Abusive leadership – a Barrier to Employee Empowerment

Abstract

This research is conducted to understand the negative impact of abusive leadership on employee empowerment. Employee Empowerment plays a vital role in an organization in achieving a competitive advantage in this era of cut throat competition. Empowerment of employee enables the employee to take a quick decision to respond to changes in the business environment. Various types of Leadership styles have different impact on employee empowerment. Abusive leadership style has adverse effect on employee empowerment. The study is conducted in Indian business organizations in Bangalore that use world class technologies in India by using a questionnaire developed by me consisting of 54 items based on literature survey, content validity, pilot study and factor analysis. Correlation and regression analysis are carried out to find the relationship among abusive leaderships variables, empowerment variables and consequence variables. The study highlights that arrogance and interpersonal insensitivity characteristics of abusive leadership reduce the employee empowerment. Abusive leadership also has a harmful impact on   consequences of empowerment viz. Organizational commitment, work environment satisfaction and job involvement of employees resulting in poor performance of the organization wearing away the competitive advantage of the organization.

Keywords: Abusive leadership; employee empowerment, commitment, work environment satisfaction, job involvement