.” As our work demonstrates, the paradox
perspective is a promising theoretical backdrop against which such
combinations of different leadership aspects can be examined.
Nevertheless, not all combinations of distinct leadership behaviors
are paradoxical. For example, visionary and directive leadership are
both agentic forms of leadership with a focus on the leader asserting
control. By contrast, empowering and participative leadership are forms
of communal leadership with an emphasis on letting go of control.
When studying such interactions of non-paradoxical elements, re-
searchers are arguably best advised to follow the typical approach of
designating one variable as the predictor and the other as the moder-
ating variable. The moderator may strengthen or weaken the effects of
the focal predictor variable.
But this conventional way of investigating interactions makes less
sense when paradoxical combinations are analyzed. In these cases,
there not only exists statistical symmetry regarding the interaction ef-
fect, but also theoretical symmetry concerning how two opposing ele-
ments mutually reinforce each other. In a paradoxical combination,
each element contributes unique strengths and helps to curtail the po-
tential negative effects that the respective opposite behavior may entail
when enacted in isolation. The interaction of such elements not only
affects the magnitude, but also changes the nature of the effects of each
element by yielding a whole that is different from the sum of its parts.
Hence, future studies of interactions between paradoxical leadership
elements could also benefit from assuming this theoretical symmetry
and analyzing an interaction effect from both sides. This is in line with
paradox theory (e.g., Smith & Lewis, 2011; Waldman & Bowen, 2016;
Zhang et al., 2015), in which neither element within a pair of para-
doxical opposites is given theoretical primacy.
Aside from the contributions to the literature on paradoxes in lea-
dership, our study also makes contributions to the specific literatures on
visionary and empowering leadership. By arguing that these behaviors
complement each other and that the effects of their simultaneous
practice go beyond the sum of their isolated effects, we offer new in-
sights into why both of these leadership behaviors may sometimes have
weak or no effects. Although this has been noted repeatedly (see for
example, Greer et al., 2012, and van Knippenberg & Stam, 2014, with
28
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 155 (2019) 20–30
respect to visionary leadership, and Ahearne et al., 2005, and Sharma &
Kirkman, 2015, in regard to empowering leadership), to date there has
been relatively little theory and research on why such leadership may
have mixed effects. Situational and contingency approaches would in-
terpret this as meaning that, under some conditions, visionary (or em-
powering) leadership may be inappropriate and that leaders should
exhibit its opposite instead. By contrast, we propose that potential ne-
gative effects may be due to one-sidedness; that is, addressing only one
pole of a pair of opposites. In line with paradox theory (Waldman &
Bowen, 2016), we argue that leaders will be most effective if they si-
multaneously maximize visionary and empowering leadership. These
behaviors form an interdependent unit insofar as their combination
addresses a broader, more holistic range of demands than either of them
addresses by itself.
5.2. Managerial implications
Although not explicitly stated, the idea of combining visionary and
empowering leadership is reflected in popular leadership advice such
as, “Don’t tell people how to do things; tell them what to do and let
them surprise you with their results” (George S. Patton). It is also evi-
dent in the idea of the “commander’s intent” developed by the military
(e.g., Storlie, 2010). The commander’s intent specifies what success
looks like at the end of a mission (visionary leadership), but grants
followers autonomy and flexibility in determining how best to realize
this desired end state (empowering leadership).
In learning to enact the combination of visionary and empowering
behaviors, leaders may be well advised to keep the following objectives
in mind. When they enact visionary behaviors, leaders must also work
on motivating followers to carefully consider the vision and the im-
plications for their work, i.e., to take ownership of the vision, which can
be accomplished through empowering leadership. Leaders who exhibit
empowering behaviors must avoid a “leaderless chaos” in which leader-
follower relationships are characterized by a misalignment of interests
and a lack of orientation and coordination. To enable leaders to be both
visionary and empowering simultaneously, organizations should em-
phasize this combination in developing and promoting their leadership
culture and offer training and coaching in this regard. Although some
leaders may be naturally adept at this combination, for most leaders it
is likely to require repeated practice, and the paradox of simultaneously
pursuing visionary and empowering leadership may to some leaders
suggest that this is a matter of either/or, rather than both/and, lea-
dership. The relatively high mean scores of both visionary and em-
powering leadership in our sample and the correlation between the two
suggest that many leaders are able to enact these behaviors and com-
bine them to some extent. The main challenge for these leaders may
thus be to further increase the degree to which they exhibit visionary
and empowering leadership and to increase both simultaneously.
5.3. Limitations and future research
We acknowledge several limitations of our study. First, we relied on
subjective, rather than objective, ratings of performance provided by the
respective leaders. Given that we studied leader-follower dyads from
different organizations and industrial sectors, it would have been diffi-
cult to find a common objective measure relevant for all followers in our
sample. Moreover, many of the followers in our sample are also eval-
uated by their respective organizations on the basis of subjective, rather
than objective, performance ratings provided by their leaders, simply
because, for some tasks, objective indicators may be difficult to define. In
support of our approach, Wall et al. (2004) found strong evidence for the
convergent, discriminant, and construct validity of self-report measures.
And summing up the results of a meta-analysis, Bommer, Johnson, Rich,
Podsakoff, and MacKenzie (1995) wrote, “… researchers … have ex-
plicitly looked for differences in relationship strength between multiple
independent variables with subjective and objective measures. But
E. Kearney, et al.
contrary to expectation, in practically no cases have significant re-
lationship differences been found” (p. 588). Furthermore, Kozlowski and
Klein (2000) argued that it is appropriate to rely on the ratings of a single
expert if the characteristic is observable and the expert has access to the
relevant information. We would thus argue that the leaders in our study
were in an adequate position to evaluate their respective followers with
whom they frequently interacted.
Second, our research design does not permit causal inferences.
Replications of our findings by means of experimental studies, pre-
ferably in the field, would be helpful to confirm the causal relationships
implied by our model. Third, the leaders in our sample were middle-
level leaders. Future studies are needed to explore whether our findings
also hold for leaders at other hierarchical levels. Fourth, the dyads in
our sample predominantly comprised German participants, and the
study was conducted in German. Further research is needed to ascertain
the generalizability of our findings to dyadic leader-follower relation-
ships in other countries and cultures.
With respect to future research, we see several main avenues to
build upon our work. In several different ways, the synergy between
empowering and visionary leadership could be explored further. For
example, by emphasizing follower development, proactivity, responsi-
bility, and ownership, empowering leadership can help prepare fol-
lowers for the changing nature of work and most notably its increasing
digitalization. Concomitantly, visionary leadership may help mitigate
the uncertainty that this process entails and provide orientation and a
sense of purpose. Hence, the combination of these two leadership be-
haviors may be particularly well suited to meet some of the most de-
manding current and future challenges that organizations face.
In further studying the combination of visionary and empowering
leadership, other mediators should also be investigated. In the present
research, our focus in this regard was on goal clarity, but we would
assume that the interactive effects of visionary and empowering lea-
dership could also affect other variables that are in turn positively
linked to performance outcomes. Future research could examine af-
fective variables (e.g., emotional exhaustion or job satisfaction), moti-
vational variables (e.g., intrinsic and prosocial motivation, goal set-
ting), as well as behavioral variables (e.g., extra effort, contextual
performance) that could conceivably be influenced by the vi-
sionary × empowering leadership interaction. Moreover, it would also
be interesting to examine whether the interactive effects identified in
the present article at the dyadic level would also hold at the team-level
of analysis. Given the potential of both visionary and empowering
leadership to engender positive effects at the team level (e.g., Carton
et al., 2014; Stewart, 2006), and the fact that social sharedness may
enhance the effects of goals (van Ginkel & van Knippenberg, 2008), the
effects may be even stronger at this higher level of analysis.
We have argued that visionary and empowering leadership lend
themselves particularly well to simultaneous enactment and thus en-
gendering positive interactive effects of agentic and communal lea-
dership. However, the paradox lens that we adopted to develop our
model also lends itself to examining other combinations of leadership
aspects. Paradox thinking emphasizes the striving for synergy through
combining and harmonizing opposites. This is not accomplished
through pursuing a balance or compromise. Instead, it is achieved
through “the optimization or simultaneous pursuit of both poles”
(Waldman & Bowen, 2016, p. 321). It is conceivable that the effects of
leadership behaviors or aspects other than the ones studied here like-
wise depend on how they are combined with other elements. For ex-
ample, researchers could explore directive leadership as an alternative
form of agentic leadership and shared leadership as an alternative form
of communal leadership. Particularly promising in this regard may be
investigations into the combination of vertical and shared leadership
(e.g., Pearce, 2004), as Berson, Waldman, and Pearce (2016) have re-
cently shown in their work on vision formation.
Another example of such a combination may be that leaders stand to
gain from influencing followers both at rational and emotional levels.
29
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 155 (2019) 20–30
Although this idea underlies prior work on the combination of trans-
formational and transactional leadership, paradox theory offers new
avenues for further theoretical and empirical investigations along these
lines. Finally, future studies could also explore interactions of see-
mingly paradoxical elements that include not only behaviors, but also
traits. In this regard, Owens, Wallace, and Waldman (2015) have ex-
amined interactive effects of the leader traits narcissism and humility
(which might translate into agentic and communal behaviors). Gen-
erally, some combinations may be more difficult to implement, some
may be more striking examples of a paradox, and some may be more
promising than other possible combinations, but the underlying ratio-
nale would always be to identify elements that are opposing, yet ulti-
mately complementary.
6. Conclusion
Arguably one of the most salient paradoxes that leaders face in the
effort to enhance their followers’ performance is the tension between,
more broadly, agency and communion, and, more specifically, main-
taining control while simultaneously letting go of control. Different
leadership behaviors are required to address and reconcile these two
poles. We showed how the combination of visionary and empowering
leadership has synergistic effects in that it enables leaders to meet this
challenge and thus engender higher levels of goal clarity and, in turn,
performance than either leadership behavior could achieve by itself.
Our work highlights the promise of studying the interactive effects of
leadership behaviors that are usually studied separately, as well as the
value that lies in examining such effects through a paradox lens.
References
Ahearne, M., Mathieu, J., & Rapp, A. (2005). To empower or not to empower your sales
force? An empirical examination of the influence of leadership empowerment be-
havior on customer satisfaction and performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90,
945–955.
Aiken, L. S., & West, S. G. (1991). Multiple regression: Testing and interpreting interactions.
Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Arnold, J. J., Arad, S., Rhoades, J. A., & Drasgow, F. (2000). The Empowering Leadership
Questionnaire: The construction and validation of a new scale for measuring leader
behaviors. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 21, 249–269.
Baer, M. D., Dhensa-Kahlon, R. K., Colquitt, J. A., Rodell, J. B., Outlaw, R., & Long, D. M.
(2015). Uneasy lies the head that bears the trust: The effects of feeling trusted on
emotional exhaustion. Academy of Management Journal, 58, 1637–1657.
Bakan, D. (1966). The duality of human existence: isolation and communion in Western man.
Chicago: Rand McNally.
Bass, B. M. (1985). Leadership and performance beyond expectations. New York: Free Press.
Bass, B. M., & Avolio, B. J. (1995). MLQ multifactor leadership questionnaire for research.
Redwood City, CA: Mindgarden.
Bass, B. M., & Riggio, R. E. (2006). Transformational leadership. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Berson, Y., Shamir, B., Avolio, B. J., & Popper, M. (2001). The relationship between vision
strength, leadership style, and context. Leadership Quarterly, 12, 53–73.
Berson, Y., Waldman, D. A., & Pearce, C. L. (2016). Enhancing our understanding of
vision in organizations: Toward an integration of leader and follower processes.
Organizational Psychology Review, 6, 171–191.
Blake, R. R., & Mouton, J. S. (1964). The managerial grid. Houston: Gulf Publishing.
Bommer, W. H., Johnson, J. J., Rich, G. A., Podsakoff, P. M., & MacKenzie, S. B. (1995).
On the interchangeability of objective and subjective measures of employee perfor-
mance: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 48, 587–605.
Brislin, R. W. (1980). Translation and content analysis of oral and written material. In H.
C. Triandis, & J. W. Berry (Vol. Eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural psychology: vol. 2, (pp.
349–444). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Carton, A. M., & Lucas, B. J. (2017). How can leaders overcome the blurry vision bias?
Identifying an antidote to the paradox of vision communication. Academy of Management
Journal. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2015.0375 Published online: 21 Nov 2017.
Carton, A. M., Murphy, C., & Clark, J. R. (2014). A (blurry) vision of the future: How
leader rhetoric about ultimate goals influences performance. Academy of Management
Journal, 57, 1544–1570.
Chen, G., Sharma, P. N., Edinger, S. K., Shapiro, D. L., & Farh, J.-L. (2011). Motivating
and demotivating forces in teams: Cross-level influences of empowering leadership
and relationship conflict. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96, 541–557.
Cheong, M., Spain, S. M., Yammarino, F. J., & Yun, S. (2016). Two faces of empowering
leadership: Enabling and burdening. Leadership Quarterly, 27, 602–616.
Conger, J., & Kanungo, R. (1998). Charismatic leadership in organizations. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage.
De Dreu, C. K. W., Nijstad, B. A., & van Knippenberg, D. (2008). Motivated information
processing in group judgment and decision making. Personality and Social Psychology
Review, 12, 22–49.
de Hoogh, A. H. B., & den Hartog, D. N. (2009). Neuroticism and locus of control as
moderators of the relationships of charismatic and autocratic leadership with
E. Kearney, et al.
burnout. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 1058–1067.
DeRue, D. S., Nahrgang, J. D., Wellman, N., & Humphrey, S. E. (2011). Trait and beha-
vioral theories of leadership: An integration and meta-analytic test of their relative
validity. Personnel Psychology, 64, 7–52.
Dorfman, P. W., Hanges, P. J., & Brodbeck, F. C. (2004). Leadership and cultural varia-
tion: The identification of culturally endorsed leadership profiles. In R. J. House, P. J.
Hanges, M. Javidan, P. W. Dorfman, & V. Gupta (Eds.). Leadership, culture, and or-
ganizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies (pp. 669–720). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Edwards, J. R., & Lambert, L. S. (2007). Methods for integrating moderation and med-
iation: A general analytical framework using moderated path analysis. Psychological
Methods, 12, 1–22.
Gebert, D., Boerner, S., & Kearney, E. (2010). Fostering team innovation: Why is it im-
portant to combine opposing action strategies? Organization Science, 21, 593–608.
Greer, L. L., Homan, A. C., de Hoogh, A. H. B., & den Hartog, D. N. (2012). Tainted
visions: The effect of visionary leader behaviors and leader categorization tendencies
on the financial performance of ethnically diverse teams. Journal of Applied
Psychology, 97, 203–213.
Griffin, M. A., Parker, S. K., & Mason, C. M. (2010). Leader vision and the development of
adaptive and proactive performance: A longitudinal study. Journal of Applied
Psychology, 95, 174–182.
Hayes, A. F. (2013). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis:
A regression-based approach (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford.
Hersey, P., Blanchard, K. H., & Johnson, D. E. (1996). Management of organizational be-
havior: Utilizing human resources (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
House, R. J., & Shamir, B. (1993). Toward the integration of transformational, charis-
matic, and visionary theories. In M. M. Chemers, & R. Ayman (Eds.). Leadership theory
and research: Perspectives and directions (pp. 81–107). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Hu, L., & Bentler, P. M. (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis:
Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling, 6, 1–55.
Humborstad, S. I. W., & Kuvaas, B. (2013). Mutuality in leader-subordinate empowerment
expectation: Its impact on role ambiguity and intrinsic motivation. Leadership
Quarterly, 24, 363–377.
Illies, R., Schwind, K. M., Wagner, D. T., Johnson, M. D., DeRue, D. S., & Ilgen, D. R.
(2007). When can employees have a family life? The effects of daily workload and
affect on work-family conflict and social behaviors at home. Journal of Applied
Psychology, 92, 1368–1379.
Kim, M., Beehr, T. A., & Prewett, M. S. (2018). Employee responses to empowering leader-
ship: A meta-analysis. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 25, 257–276.
Kirkman, B. L., & Rosen, B. (1999). Beyond self-management: Antecedents and con-
sequences of team empowerment. Academy of Management Journal, 42, 58–74.
Kozlowski, S. W. J., & Klein, K. J. (2000). A multilevel approach to theory and research in
organizations: Contextual, temporal, and emergent processes. In K. J. Klein, & S. W. J.
Kozlowski (Eds.). Multilevel theory, research, and methods in organizations: Foundations,
extensions, and new directions (pp. 3–90). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Kruglanski, A. (1989). Lay epistemics and human knowledge. New York: Plenum.
Larson, L. L., Hunt, J. G., & Osborn, R. N. (1976). The great hi-hi leader behavior myth: A
lesson from Occam's razor. Academy of Management Journal, 19, 628–641.
Lord, R. G., Day, D. V., Zaccaro, S. J., Avolio, B. J., & Eagly, A. H. (2017). Leadership in
applied psychology: Three waves of theory and research. Journal of Applied
Psychology, 102, 434–451.
Lorinkova, N. M., Pearsall, M. J., & Sims, H. P., Jr. (2013). Examining the differential
longitudinal performance of directive versus empowering leadership in teams.
Academy of Management Journal, 56, 573–596.
Lovelace, K. J., Manz, C. C., & Alves, J. C. (2007). Work stress and leadership develop-
ment: The role of self-leadership, shared leadership, physical fitness and flow in
managing demands and increasing job control. Human Resource Management Review,
17, 374–387.
MacKenzie, S. B., Podsakoff, P. M., & Fetter, R. (1991). Organizational citizenship be-
havior and objective productivity as determinants of managerial evaluations of
salespersons’ performance. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50,
123–150.
Manz, C. C., & Sims, H. P., Jr. (1987). Leading workers to lead themselves: The external
leadership of self-managing work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 32,
106–128.
March, J. G. (1991). Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning. Organization
Science, 2, 71–87.
Martin, S. L., Liao, H., & Campbell, E. M. (2013). Directive versus empowering leadership:
A field experiment comparing impacts on task proficiency and proactivity. Academy
of Management Journal, 56, 1372–1395.
Maynard, M. T., Gilson, L. L., & Mathieu, J. E. (2012). Empowerment – Fad or fab? A
multilevel review of the past two decades of research. Journal of Management, 38,
1231–1281.
McAdams, D. P. (1993). The stories we live by. New York: Harper Collins.
Miron-Spektor, E., Gino, F., & Argote, L. (2011). Paradoxical frames and creative sparks:
Enhancing individual creativity through conflict and integration. Organizational
Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 116, 229–240.
Miron-Spektor, E., Ingram, A., Keller, J., Smith, W. K., & Lewis, M. W. (2018).
Microfoundations of organizational paradox: The problem is how why think about
the problem. Academy of Management Journal, 61, 26–45.
Morgeson, F. P., & Humphrey, S. E. (2006). The work design questionnaire (WDQ):
Developing and validating a comprehensive measure for assessing job design and the
nature of work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91, 1321–1339.
Owens, B. P., Wallace, A. S., & Waldman, D. A. (2015). Leader narcissism and follower
outcomes: The counterbalancing effect of leader humility. Journal of Applied
Psychology, 100, 1203–1213.
Pearce, C. L. (2004). The future of leadership: Combining vertical and shared leadership
to transform knowledge work. Academy of Management Executive, 18, 47–57.
Pearce, C. L., Sims, H. P., Jr., Cox, J. F., Ball, G., Schnell, E., Smith, K. A., & Trevino, L.
(2003). Transactors, transformers and beyond: A multi-method development of a
theoretical typology of leadership. Journal of Management Development, 22, 273–307.
30
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 155 (2019) 20–30
Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Moorman, R. H., & Fetter, R. (1990). Transformational
leader behaviors and their effects on followers' trust in leader, satisfaction, and or-
ganizational citizenship behaviors. Leadership Quarterly, 1, 107–142.
Putnam, L. L., Fairhurst, G. T., & Banghart, S. G. (2016). Contradictions, dialectics, and
paradoxes in organizations: A constitutive approach. Academy of Management Annals,
10, 65–171.
Quinn, R. W. (2005). Flow in knowledge work: High performance experience in the de-
sign of national security technology. Administrative Science Quarterly, 50, 610–641.
R Core Team (2017). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R
Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL: < https://www.R-
project.org/ > .
Raub, S., & Robert, C. (2010). Differential effects of empowering leadership on in-role and
extra-role employee behaviors: Exploring the role of psychological empowerment and
power values. Human Relations, 63, 1743–1770.
Raub, S., & Robert, C. (2013). Empowerment, organizational commitment, and voice
behavior in the hospitality industry: Evidence from a multinational sample. Cornell
Hospitality Quarterly, 54, 136–148.
Rosseel, Y. (2012). Lavaan: An R package for structural equation modeling. Journal of
Statistical Software, 48, 1–36.
Sawyer, J. E. (1992). Goal and process clarity: Specification of multiple constructs of role
ambiguity and a structural equation model of their antecedents and consequences.
Journal of Applied Psychology, 77, 130–142.
Schad, J., Lewis, M., Raisch, S., & Smith, W. (2016). Paradox research in management
science: Looking back to move forward. Academy of Management Annals, 10, 5–64.
Shalley, C. (1991). Effects of productivity goals, creativity goals, and personal discretion
on individual creativity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 76, 179–185.
Shalley, C. E. (1995). Effects of coaction, expected evaluation, and goal setting on crea-
tivity and productivity. Academy of Management Journal, 38, 483–503.
Shamir, B., House, R., & Arthur, M. B. (1993). The motivational effects of charismatic
leadership: A self-concept based theory. Organization Science, 4, 577–594.
Sharma, P., & Kirkman, B. L. (2015). Leveraging leaders: A literature review and future
lines of inquiry for empowering leadership research. Group and Organization
Management, 40, 193–237.
Smith, W. K., & Lewis, M. W. (2011). Toward a theory of paradox: A dynamic equilibrium
model of organizing. Academy of Management Review, 36, 381–403.
Sosik, J. J., & Dinger, S. L. (2007). Relationships between leadership style and vision
content: The moderating role of need for social approval, self-monitoring, and need
for social power. Leadership Quarterly, 18, 134–153.
Stam, D., Lord, R. G., van Knippenberg, D., & Wisse, B. (2014). An image of who we might
become: Vision communication, possible selves, and vision pursuit. Organization
Science, 25, 1172–1194.
Stam, D., van Knippenberg, D., & Wisse, B. (2010). The role of regulatory fit in visionary
leadership. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 31, 499–518.
Stewart, G. L. (2006). A meta-analytic review of relation-ships between team design
features and team performance. Journal of Management, 32, 29–54.
Storlie, C. (2010). Manage uncertainty with commander’s intent. Harvard Business Review.
https://hbr.org/2010/11/dont-play-golf-in-a-football-g.
Sully de Luque, M., Washburn, N. T., Waldman, D. A., & House, R. J. (2008). Unrequited
profit: How stakeholder and economic values relate to subordinates' perceptions of
leadership and firm performance. Administrative Science Quarterly, 53, 626–654.
Tuckey, M. R., Bakker, A. B., & Dollard, M. F. (2012). Empowering leaders optimize
working conditions for engagement: A multilevel study. Journal of Occupational
Health Psychology, 17, 15–27.
van Ginkel, W. P., & van Knippenberg, D. (2008). Group information elaboration and
group decision making: The role of shared task representations. Organizational
Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 105, 82–97.
van Knippenberg, D., De Cremer, D., & van Knippenberg, B. (2007). Leadership and
fairness: The state of the art. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology,
16, 113–140.
van Knippenberg, D., & Sitkin, S. B. (2013). A critical assessment of charismatic-trans-
formational leadership research: Back to the drawing board? Academy of Management
Annals, 7, 1–60.
van Knippenberg, D., & Stam, D. (2014). Visionary leadership. In D. V. Day (Ed.). The
oxford handbook of leadership and organizations (pp. 241–259). New York: Oxford
University Press.
Vecchio, R. P., Justin, J. E., & Pearce, C. L. (2010). Empowering leadership: An ex-
amination of mediating mechanisms within a hierarchical structure. Leadership
Quarterly, 21, 530–542.
Vroom, V. H., & Jago, A. G. (1988). The new leadership: Managing participation in organi-
zations. Upper Saddle River: NJ: Prentice Hall.
Waldman, D. A., & Bowen, D. E. (2016). Learning to be a paradox-savvy leader. Academy
of Management Perspectives, 30, 316–327.
Wall, T. D., Michie, J., Patterson, M., Wood, S. J., Sheehan, M., Clegg, C. W., & West, M.
(2004). On the validity of subjective measures of company performance. Personnel
Psychology, 57, 95–118.
Yukl, G. (2010). Leadership in organizations. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Yukl, G. (2012). Effective leadership behavior: What we know and what questions need
more attention. Academy of Management Perspectives, 66–85.
Yun, S., Cox, J., & Sims, H. P., Jr. (2006). The forgotten follower: A contingency model of
leadership and follower self-leadership. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21,
374–388.
Zhang, X., & Bartol, K. M. (2010). Linking empowering leadership and employee crea-
tivity: The influence of psychological empowerment, intrinsic motivation, and crea-
tive process engagement. Academy of Management Journal, 53, 107–128.
Zhang, Y., Waldman, D. A., Han, Y., & Li, X. (2015). Paradoxical leader behaviors in
people management: Antecedents and consequences. Academy of Management
Journal, 58, 538–566.
Zhang, X., & Zhou, J. (2014). Empowering leadership, uncertainty avoidance, trust, and
employee creativity: Interaction effects and a mediating mechanism. Organizational
Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 124, 150–164.