Nankai Business Review International

Supervisors’ leadership and health science researchers’ intrinsic motivation: The

mediate role of psychological empowerment
Yi Meng Liqing Zou Jia He Changkun Luo
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Yi Meng Liqing Zou Jia He Changkun Luo , (2015),"Supervisors’ leadership and health science
researchers’ intrinsic motivation", Nankai Business Review International, Vol. 6 Iss 1 pp. 68 - 81
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NBRI
6,1
Supervisors’ leadership and
health science researchers’
intrinsic motivation
68 The mediate role of psychological
empowerment
Yi Meng
Department of Social Medicine and Health Service Management,
Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China
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Liqing Zou
Training Department, Third Military Medical University,
Chongqing, China, and
Jia He and Changkun Luo
Department of Social Medicine and Health Service Management,
Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China

Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to enrich our understanding about the factors which encourage health science
researchers’ intrinsic motivation. It integrates leadership theories regarding powers from Western and
Eastern cultures to build and test a theoretical model linking two types of leadership (empowering leadership
and authoritarian leadership) with intrinsic motivation through psychological empowerment.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper tested the hypotheses with a sample of 235
postgraduates working in research groups at a medical university in China, using a two-step analytical
strategy of structure equation modeling.
Findings – The results showed that the proposed mediation model has a satisfactory fit (␹2/df ⫽ 2.24,
GFI ⫽ 0.92, CFI ⫽ 0.94, RMSEA ⫽ 0.073). This paper found support for the hypotheses that
empowering leadership was positively correlated and authoritarian leadership was negatively
correlated with intrinsic motivation through psychological empowerment.
Originality/value – This paper provides a comprehensive understanding of the mechanism between
leadership-employing powers and intrinsic motivation by an initiative examining a conceptual model
including empowering leadership, authoritarian leadership, psychological empowerment and intrinsic
motivation. It also provides generalized findings by testing the theories from the industrial world in the
area of academia and the theories about the West and the East within Chinese culture.
Keywords Creativity, Intrinsic motivation, Authoritarian leadership, Empowering leadership,
Health science researcher, Psychological empowerment
Paper type Research paper

Nankai Business Review

International 1. Introduction
Vol. 6 No. 1, 2015
pp. 68-81
Creativity refers to the production of novel and useful ideas by an individual or by a
© Emerald Group Publishing Limited
2040-8749
group of individuals working together (Amabile, 1983; Tierney et al., 1999; Zhou and
DOI 10.1108/NBRI-01-2014-0007 Shalley, 2003). In modern society, science researchers are professional creativity
 producers. When they conduct a scientific research in pursuit of creativity, their Role of
intrinsic motivation determines their decision to initiate and sustain creative effort over psychological
time, and their willingness to challenge the status quo and take task risks. In this sense, empowerment
science researchers with high levels of intrinsic motivation are likely to exhibit a high
level of creativity. Therefore, people desire to understand the factors influencing the
level of their intrinsic motivation and the underlying mechanism.
According to componential theory of creativity (Amabile, 1983), intrinsic motivation 69
is influenced by an individual’s perceptions of the specific contextual factors. Of all the
contextual factors that impinge on a science researcher’s intrinsic motivation within
organizations, one of the most immediate and potent factors is likely to be the immediate
supervisor’s leadership (Heinze et al., 2009; Hemlin and Olsson, 2011). Yet, our
knowledge and understanding of how supervisors’ leadership impinges upon intrinsic
motivation of science researchers is limited, as the body of research on leadership and
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intrinsic motivation focuses mainly on the field of industries (Chen et al., 2009; Shin and
Zhou, 2003; Zhang and Bartol, 2010) and rarely on academics. Moreover, the existing
knowledge of leadership and motivation is still incomplete because research
investigating the relationship of leadership and intrinsic motivation demonstrates great
interest in transformational leadership (Aryee et al., 2007; Shin and Zhou, 2003),
supporting leadership (Oldham and Cummings, 1996) and leader–member exchange
(Pan et al., 2012), and does not pay enough attention to the leadership dealing with power
(Zhang and Bartol, 2010). Nevertheless, as Bass and Bass (2008) noted, the essence of
leadership has influence over followers and the engine of influence is a leader’s power;
the investigation on the leadership regarding power and its influencing mechanism on
intrinsic motivation is worthwhile.
Within management practice, empowering leadership and authoritarian leadership
are two typical leadership-employing powers. Empowering leadership, advanced by the
Western leadership theory (Zhang and Bartol, 2010), involves sharing power with a
view to enhancing subordinates’ motivation in their work, while authoritarian
leadership, developed by Eastern leadership theory (Cheng et al., 2004), manifests itself
as centralizing power so as to assert absolute authority and control over subordinates
and unquestionable obedience from subordinates. Theoretically, individuals under
empowering leadership feel competent and self-determining in their given tasks, thus
their intrinsic motivation is enhanced; oppositely, experiencing authoritarian
leadership, individuals feel incompetent and that they have lost control of the given task,
so their intrinsic motivation is diminished (Zhou and Shalley, 2003). According to these
assumptions, psychological empowerment refers to an individual’s psychological state
that is manifested in four cognitions: meaning, competence, self-determination and
impact (Spreitzer, 1995), and may act as the mediator of the relationship between
leadership-employing power and intrinsic motivation. However, so far only a few
empirical evidence (Zhang and Bartol, 2010) have proven that empowering leadership is
positively associated with intrinsic motivation mediating psychological empowerment,
and no research has tested the negative effects of authoritarian leadership on intrinsic
motivation and its mechanism.
To address these issues, we integrate leadership theory regarding power from
Western and Eastern cultures to hypothesize that empowering leadership is positively
and authoritarian leadership is negatively correlated with intrinsic motivation through
 NBRI psychological empowerment (Figure 1). The findings of this study contribute to the
6,1 literature in four significant ways. First, by examining the positive effects of
empowering leadership and the negative effects of authoritarian leadership on intrinsic
motivation, this study extends earlier research that has only examined empowering
leadership, and makes an effort to provide a comprehensive understanding of
leadership-employing power and intrinsic motivation. Second, by examining
70 psychological empowerment as a mediating variable in the relationship between two
leaderships using power and intrinsic motivation, this study enriches our
understanding of the underlying mechanism between them. Third, by testing the
hypothesized model with a group of science researchers, this study generalizes and
applies the existing theory in industry to the area of academia and further draws more
generalized findings. Fourth, by examining a conceptual model based on knowledge
from the West and the East within Chinese culture, this study evidences the
generalization of leadership, empowerment and motivation theories in Chinese cultural
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contexts.

2. Theoretical background and hypothesis

2.1 Leadership and psychological empowerment
Empowerment gives organizational members the responsibility and authority to carry
out their jobs so that psychologically they feel they “own” their work (Bass and Bass,
2008). Conger and Kanungo (1988) defined psychological empowerment as self-efficacy.
Thomas and Velthouse (1990) further claim that psychological empowerment is
multifaceted and is seen as intrinsically task-motivating by providing meaning to one’s
role in the organization, a sense of competence, a sense of self-determination and
awareness of the impact of what one is doing. Spreitzer (1995) extracted and validated
this definition as four dimensions: meaning, competence, self-determination and impact.
Meaning is the value of a work goal or purpose, judged in relation to an individual’s own
ideas or standards. Competence is an individual’s belief in his or her capability to
perform activities with skill. Self-determination is an individual’s sense of having choice
in initiating and regulating actions. Impact is the degree to which an individual can
influence strategic, administrative or operating outcomes at work. Those four factors
are independent and distinct, yet interrelated and mutually reinforcing (Gagne, Senecal
and Koestner, 1997; Spreitzer, 1995).
Empowering leadership refers to the process of implementing conditions that enable
power sharing with a subordinate by delineating the significance of the subordinate’s
job, providing greater decision-making autonomy, expressing confidence in the

Figure 1.
Hypothesized model
 subordinate’s capabilities and removing hindrances to performance (Arnold et al., 2000; Role of
Zhang and Bartol, 2010). Empowering leadership is a favorite leadership in Western psychological
organizations today and has attracted scholars’ attention (Arnold et al., 2000; Srivastava
and Bartol, 2006; Zhang et al., 2011). According to the conceptions, empowering
empowerment
leadership should have significant effects on the subordinates’ psychological
empowerment. Empowering leadership promotes the meaning of the work by helping
the subordinate understand the significance of the work he or she is doing; enhancing 71
the subordinate’s confidence on his or her work by demonstrating trust in their work
competence; providing the subordinate with autonomy by encouraging self-regulation,
buffering bureaucracy and imparting needed information; and increasing the
subordinate’s feeling of impact by providing opportunities for participating in decision
making. Zhang and Bartol (2010) found a positive correlation between empowering
leadership and psychological empowerment. However, more evidence is needed to
support it. For these reasons, the first hypothesis of this study is proposed:
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H1. Empowering leadership is positively related with psychological empowerment.

Authoritarianism describes leadership as asserting absolute authority and control over
followers and demanding unquestioned obedience of them (Cheng et al., 2004). This
observation comes from studies on paternalistic leadership (Cheng et al., 2004; Tsui
et al., 2004; Wu et al., 2012), a prevalent leadership style of Chinese organizations. Tsui
et al. (2004) describe authoritarian leaders as stressing personal dominance over
subordinates, centralizing authority and making unilateral decisions. They tend to pass
on information, determine what is to be done, issue rules, promise rewards for
compliance and threaten punishment for disobedience (Aryee et al., 2007). In response to
the leader’s authoritarian behaviors, subordinates need to demonstrate complete
obedience and compliance and are fearful in responding to the leader’s requests (Cheng
et al., 2004). Under authoritarian leadership, the subordinates have little autonomy over
access to resources and information; there are few opportunities to participate in
decision making, communicate with the leader and, consequently, to influence the work
performance, and subordinates undergo psychological stress and demonstrate low
confidence in themselves (Cheng et al., 2004; Conger and Kanungo, 1988). Based on these
statements, subordinates’ feelings concerning the meaning and impact of their work and
their sense of self-determination and confidence in their competence are impaired by
authoritarian leadership. To our knowledge, no research has provided empirical
evidence on this assumption so far. Therefore, the second hypothesis of this study is
proposed:
H2. Authoritarian leadership is negatively related to psychological empowerment.

2.2 Psychological empowerment and intrinsic motivation

Motivation is regarded as the processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction
and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal (Robbins and Judge, 2009). An individual’s
motivation can be intrinsic or extrinsic in nature. Intrinsic motivation refers to the
motivational state in which an individual is driven by his or her interests in the work and
engages in it for the sake of the work itself (Utman, 1997). According to the componential
theory of creativity by Amabile (1983), domain-relevant skills, creativity-relevant skills
and intrinsic motivation are the essential components of creativity. Intrinsic motivation
is seen as the most important determinant in this context. The level of domain-relevant
 NBRI and creativity skill determines what one can do. Nevertheless, these two skills determine
6,1 one’s creativity only in conjunction with intrinsic motivation. This is because an
intrinsically motivated individual is cognitively more flexible, more persistent in
breaking out of conceptual ruts, looks for alternative ways for solving problems and is
willing to challenge the status quo and take risks (Amabile, 1983; Zhang and Bartol,
2010; Chen et al., 2009).
72 Psychological empowerment is presumed to be a proximal cause of intrinsic
motivation (Thomas and Velthouse, 1990). Individuals will experience high levels of
intrinsic motivation toward a task when they feel competent and self-determining about
given work and the meaningfulness of the given work. In contrast, when individuals
perceive that their thoughts, feelings and actions are constrained by external forces,
their intrinsic motivation tends to diminished (Amabile, 1983). Gagne et al. (1997) found
that meaningfulness, impact and autonomy were positively associated with intrinsic
motivation. Zhang and Bartol (2010) also provided empirical evidence on the positive
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relationship between psychological empowerment and intrinsic motivation. Based on

these inferences, the third hypothesis of this study is proposed:
H3. Psychological empowerment is positively related with intrinsic motivation.

2.3 The mediating effects of psychological empowerment

Thomas and Velthouse (1990) stated that psychological empowerment played a role
between environmental factors and intrinsic motivation. H1, H2 and H3 as a whole
suggest that empowering leadership and authoritarian leadership have a correlation
with individuals’ intrinsic motivation through the mediating role of psychological
empowerment. This means empowering leadership enhances intrinsic motivation by
promoting psychological empowerment, and authoritarian leadership reduces intrinsic
motivation by diminishing psychological empowerment. However, only a few studies
(Zhang and Bartol, 2010) have provided empirical evidence for the mediating effects of
psychological empowerment between empowering leadership and intrinsic motivation, and
no research has tested the mediating role of psychological empowerment between
authoritarian leadership and intrinsic motivation. Accordingly, the following hypotheses of
this study are proposed:
H4a. Psychological empowerment will mediate the positive relationship between
empowering leadership behavior and intrinsic motivation.
H4b. Psychological empowerment will mediate the negative relationship between
authoritarian leadership behavior and intrinsic motivation.

3. Method
3.1 Samples and procedure
The research site was a medical university located in Chongqing, a municipality directly
under the control of the central government of the People’s Republic of China.
Participants were a group of “science researchers”, namely, postgraduate students
working in the research groups of the university. In today’s scientific research world,
universities undertake the task of producing creativity and postgraduates serve as the
main force of creative production. Creativity production is their daily work, and
creativity is the key indicator evaluating their work performance, but their creativity
highly depends on their intrinsic motivation. To guide leadership practice improving
 intrinsic motivation for a creative task, this group of “science researchers” are more Role of
representative than samples from the industrial world. At the time the survey was psychological
conducted, there were about 1,200 postgraduates directly carrying out health science
research work in about 200 groups affiliated with seven colleges and three subsidiary
empowerment
hospitals at the university. Cluster sampling was used for this survey. First, two colleges
(of the basic science and public health) and the central laboratory of the first subsidiary
hospital were randomly selected as sampling clusters; then 316 postgraduates, who had 73
worked with a research group supervisor for at least half a year at three selected
sections, were invited to participate in our study and the questionnaire packs were
distributed to them. Participants were assured of anonymity and confidentiality in the
cover letter attached with the questionnaires. There were 235 valid questionnaires
returned, a response rate of 71.2 per cent. Respondents’ average age was 28.09 years
(SD ⫽ 4.91). Among them, 66 per cent were male, 44 per cent were female, 45 per cent
were PhD students and 55 per cent were master’s students.
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3.2 Measurement
Four instruments were used in our survey. Two instruments (authoritarian leadership
and psychological empowerment) are Chinese versions, while the other two
(empowering leadership and intrinsic motivation) were translated from English into
Chinese. To ensure the accuracy and conceptual equivalence of the measures in English
and Chinese, a standard translation and back-translation procedure was conducted, as
Brislin (1986) suggests.
3.2.1 Empowering leadership. Following the approach of Zhang and Bartol (2010), a
12-item scale developed by Ahearne et al. (2005) was adapted and used to measure
empowering leadership. This instrument is a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 ⫽ not
at all characteristic to 5 ⫽ very characteristic to measure participants’ evaluation of
their supervisors’ empowering behaviors. Based on the score of each item, an average of
12 items was used to measure empowering leadership. A higher score indicates that the
supervisors engage in a higher degree of empowering leadership. A sample item was
“My manager allows me to do my job in my way”. This scale has four dimensions:
enhancing the meaningfulness of work (3 items, alpha ⫽ 0.70), fostering participation in
decision making (3 items, alpha ⫽ 0.57), expressing confidence in high performance
(3 items, alpha ⫽ 0.76) and providing autonomy from bureaucratic constraints (3 items,
alpha ⫽ 0.72). The overall reliability coefficient was 0.79. The fit indices for four
first-order factors plus one second-order factor model were acceptable (␹2 ⫽ 87.536, df ⫽
48, ␹2/df ⫽ 1.824, p ⬍ 0.001; GFI ⫽ 0.942, CFI ⫽ 0.951, RMSEA ⫽ 0.059), suggesting that
the dimensions reflected the overall construct.
3.2.2 Authoritarian leadership. A 9-item scale developed by Cheng et al. (2004) was
adapted and used to measure authoritarian leadership. This scale was originally in Chinese,
which uses a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 ⫽ not at all characteristic to 5 ⫽ very
characteristic to measure participants’ evaluation of their superiors’ authoritarian
leadership. These nine items were averaged to create a score for measuring authoritarian
leadership. A higher score indicates that the supervisors engage in a higher degree of
authoritarian leadership. A sample item was “My supervisor asks me to obey his/her
instructions completely”. The reliability coefficient was 0.88.
3.2.3 Psychological empowerment. Psychological empowerment was measured by a
Chinese version (Li et al., 2006) of the 12-item scale developed and validated by Spreitzer
 NBRI (1995). It is a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 ⫽ strongly disagree to 5 ⫽ strongly
6,1 agree. A higher score demonstrates that the participant demonstrates higher degree of
psychological empowerment. A sample item was “I have significant autonomy in
determining how I do my job”. This scale has four sub-dimensions: meaning (3 items,
alpha ⫽ 0.84), competence (3 items, alpha ⫽ 0.86), self-determination (3 items, alpha ⫽
0.76) and impact (3 items, alpha ⫽ 0.72), and the overall reliability coefficient was 0.74.
74 The fit indices for four first-order factors plus one second-order factor model were
acceptable (␹2 ⫽ 112.418, df ⫽ 48, ␹2/48 ⫽ 2.342, p ⬍ 0.001; GFI ⫽ 0.928, CFI ⫽ 0.952,
RMSEA ⫽ 0.076), supporting the scale construct validity.
3.2.4 Intrinsic motivation. Participants’ intrinsic motivation for creativity was
measured with a 6-item scale adapted from the work of Tierney et al. (1999) and Zhang
and Bartol (2010). This scale is a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 ⫽ strongly disagree
to 5 ⫽ strongly agree. A higher score demonstrates that the participant demonstrates a
higher degree of intrinsic motivation. A sample item was “I enjoy engaging in critical
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thinking”. The reliability coefficient was 0.81.

3.2.5 Control variables. Three participants’ demographic variables were controlled.
Gender was coded as 0 ⫽ female and 1 ⫽ male. The participants’ identity was 0 ⫽
master’s student and 1 ⫽ PhD. student. Age was coded as years.

3.3 Analysis
PASW Statistics 18 was used to analyze descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations
of the studied variables. Structural equation modeling (SEM) in AMOS 20 was used to
test the hypotheses. SEM provides researchers with a comprehensive means for
assessing and testing theoretical models; two-step analytical strategy of SEM suggested
by Anderson and Gerbing (1988) was thus used to test the hypothesized model.
Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was first used to examine the measurement model,
and then model comparisons were performed to evaluate the structural model. The
indices used for estimating goodness of fit of the model were chi-square/degree of
freedom (␹2/df), goodness-of-fit index (GFI), comparative fit index (CFI) and root mean
square error of approximation (RMSEA). The value of ␹2/df between 1 and 3 is
indicative of an acceptable fit between the hypothetical model and the sample data; the
GFI and CFI are regarded as the best approximations of the population value for a single
model, and values greater than 0.90 indicate a good fit; the RMSEA is a measure of the
average standardized residual per degree of freedom, and a value of about 0.08 or less for
RMSEA indicates a reasonable error of approximation (Wu, 2012). Before examining the
measurement model and testing the hypothesized model, CFA was also used to confirm
construct validity of the instruments of empowering leadership and psychological
empowerment.

4. Results
Table I presents means, standard deviation, inter-correlations and scale reliabilities for
the studied variables. Empowering leadership was positively related to psychological
empowerment (r ⫽ 0.54, p ⱕ 0.001) and intrinsic motivation (r ⫽ 0.27, p ⱕ 0.001);
authoritarian leadership was negatively related to psychological empowerment (r ⫽
⫺0.30, p ⱕ 0.001) and intrinsic motivation (r ⫽ ⫺0.27, p ⱕ 0.001); and psychological
empowerment was positively correlated to intrinsic motivation (r ⫽ 0.48, p ⱕ 0.001).
The bivariate correlations of age, gender and identity with empowering leadership,
 Variables Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Role of
psychological
1. Age 28.09 4.09 empowerment
2. Gender 0.66 0.48 0.12
3. Identity 0.45 0.50 0.54*** 0.13*
4. Empowering
leadership 3.28 0.83 ⫺0.04 ⫺0.01 ⫺0.06 (0.79)
5. Authoritarian
75
leadership 2.51 0.66 0.11 0.06 0.14 ⫺0.26*** (0.88)
6. Psychological
empowerment 3.31 0.59 ⫺0.04 0.08 ⫺0.08 0.54*** ⫺0.30*** (0.74)
7. Intrinsic Table I.
motivation 3.67 0.67 ⫺0.03 0.17** ⫺0.11 0.27*** ⫺0.27*** 0.48*** (0.81) Means, standard
deviations and zero-
Notes: n ⫽ 235. Coefficient alpha are listed in parentheses along the diagonal; * p ⱕ 0.05; ** p ⱕ
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order correlations of
0.01; *** p ⱕ 0.001 studied variables

authoritarian leadership, psychological empowerment and intrinsic motivation were

not significant, apart from gender and intrinsic motivation (r ⫽ 0.17, p ⱕ 0.01).
Table II reports the fit indices of the measurement model, hypothesized model and
two alternative models. As shown in Table II, the proposed mediation model has
satisfactory fit (␹2 ⫽ 136.82, df ⫽ 61, ␹2/df ⫽ 2.24; GFI ⫽ 0.92, CFI ⫽ 0.94, RMSEA ⫽
0.073). In the first alternative models, a direct path was added to link empowering
leadership and intrinsic motivation. In the second alternative model, a direct path was
added to link authoritarian leadership to intrinsic motivation. These alternative models
show a slightly worse fit than the hypothesized model in terms of ␹2/df or RMSEA.
Thus, the hypothesized model provides a better fit than the two alternative models and
is used to test hypotheses.
Figure 2 shows the standardized path coefficients for the hypothesized mediation
model. All paths in the hypothesized model are significant. Empowering leadership has
a positive relationship with intrinsic motivation of creativity through psychological
empowerment (␤ ⫽ 0.64, p ⱕ 0.001). Authoritarian leadership has a negative effect on
psychological empowerment (␤ ⫽ ⫺0.23, p ⱕ 0.001). Psychological empowerment has a
positive relationship with intrinsic motivation (␤ ⫽ 0.59, p ⱕ 0.001). These results
support all the hypotheses.

Model test ␹2 df ␹2/df GFI CFI RMSEA

Measurement model 134.57 59 2.28 0.92 0.94 0.074

Hypothesized modela 136.82 61 2.24 0.92 0.94 0.073
Alternative model 1: direct path from empowering
leadership to intrinsic motivation 135.89 60 2.27 0.92 0.94 0.074
Alternative model 2: direct path from authoritarian
leadership to intrinsic motivation 135.27 60 2.25 0.92 0.94 0.073 Table II.
Results of model fit
Notes: a Indicates best-fitting model; ␹2/df values for the measurement and structural models are and model
significant at p ⱕ 0.001 comparison
 NBRI
6,1

76
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Figure 2.
Results of the
hypothesized
mediation model

5. Discussion
5.1 Theoretical implications
This study examined how supervisors’ leadership-employing powers influence
health science researchers’ intrinsic motivation through psychological
empowerment. It found support for the hypotheses that empowering leadership was
positively correlated and authoritarian leadership was negatively correlated with
intrinsic motivation through psychological empowerment. Findings from this study
extend previous research in four significant ways. First, this study verified the
positive effects of empowering leadership and the negative effects of authoritarian
leadership on intrinsic motivation. So far, research examining the effects of
leadership-employing power on individuals’ intrinsic motivation has been limited
and mainly focused on empowering leadership (Zhang and Bartol, 2010) and none on
authoritarian leadership. These findings provide a more comprehensive
understanding of leadership and intrinsic motivation by examining both positive
and negative leadership.
Second, consistent with previous studies (Zhang and Bartol, 2010), this study
confirms that psychological empowerment mediates the relationship between
empowering leadership and intrinsic motivation. Beyond this, this study is among
the first to identify the mediating role of psychological empowerment between
authoritarian leadership and intrinsic motivation. These findings enrich our
understanding about the enhancing or diminishing process of leadership on an
individual’s intrinsic motivation.
Third, the samples used in the previous studies on the leadership facilitating
creativity were generally from the industrial world and people performing tasks
that may not fundamentally rely upon creativity (Hemlin and Olsson, 2011; Vessey
et al., 2014). Nevertheless, science researchers are relatively unique and operate in
 fundamentally different ways than the average person when engaged in creativity Role of
production (Gupta and Singh, 2013; Vessey et al., 2014). Thus, the developed theory psychological
has potential limitations guiding the leadership practice of “pure” science research
settings. The present study empirically applied empowering leadership,
empowerment
authoritarian leadership, psychological empowerment and intrinsic motivation in
academia. The findings should be more generalized in guiding leadership practice to
improve intrinsic motivation for a creative task than the relative theories based on 77
industry organizations.
Fourth, this study has built and tested a conceptual model integrating leadership
theory regarding leadership-employing powers from Western and Eastern cultures
in China, an Eastern culture context which has been impacted by Western culture in
the past 50 years. Nowadays, traditional-controlled management and leadership
styles and autonomous styles coexist in Chinese organizations, providing an
appropriate time and place to examine and compare these two contradictory
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leadership styles, empowering and authoritarian. Although earlier studies have

shown consistent results for the effects of leadership on the psychological effects
toward creativity across cultures (Chen et al., 2009; Sun et al., 2012; Zhang and
Bartol, 2010), this study is an initiative study examining a conceptual model based
on knowledge from the West and the East within Chinese culture. The findings on
the one hand evidence the negative effects of Chinese traditional authoritarian
leadership, and on the other hand provide support that Western theories of
empowerment and intrinsic motivation can be applied to Chinese cultural contexts.

5.2 Practical implications

The present study focused on the leadership of immediate supervisors for science
researchers, which is considered to be one of the most important factors influencing
science researchers’ intrinsic motivation. The findings of this study suggest that
supervisors’ empowering leadership is likely to increase science researchers’
psychological empowerment, thereby promoting their intrinsic motivation, while
authoritarian leadership has the opposite effect. Therefore, science researchers’
supervisors should employ more empowering leadership, particularly in helping
researchers understand the significance of their work; encouraging researchers’
confidence for high performance; fostering researchers’ participation in decision
making, such as choosing their research topic; providing researchers with
autonomy by buffering bureaucracy; encouraging self-regulation; and imparting
need information. Meanwhile, supervisors should keep in mind that authoritarian
leadership could decrease researchers’ intrinsic motivation, although it may be
effective concerning the researchers’ behavior compliance about the work. It is
common in the research world that a supervisor and four to eight postgraduates
work in a research group. Similar family structures and mentor–students
relationships make authoritarian leadership likely to happen, both in Western and
Eastern cultural contexts. Thus, behaviors such as scolding researchers if they
cannot accomplish tasks, making all the decisions of research works whether they
are important or not and asking researchers to do work in a commanding manner
should be avoided. Science research institutions or universities may use leadership
training programs to focus on developing research group supervisors’
empowerment skills and changing their authoritarian leadership through reflection
 NBRI or emotion-control activities. All in all, supervisors of science research groups need
6,1 to know how to demonstrate their leadership by employing power which is
beneficial to science researchers’ intrinsic motivation.

5.3 Limitations
78 Several limitations apply to this study and need to be addressed in future studies.
First, this study used a cross-sectional design. Although the proposal model is
theoretical and empirically supported, the causal inferences cannot be drawn.
Therefore, future research designs should be longitudinal or experimental to
examine the causality of the studied variables. Second, the postgraduates of the
research groups were asked to rate empowering leadership, authoritarian
leadership, their own psychological empowerment and intrinsic motivation, raising
the possibility of common-source bias. Fortunately, this issue was mitigated by the
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results of the CFAs that provided convincing evidence for the distinctiveness among
the studied variables. Future studies could directly avoid this issue by using
observational data of leaders’ behaviors. Third, there might be a limited
generalization of the findings to other institutions in other cultural contexts, as all
data were from one medical university in China. Future research at multiple
institutions in other cultures would be helpful for further verification.

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About the authors

Yi Meng, MSc, is a PhD candidate of health management and a Lecturer at the Department of
Social Medicine and Health Service Management, Third Military Medical University of China. Her
main area of research interest is science research management.
Liqing Zou, PhD, is a Teaching Administrator in the Training Department, Third Military
Medical University of China. Her main area of research interest is medical education.
 Jia He, MHPE, is a Professor of medical education and the Head of the Department of Social Role of
Medicine and Health Service Management, Third Military Medical University of China. Her main
area of research interest is medical education. psychological
Changkun Luo, MD, is a Senior Researcher in science research management; President of the empowerment
Third Military Medical University of China (TMMU); Vice Chairman of the Science Research
Management Committee for Chinese Medical Association; and Senior Editor of the Chinese
Journal of Medical Science Research Management. He was closely involved in the planning and
decision making of TMMU’s research projects for many years. His main area of research interest 81
is science research management. Changkun Luo is the corresponding author and can be contacted
at: [email protected]
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