Although much of the empowering leadership literature examines its relationship with one form of employee empowerment, independently, the present study takes a “holistic” approach to understanding employee empowerment experiences by investigating the interrelationships of empowering leadership, psychological empowerment, structural empowerment, and behavioral empowerment, concurrently. Using self-determination theory and the job characteristics model, we first establish that empowering leadership enhances behavioral empowerment, a variation of employee empowerment that remains limitedly understood. Next, using substitutes for leadership theory, we conduct a detailed examination of when this relationship occurs by investigating the moderating effects of psychological and structural empowerment. We further explore the direct and moderated relationship between behavioral empowerment and engagement and a form of innovative work behavior. Data from 232 teams and 1232 members provide strong support for the predicted main and interactive effects of empowering leadership on behavioral empowerment and subsequent outcomes. Together, this study provides rich insight into the empowering leadership – employee empowerment relationship and demonstrates the value of examining the substitutive effects of several variations of empowerment in a single investigation, as well as its downstream effects on employee engagement and innovative behaviors.
