Toward a Contingency Model of Leadership and Psychological Empowerment: When Should Self-Leadership Be Encouraged?

In this paper, we develop and present a contingency model of leadership and psychological empowerment that specifies the circumstances and situations under which follower self-leadership should be encouraged. The model suggests that certain key contingency factors, including follower development, situational urgency and task structure, dictate which of several leadership approaches, including directive, transactional, transformational and empowering, should be chosen. Each specific leadership approach in turn results in a specific combination of predictable outcomes, which include the level of follower involvement, dependence, creativity and psychological empowerment. We also advance research propositions based on the model and discuss the model’s practical implications along with possible approaches for empirically testing its linkages.