ESCP Europe

Langue

English

Publication year

01/02/2023

This study aims to examine an integrated research model of employee empowerment from the perspectives of managers (the empowering) and employees (the empowered) with a newly proposed construct, empowerment disparity that captures a difference in employees' perception of empowerment within a team. A multilevel analysis was conducted using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) to test the hypotheses using a matched sample of 286 restaurant employees along with 51 managers and 2129 customers from five tourist cities in Thailand. The findings show that psychological empowerment and the psychological contract have a positive effect on customers' assessment of interaction quality, and empowerment disparity moderates the links between a manager's empowering behavior and psychological empowerment, and psychological empowerment and the psychological contract. The theoretical and managerial implications suggested by the findings are provided for researchers and practitioners.