Assessing the impact of empowerment on individual innovative behavior: An empirical test

There are two distinct, yet related theories of empowerment, relational empowerment or empowerment practices and psychological empowerment. This research tries to assess the effects of relational empowerment on individual innovative behavior through a two-path model. The two-path model including a direct effect based on self-consistency theory and an indirect effect with job satisfaction as a mediator based on the social exchange theory. The results showed that relational empowerment has active effect on individual innovative behavior as hypothesized. And relational empowerment can promote employees´ job satisfaction directly, and then, job satisfaction will promote individual innovative behavior. Directions for future research are discussed.