A substantial body of research focuses on the positive impacts of empowering leadership, yet there is insufficient exploration of why and how it produces unintended effects. This study, starting from the characteristics and limitations of individual work and drawing on the job demands-resources (JD-R) model, proposes that for employees, empowering leadership acts more as a job demand than a job resource. Subsequently, based on the health impairment process of job demands within the JD-R model, the study suggests that employees’ role ambiguity and job burnout serve as chain mediators in the cross-level impact of empowering leadership on employee innovative performance, with employees’ power distance orientation acting as a moderating factor. Empirical results based on time-lagged multi-source paired survey data collected from 150 leaders and 750 employees in the Chinese IT industry support our theoretical model. With its theoretical and practical implications, this study contributes to both empowering leadership and organisational management literature.
