Empowerment

Leadership empowering behavior

Leadership empowering behavior was first proposed by Konczak et al. as a series of management behaviors adopted by leaders to empower employees. Leadership empowering behavior is a type of special leadership style differing from traditional leadership. Leadership empowering behavior occurs between a leader and a subordinate, emphasising the process of power sharing between a leader and employees and allowing employees to develop self-control and perform tasks autonomously. In addition, leadership empowering behavior is an implementation process, the core of which involves a leader delegating power to employees, eliminating employees' sense of powerlessness and enhancing employees' autonomy to stimulate their intrinsic motivation and promote their development as well as that of the company. The essence of leadership empowering behavior is a series of management behaviors to share information and rights with employees and promote psychological empowerment to provide employees with increased opportunities to participate in decision making, which will improve their self-efficacy and work performance.

Scholars conceptualized and verified the dimensions of this unique set of leadership behaviors and distinguished them from other related leadership structures. For example, Arnold et al. identified five key aspects of leadership empowering behavior, that is, leading by example, participative decision making, guiding, informing and mutual attention. Ahearne et al. analyzed four dimensions of leadership empowering behavior, specifically, delegation of authority, participative decision making, trust in subordinates and strengthening the meaning of work. Amundsen and Martinsen believed that the two core dimensions of leadership empowering behavior are independent support and development support. Meanwhile, Pearce and Sims argued that encouraging employees to develop their abilities, promoting employee autonomy, supporting employees to seek opportunities actively, attaching importance to teamwork, setting goals reasonably, and strengthening employees' self-management should be the six important aspects of leadership empowering behavior. Konczak et al. identified six dimensions of leadership empowering behavior, namely, delegation of authority, support innovation, independent decision making, skills development, information sharing, and taking responsibility.

Although the aforementioned scholars adopted different perspectives on the dimensional division of leadership empowering behavior, numerous common points exist, which describe the empowering role of leadership empowering behavior and transform previous "management + control" behavior into "help guide", "strengthening the meaning of work", and "team interaction" to reshape the value of work. They transform from the abstract behavior of strengthening the "trust atmosphere" into the equal communication behavior of leaders' "information sharing" and from previous "top-down" decentralization into leaders' encouragement of employees to "participate in decision making". Based on previous research, this study examines the influence of leadership empowering behavior on employees' innovation behavior from the three dimensions of personal development support, participative decision making and delegation of authority and investigates the relationship between the three dimensions.

Thriving at work

Thriving at work is a concept of active organizational behavior, including two dimensions, namely, vigor and learning. The vigor dimension examines whether employees feel energized and enthusiastic at work, and the learning dimension mainly examines whether employees have self-confidence from mastering knowledge or skills. Compared with work investment, in addition to vigor, thriving at work places more emphasis on employee learning and growth experience. Research confirmed that a high degree of thriving at work energizes employees and gives them a sense of growth and a high level of innovation at work. Therefore, enhancing employees' sense of thriving at work is significant for improving their innovation behavior.

Existing empirical studies extensively verified the positive relationship between thriving at work and work performance. Recently, a meta-analysis of 73 empirical research papers concluded that work exuberance has a predictive effect of 0.35 on work performance. The positive mental state of thriving at work can generate increased positive experiences and resorces and improve work performance. According to the above research, empowering leadership is conducive to improving thriving at work, and a strong correlation exists between the two factors. Therefore, the present study includes thriving at work in the research scope. Learning and vigor are two key variables of thriving at work. Many scholars confirmed the positive influence of learning on employees' innovation behavior. This study uses vigor and learning to represent employee prosperity and conducts research on employees' innovation behavior.

Innovation behavior

Kanter first pointed out that individual innovation behavior can be divided into three stages, from identifying problems and proposing solutions to forming groups to realize ideas and finally spreading the innovative results. This definition includes the initiation and result of innovation behavior rather than merely action. Scott and Bruce emphasized that employees' innovation behavior involves the individual identification and understanding of problems and building an innovation team to put the innovative ideas into practice and finally commercializing the action of innovative practices. This process completes the generation, development and realization of ideas. Moreover, the process is a combination of a series of discontinuous activities, with different relatively independent innovation activities in each stage. Amabile et al. regarded innovation as a new idea, new scheme and work path that can bring value to an organization. Meanwhile, Kleysen and Street argued that innovation behavior should be understood comprehensively, from the initial discovery of opportunities to the initiation of ideas, multifaceted evaluation of innovation, creative support, and finally, the realization of the creative ideas. Shen et al. believed that the concept of employee innovation behavior is to generate innovative ideas at work and turn ideas into practice.

Kirton posited that employees' innovation behavior is affected by their characteristics. If employees enjoy thinking about problems in accordance with their original path, then their innovation behavior will be minimal. However, if employees tend to find different ways to ponder problems, then they will demonstrate considerable innovative behavior. Innovation behavior involves not following the existing path, pondering a problem spontaneously and solving the problem in a unique way.

In summary, this study uses the viewpoint of Scott and Bruce to define employee innovation behavior as producing or adopting new methods, ideas and technologies and putting them into practice in the actual production activities of an organization to improve original management procedures or practices and enhance the organization's production efficiency.