Influence of distributed leadership on employee innovative behaviour: the mediating role of psychological empowerment

Employee innovative behaviour shapes the core competitiveness of an enterprise. Leadership style has been shown to influence employee innovative behaviour significantly. This research paper fills the gap by exploring the relationship between distributed leadership as an emerging leadership style and employee innovative behaviour along with psychological empowerment as mediator and organizational innovation climate as a moderator. 567 responses were collected from 29 different regions in China based on their availability through an adapted questionnaire. The data were analyzed using statistical software Mplus 6.0 and SPSS 19.0. The research results show that distributed leadership not only positively affects the innovative behaviour of employees but also has a positive impact on psychological empowerment and such empowerment positively influences employee innovative behaviour. The results also confirm that psychological empowerment mediates the relationship between the innovative behaviour of employees and distributed leadership. In addition, the organizational innovation climate moderates the relationship between psychological empowerment and the innovative behaviour of employees. The study not only contributed by confirming the moderating effect of organizational innovation climate on the relationship between psychological empowerment and employee innovative behaviour but also added directions for future researchers to explore more about the relationship between psychological empowerment and employee innovative behaviour along with theoretical research on enterprise leadership and management.

The topic of leadership and innovation has been extensively investigated in numerous studies with very limited focus on the role of distributed leadership in employee innovative behaviour (Bel, 2010). Previous research points out that distributed leadership can play a crucial role in overcoming resistance to change and in establishing competitive advantages by creating organizational synergies and introducing new initiatives (Lerner & Tirole, 2005). Leaders’ ability has a major role in managing emotions and knowledge to affect innovation among enterprises (Choudhary et al., 2017; Naqshbandi & Jasimuddin, 2018). As employees are the producers and implementers of organizational innovation, their entrepreneurial and innovative behaviour is the foundation of organizational innovation and serves as an important factor that can promote the sustainable survival and development of enterprises (Edquist, 2010; Kuratko et al., 2014). In the field of business organization management, the influence of leadership style on innovative behaviour has primarily been investigated within the framework of traditional approaches, i.e., centralized leadership style. Several studies have shown that transformational leadership (Karimi et al., 2023; Sharif et al., 2021; Stanescu et al., 2021), ethical leadership (Dhar, 2016), paternalistic leadership (Tian & Sanchez, 2017), inclusive leadership (Qi et al., 2019) and entrepreneurial leadership significantly affect employees’ innovative behaviour.

Due to the open innovation paradigm in enterprises, the traditional innovation model has been confronted with certain challenges, and institutions must change their innovation models and adopt more modern innovation management methods (Dahlander & Gann, 2010). The adoption of a modern innovation model requires enterprises to undergo a concomitant shift in their leadership approach, transitioning from traditional paradigms to more contemporary ones (Robbins & O’Gorman, 2015). Distributed leadership theory is one of the most prominent leadership theories in the field of contemporary education (Hairon & Goh, 2015). This theory emphasizes responsibility sharing, blurring hierarchical boundaries between leaders and employees, as well as empowering employees with autonomy to participate in decision-making processes (Chiaburu et al., 2014; Spillane, 2012), thereby conveying signals of trust and recognition to employees establishing an organizational culture of openness and trust, and promoting an organizational environment that encourages employees to take the initiative in the context of innovation (Tandon, 2022).

Previous investigations have predominantly focused on distributed leadership in the field of education, with limited scholarly inquiry conducted in the domain of business administration. Recently, the application of distributed leadership methods in business organizations has attracted increasing attention from researchers (Xu et al., 2021). Although these studies have provided interesting results, research on the relationship between distributed leadership and employee innovative behaviour remains in its infancy (Canterino et al., 2020). The mechanism underlying the relationship between distributed leadership and employees’ innovative behaviour has not been studied. Furthermore, limited research has been conducted on the mediating role of psychological empowerment in the relationship between distributed leadership and employees’ innovative behaviour. However, a small number of scholars, such as Zhu et al. (2014), Yang et al. (2020), and Fan et al. (2021), have performed relevant research concerning this topic.

Therefore, to fill this research gap, combined with social cognitive theory, this study identifies psychological empowerment as a mediating variable and organizational innovation atmosphere as a moderating variable to analyze the mechanism underlying the relationship between distributed leadership and employees’ innovative behaviour (Anderson et al. 2004, 2014; Bandura 1989). This study thereby enriches the theoretical framework for distributed leadership and can serve as a reference for studies focusing on distributed leadership theory.

An increasing number of multinational enterprises (MNEs) are strategically leveraging open innovation to gain and maintain competitive advantages, ultimately positioning themselves as industry leaders in the market (Naqshbandi & Jasimuddin, 2018). In the context of inter-enterprise open innovation, the presence of skilled individuals capable of effectively identifying, obtaining, adapting, and leveraging innovative knowledge is crucial (Naqshbandi & Tabche, 2018; Tirabeni et al., 2015), as it involves both inflow and outflow of knowledge resulting from exploration and development activities. Therefore, the successful implementation of open innovation necessitates leaders who possess the capability to effectively oversee and harness this invaluable human resource. Recently, scholars have discussed the role of leadership in open-service innovation (Ahmed et al., 2018). Some scholars have claimed that certain leadership styles can promote open innovation among enterprises by cultivating leaders’ knowledge management ability (Naqshbandi & Jasimuddin, 2018). Several scholars have shown that empowering leadership can enhance open innovation through the moderator role of an organizational learning culture (Naqshbandi & Tabche, 2018). Naqshbandi et al. (2019) demonstrated that empowering leadership has a positive impact on open innovation within organizations. However, Xiang (2010) argued that an organization’s open innovation activities are interpreted, determined, and implemented by its employees. Choudhary et al. (2017) also proved that leaders’ emotional management ability affects organizational citizenship behaviour. In this context, enhanced leadership can foster follower creativity and flexibility, resulting in “very high levels of innovation” based on follower development and self-confidence. Distributed leadership refers to a dynamic and interactive group action process. Following the different characteristics of tasks, employees with corresponding types of heterogeneous knowledge begin to play a leadership role, which dynamically changes in linen with corresponding changes in working conditions to achieve organizational goals (Spillane, 2012). This approach emphasizes responsibility sharing and blurs the boundaries between leaders and employees, who are offered the autonomy necessary to participate in decision-making (Chiaburu et al., 2014; Spillane, 2012); accordingly, this approach also conveys a signal of trust and recognition to employees establishes an open and trusting organizational culture atmosphere, and promotes an organizational environment that is conducive to employees’ initiative and innovation (Tandon, 2022). Studies on distributed leadership have focused mainly on the fields of education and health care and have mainly investigated the impacts of distributed leadership on outcome variables, such as teachers’ self-efficacy (Liu et al., 2021), job satisfaction (Liu et al., 2021; Torres, 2019), and turnover intention (Kavgaci & Ozturk, 2023) as well as nursing staff’s engagement, job satisfaction and turnover intention (Quek et al., 2021).

In the field of business organization management, several studies have shown that distributed leadership can improve employees’ job satisfaction (Harris, 2013), proactive behaviour (Xu et al., 2021), and organizational innovation as well as both individual and team effectiveness (Nicolaides et al., 2014) and innovative behaviour (Fan et al., 2021; Yang et al., 2020; Zhu et al., 2014). Although a small number of scholars have studied the relationship between distributed leadership and innovative behaviour, the mediating role of psychological empowerment in this relationship has not been considered. Theoretical and empirical research on the relationships among distributed leadership, psychological empowerment, and innovative behaviour remains lacking. Psychological empowerment is a state of empowerment that employees can feel and includes four aspects: meaning at work, autonomy, self-efficacy, and work influence (Spreitzer, 1995). Seibert et al. (2011) showed that leadership has a significant impact on employees’ psychological empowerment. Among situational factors, a positive leadership style is the best predictor of psychological empowerment (Schermuly et al., 2022). Positive leadership styles include participatory leadership, transactional leadership, and vertical empowerment leadership (Bharadwaja & Tripathi, 2020; Konczak et al., 2000). Several studies have reported that leadership styles whose core purpose is empowerment are closely related to employee psychological empowerment (Schermuly et al., 2022). Empowering leadership motivates followers to participate actively in the exploration and development of knowledge (Naqshbandi et al., 2019). Zhu et al. (2014) found a positive and significant relationship between distributed leadership and psychological empowerment. Majouni et al. (2023) showed that distributed leadership has a significant positive impact on teachers’ psychological empowerment. In addition, about the outcome variables of psychological empowerment, Spreitzer et al. showed that psychological empowerment affects employees’ work effectiveness, organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behaviour, participation, job satisfaction, job stress, etc.

Employee innovative behaviour refers to an activity in which employees propose novel and useful ideas pertaining to technology, products, and services in actual work situations and apply those ideas to their work practice. Many relevant variables affect innovative behaviour, such as the innovation environment, creative self-efficacy, and leadership styles such as transformational leadership (Bednall et al., 2018), entrepreneurial leadership, and empowering leadership (Zhang & Bartol, 2010). Stanescu et al. (2021) demonstrated the impact of psychological empowerment on innovative work behaviour but ignored the role of distributed leadership in this context. Few studies have investigated the relationships among distributed leadership, psychological empowerment, and innovative behavior.

The organization establishes a work environment for employees that encourages them to embrace challenging concepts, provides them with appropriate technology to mitigate risk factors, and assigns them challenging work that involves innovative working methods. This creative work environment is known as the organization’s innovation climate (Sarros et al., 2008). The organization’s innovation climate is based on perceptions of whether an organization helps its employees engage in innovative behaviour (Newmanet al., 2020). Previous scholars have conducted relevant studies to investigate the notion of the organizational innovation climate. For example, an organizational innovation climate positively affects employees’ innovative behaviour (Hsu & Chen, 2017; Ren & Zhang, 2015). Such an organizational innovation climate also moderates the relationship between leadership member exchange and employee proactive behaviour. Some scholars have claimed that employees’ proactive behaviour is related to their support for innovation in the organizational environment. As a dynamic process within an organization, the innovation climate characterizes a creative environment in which the dynamic work behaviours of employees are adapted to working conditions at hand (Oke et al., 2013; Thomas and Velthouse 1990; Tierney and Farmer 2011; Waguespack and Fleming 2005; Zhou and Velamuri 2018). Therefore, this paper introduces organizational innovation climate as the moderating variable of the relationship between psychological empowerment and innovative behaviour and studies the relationships between distributed leadership, psychological empowerment, organizational innovation climate and employee innovative behaviour.

Social cognitive theory was proposed by the famous American psychologist Bandura (1986) in the 1980s with the goals of summarizing and improving on social learning theory. Social cognitive theory estimates an individual’s ability to participate in a target behaviour based on internal and external parameters and their interrelations. Triadic reciprocity represents the core of this theory (Bandura, 1986). That is, individual, environmental, and behavioural factors interact with one another to regulate and influence human behaviour. The triadic reciprocity model is shown in Fig. 1.

Triadic reciprocity model

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According to the triadic reciprocity model proposed by social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), the researchers of this paper can speculate that interactions may occur among the variables included in this study. As an external environmental factor, distributed leadership may affect psychological empowerment. Psychological empowerment, which refers to an individual’s cognition of the external environment (i.e., the empowerment behaviour exhibited by or motivation provided by distributed leaders), affects individuals’ emotional states and internal motivation through their perceptions of the empowerment behaviour exhibited by their various leaders, thus affecting individuals’ innovative behaviour (Cristofaro, 2020). In the following, the paper discusses the relationships among these variables in further detail considering a literature review.

Distributed leadership and employee innovative behaviour

Distributed leadership refers to a dynamic and interactive group action process. By the different characteristics of tasks, employees with corresponding types of heterogeneous knowledge begin to play a leadership role, which changes dynamically their work situation to achieve organizational goals (Spillane, 2012).

According to social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), individuals propose corresponding action plans based on their recognition of the external world and then take action to pursue the goals that have been set. The leadership style exhibited by their superiors in the workplace serves as a major external environmental factor for employees. Such a leadership style is also a crucial antecedent that influences employee behaviour (Thomas et al., 2021). Employees develop different perceptions based on different leadership styles and then formulate different action plans. Distributed leadership, as an interactive and dynamic approach to leadership, emphasizes “role exchange and shared responsibility,” thereby accelerating employees’ professional advancement; it thus conflicts with the traditional Chinese corporate culture of “promotion based on seniority” by allowing many talented young employees to demonstrate their diverse abilities across various levels of hierarchical and consequently facilitating the integration of employees’ constructive and innovative behaviours into the actual management of enterprises (Proudfoot et al., 2015). Therefore, this study argues that the adoption of a distributed leadership style by a superior leader can help encourage employees to apply new thoughts and approaches proactively to address problems in an innovative manner. Specifically, due to the widespread use of the internet, remote working has become normalized in modern companies, and employees from younger generations have gradually become accustomed to the “low power distance” that characterizes online contexts (Luksyte et al., 2018) rather than blindly following authority. Distributed leadership causes the power boundaries between subordinates and superiors to become vague, thus allowing subordinates to focus more on enhancing their work performance and personal growth instead of overcoming the burdens entailed by different social relations, a change which enables employees to perceive the value of their work more accurately, thereby leading them to engage in more proactive innovative behaviour (Gu & Peng, 2010). In general, employees from younger generations have better educational qualifications but insufficient practical experience. Distributed leadership allows these young staff members to exercise leadership functions in their professional fields, thereby promoting their rapid growth. This approach increases employees’ perceived innovation efficacy while enhancing their competencies, thus allowing them to engage in innovative behaviours that benefit the organization more confidently (Zhu et al., 2014). Employees from younger generations exhibit distinct characteristics and desire a work environment that features freedom, openness and fairness. Distributed leadership offers such employees a fair and open working climate, promotes self-management, and results in optimistic, positive and healthy mental conditions among employees, thus leading employees to engage in innovative behaviours spontaneously under conditions of open work. The results reported by Yang et al. (2020) indicated that distributed leadership is positively connected with proactive innovative behaviour on the part of employees in younger generations. Accordingly, this study proposes the following hypothesis:

H1

Distributed leadership influences employee innovative behaviour.

Distributed leadership and psychological empowerment

Psychological empowerment refers to a series of psychological conditions that enable individuals to perceive themselves as having control over their work. Such empowerment takes the form of cognitive self-motivation, which reflects individuals’ positive orientation towards their job roles (Bednall et al., 2018). As a very important psychological variable, psychological empowerment has received extensive attention from scholars. Some studies have reported that a leadership style featuring an essential focus on empowerment is closely related to employees’ psychological empowerment (Schermuly et al., 2022). Empowering leadership motivates followers to participate actively in knowledge exploration and development (Naqshbandi et al., 2019). This approach offers employees more autonomy in their working environment and reduces the centralization of power, thus stimulating the self-determination and autonomy dimensions of employees’ psychological empowerment (Zhang & Bartol, 2010). Second, empowering leadership provides more opportunities for employees to participate in decision-making, which may also improve their ability and influence at work (Schermuly et al., 2022). In addition, the empowerment behaviour exhibited by empowering leaders provides opportunities for employees to develop their skills (Konczak et al., 2000), indicates leaders’ trust and confidence in their employees, enhances employees’ confidence in their ability to complete organizational tasks, and increases employees’ self-efficacy. Dierckx et al. (2008) reported that responsibility, as an important component of distributed leadership, is an important predictor of employee psychological empowerment. Employees who are embedded in a distributed leadership model have more autonomy and support; accordingly, they take on more responsibility. The greater the employee’s sense of responsibility is, the stronger the employee’s perceptions of empowerment.

In addition, according to social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), distributed leadership, as an external environmental factor, affects employees’ innovative behaviour. Many scholars have studied the relationship between empowering leadership and psychological empowerment. For example, Konczak et al. (2000) and Bharadwaja and Tripathi (2020) noted that vertically empowered leaders impact both affective commitment and job satisfaction through psychological empowerment. The results reported by Majouni et al. (2023) indicated a significant positive association between distributed leadership and psychological empowerment among teachers. Based on tests of a multiple mediating effect model, Zhu et al. (2014) found that distributed leadership has a significantly positive impact on employees’ psychological empowerment. In addition, distributed leadership can improve the psychological empowerment of employees by enhancing their self-confidence and sense of trust (Xiang, 2010). Although relevant research findings have been reported, studies on the relationship between distributed leadership and psychological empowerment remain rare. To re-examine this relationship, the following research hypothesis is proposed:

H2

Distributed leadership positively influences psychological empowerment.

The mediating role of psychological empowerment

Spreitzer (1995) claimed that psychological empowerment refers to individuals’ observation of power in the external world as well as a positive psychological situation that influences role orientation and work motivation. Psychological empowerment thus includes four dimensions: self-efficacy, job meaning, job autonomy, and job impact. Self-efficacy refers to individuals’ affirmation of their competence about their job; job meaning refers to the criteria used to assess the value of the job itself; job autonomy or self-determination indicates the autonomy observed in the context of making decisions; and job impact refers to the influence of individual organizational behaviour on the enterprise’s operations. Psychological empowerment, as a form of employee cognition, can promote employee agility. In the forms of intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy, psychological empowerment can enhance employees’ initiative, adaptability and resilience behaviours (Muduli, 2018). According to psychological resource theory, individuals who perceive psychological empowerment are more likely to construct their job roles actively, explore hidden value, and pursue innovation as an inherent goal, thus leading to an increase in innovative behaviour (Bednall et al., 2018). In addition, according to the triadic reciprocity model of social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), as an individual’s cognition of the external environment (i.e., the empowerment behaviour exhibited by or motivation provided by distributed leaders), psychological empowerment affects the individual’s emotional state and internal motivation through the individual’s perceptions of the empowerment behaviour of distributed leaders, thus affecting the individual’s innovative behaviour (Cristofaro, 2020). Previous studies have verified the positive impact of psychological empowerment on innovative behaviour (e.g., Liu & Shi, 2010; Marane, 2012; Stanescu et al., 2021), a claim which has been supported by many researchers. Therefore, to verify the relationship between psychological empowerment and innovation behaviour once again, based on social cognitive theory, the following hypothesis is proposed:

H3

Psychological empowerment positively influences employee innovative behaviour.

Regarding the mediating effect of psychological empowerment, according to social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), distributed leadership, as an external environmental factor, affects psychological empowerment. Moreover, as an individual’s cognition of the external environment (i.e., the empowerment behaviour exhibited by or motivation provided by distributed leaders), psychological empowerment affects the individual’s emotional state and internal motivation through the individual’s perceptions of the empowerment behaviour of distributed leaders, thus affecting the individual’s innovative behaviour (Cristofaro, 2020). Scholars have studied the mediating role of psychological empowerment (for example, Aggarwa et al., 2018; Aydogmus et al., 2018; Bartram & Casimir, 2007; Dust et al., 2018; Liu & Shi, 2010; Mehmood et al., 2019; Singh and Sarkar, 2019; Ture & Akkoc, 2020). However, research on the mediating role of psychological empowerment in the relationship between distributed leadership and innovative behaviour remains lacking. Although Zhu et al. (2014) proved that psychological empowerment plays a mediating role in the relationship between distributed leadership and employees’ proactive behaviour, Zhu et al. (2019) indicated that empowering leadership improves teachers’ innovative behaviour by increasing teachers’ psychological empowerment. Therefore, to fill this research gap, based on social cognitive theory, this paper proposes the following hypothesis:

H4

Psychological empowerment mediates the relationship between distributed leadership and employees’ innovative behaviour.

The moderating role of organizational innovation climate

An organization establishes a work environment that encourages employees to accept the concept of challenge, provides them with adequate technology to mitigate risk factors, and assigns them challenging work involving innovative work methods. This kind of creative working environment is known as an innovative climate (Sarros et al., 2008). Organizational climate, as a potential regulatory factor in this context, has received a great deal of attention from researchers (Chen & Huang, 2007; Eisenbeiss et al., 2008). However, the moderating effects on the relationship between psychological empowerment and employee innovative behaviour have not been examined. Early research indicated that a supportive innovation atmosphere provides a new direction for employees’ thought behaviour, psychological cognition and perceptions and facilitates the generation of new ideas and concepts (Waheed et al., 2019). Such an atmosphere improves employees’ motivation to innovate and promotes innovative behaviours, thus facilitating organizational innovation (Cohen-Meitar et al., 2009). When employees perceive that they are operating within an environment that not only acknowledges their ideas, but also fosters their development and implementation of novel concepts while simultaneously esteeming individual creativity, they become empowered to engage in more innovative practices and challenge conventional operations (Bos-Nehles & Veenendaal, 2019). Providing employees with flexible working conditions and ensuring their active involvement in decision-making can facilitate the cultivation of novel ideas and foster a sense of accountability. Therefore, based on the research presented above, the following hypothesis is proposed:

H5

The organizational innovation climate moderates the relationship between psychological empowerment and employee innovative behaviour.

In other words, when the innovation climate is high, the impact of psychological empowerment on innovative behaviour is more significant. On another level, when the organizational innovation atmosphere is high, the influence of distributed leadership on employees’ innovative behaviour through psychological empowerment becomes more significant; that is, the mediating effect is strengthened. Therefore, another hypothesis is proposed regarding the moderating effect of organizational innovation atmosphere:

H6

The organizational innovation climate moderates the mediating influence of psychological empowerment on the relationship between distributed leadership and employee innovative behaviour.

In summary, Fig. 2 illustrates the theoretical framework employed in this research.

Employed theoretical framework

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Research methods

The data were collected from the in-service workers at high-tech enterprises in China due to their interest in studying the leadership role in employee innovative behaviour. The sample size was calculated using Bentler & Chou way; the sample size should be at least five times the number of the observable variables. However, Hair et al. (2010) proposed that an acceptable sample size should be ten times the number of significant variables. Therefore, by employing the previously referred literature, the researchers gathered a maximum number of responses from the available employees to reach a sample size of five times than our research variables which came out to 567 high tech enterprises workers (Berndt, 2020).

Data collection

The data used in this study were collected using a questionnaire survey through employing online method using WeChat, QQ, and mail (Hair et al., 2010). The questionnaire was distributed and collected over a period of 3 months. The respondents were targeted across 29 provinces/autonomous regions/municipalities in China, and all the respondents were full-time employees working in various enterprises. A total of 600 questionnaires were distributed and collected. The collected questionnaires were subjected to a screening process based on the following criteria: (1) questionnaires with notably short response times, as determined by the distribution system, were removed and (2) reverse-coded items were included in the questionnaire, responses to which were examined to identify and eliminate samples that included obviously careless answers. After excluding invalid questionnaires, 567 valid questionnaires were obtained, for an effective response rate of 94.5%. The participants’ demographic features were as follows. The sample included 204 males (36%) and 363 females (64%). Regarding the age distribution of the sample, 62 (10.9%) respondents were less than 25 years of age, 168 (29.6%) were 25–30 years of age, 231 (40.7%) were 31–35 years of age, 75 (13.2%) were 36–45 years of age, and 31 (5.5%) were 45 years of age or older. In terms of educational background, 47 respondents had a junior college degree or less (8.3%), 396 had a bachelor’s degree (69.8%), 109 were master’s students (19.2%), and 15 were doctoral students (2.6%). The average work experience of respondents was 8 years (SD = 6.09).

Variable measurement

All the scales used to measure the variables were well-developed scales that had been published in leading journals. For scales that were not written in Chinese, we employed a translation and back-translation procedure and made appropriate revisions to the Chinese expressions to ensure that respondents could understand the content of the items accurately. A five-point Likert scale was used to score the items; a response of “strongly disagree” was assigned a score of 1, while a response of “strongly agree” was assigned a score of 5.

A scale developed by Hulpia et al. was used to measure distributed leadership after appropriate modifications were made. The scale includes two dimensions (leadership cooperation and leadership support) that contain a total of ten items, such as “My superiors and employees both have clear development goals” and “My superiors provide some guarantees for interactions among employees.” In this paper, the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of this scale was 0.66.

A scale developed by Spreitzer (1995) was used to assess psychological empowerment. The scale includes four dimensions (self-efficacy, job meaning, job impact, and autonomy) featuring 12 items in total, such as “The work that I do is meaningful” and “I have a significant influence on what happens in the department.” In this research, the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of this scale was 0.84.

A scale developed by Zhang et al. (2016) was used to measure organizational innovation climate. The scale features 12 items in total, such as “At work, my colleagues support and assist each other” and “My superiors support and assist subordinates in the implementation of work-related ideas.” In this research, the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of this scale was 0.84.

A scale developed by Zhang et al. (2016) was used to assess innovative behaviour. The scale includes 8 items, such as “I often seek opportunities to improve work-related skills” and “I often introduce new work-related skills to my colleagues.” In this research, the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of this scale was 0.84.

In addition, this study included age, gender, years of work experience and educational background as control variables.

The reliability of each scale is summarized in Table 1.

Discriminant validity

To estimate the discriminant validity of the variables, this research developed a four-factor model that included psychological empowerment, distributed leadership, innovative behaviour, and organizational innovation climate. The researchers distributed the items about the multidimensional variables (distributed leadership and psychological empowerment) evenly across their respective dimensions and treated each dimension as a latent variable indicator of the corresponding construct (Zhang & Bartol, 2010); innovative behaviour and organizational innovation climate were analysed directly using the respective items (Han & Yang, 2011; Netemeyer et al., 1996). Table 2 shows the results of the analysis.

According to the results of the data analysis shown in Table 2, the four-factor model exhibited the best fit (χ²/df = 2.88, TLI = 0.90, CFI = 0.91, RMSEA = 0.06), thus suggesting that the four main constructs in this research exhibited great discriminant validity. Because all the variables were self-rated by employees, common method bias may have been present, and the possibility of such bias was examined using Harman’s one-factor test (Podsakoff et al., 2003). The test results show that the first major component explains only 36.19% of the entire variance, i.e., less than the critical threshold of 50%, thus implying that the data were not strongly affected by such bias.

Results

To investigate the possibility of correlations among the constructs, the study used SPSS 19.0 software to perform correlation analysis on the constructs. Table 3 lists the means, correlation coefficients and standard deviations of the variables.

According to the results of the data analysis shown in Table 3, innovative behaviour is significantly positively related to distributed leadership (r = 0.61, p < 0.01) and psychological empowerment (r = 0.75, p < 0.01), while distributed leadership is significantly positively related to psychological empowerment (r = 0.74, p < 0.01). These results confirm our hypotheses, implying that the data are suitable for further evaluation of the hypotheses.

Hypothesis testing

This study used Mplus software and the bootstrap method (number of bootstrap resamples = 1000) for hypothesis testing. Tables 4 and 5 show the test results. As Table 4 indicates, distributed leadership has an obvious and positive influence on employees’ innovative behaviour (b = 0.24, p < 0.05), thus supporting H1. In addition, distributed leadership has a significant positive effect on psychological empowerment (b = 0.55, p < 0.001); therefore, H2 is verified. In addition, psychological empowerment significantly positively influences employee innovative behaviour (b = 0.81, p < 0.001); hence, H3 is confirmed.

The results presented in Table 5 highlight the mediating influence of psychological empowerment on the relationship between the innovative behaviour of employees and distributed leadership. The size of this mediating effect was 0.45, with a confidence interval (CI) of 95% [0.25, 0.68], excluding 0. Therefore, psychological empowerment significantly mediates the relationship between employee innovative behaviour and distributed leadership, thereby supporting H4.

Regarding the moderating influence of organizational climate on innovation, as shown in Table 4, such a climate has an obvious and positive influence on the relationship between psychological empowerment and employee innovative behaviour (b = 0.18, p < 0.05). As Table 5 indicates, a simple effect analysis reveals that the effect of a climate featuring a high level of organizational innovation is 0.89 with a 95% CI of [0.62, 1.21], excluding 0, thus indicating a significant high-level effect; furthermore, the effect of a climate featuring a low level of organizational innovation is 0.74 with a 95% CI of [0.55, 0.98], excluding 0, thus indicating a significant low-level effect. The difference between the high- and low-level effect sizes is 0.15 with a 95% CI of [0.01, 0.30], excluding 0, thus indicating a significant difference between the high- and low-level effect sizes. Therefore, organizational innovation climate positively moderates the relationship between psychological empowerment and the innovative behaviour of employees; in other words, as the organizational innovation climate increases, the relationship between psychological empowerment and the innovative behaviour of employees becomes stronger, and as the organizational innovation climate decreases, this relationship becomes weaker. Thus, H5 is verified.

As Table 5 shows, regarding the moderated mediating effect, the indirect effect is significant about a high-level organizational innovation climate (b = 0.49, 95% CI [0.28, 0.77]) and for a low-level organizational innovation climate (b = 0.41, 95% CI [0.23, 0.61]). In addition, the difference between the low- and high-level organizational innovation climates is obvious (b = 0.08, 95% CI [0.01, 0.19]). Thus, the organizational innovation climate moderates the mediating effect of psychological empowerment on the relationship between distributed leadership and the innovative behaviour of employees, and this moderated mediating effect is significant, thereby supporting H6.

With respect to the relation between the innovative behaviour of employees and psychological empowerment, to explore the moderating role of organizational innovation climate in further detail, we employed simple regression analysis to determine the relationships among these variables. The results of this analysis are presented graphically in Fig. 2. To address issues with collinearity, we standardized the independent and moderating variables. In the horizontal axis of the figure, “low” indicates one standard deviation lower than the mean, while “high” indicates one standard deviation above the mean.

The results of the hypothesis verification are summarized in Tables 6 and 7. The results of this study showed that distributed leadership, psychological empowerment, and organizational innovation climate feature significant important relationships with employees’ innovative behaviour. H1 to H6 are all verified by the results of this study.

Discussion

According to the data analysis results presented in Table 6, distributed leadership has a significantly positive impact on employees’ innovative behaviour. H1 was thus supported by the present study and confirmed the social cognitive theory implications for studying employee innovative behaviour (Bandura, 1986). Similarly, Tables 6 and 7 show that H2, H3, and H4 are verified. Psychological empowerment proven a significantly positive impact on employees’ innovative behaviour as well as a mediating effect on the relationship between distributed leadership and employees’ innovative behaviour. This finding expands the outcome variables of distributed leadership. According to social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), psychological empowerment, which refers to an individual’s cognition of the external environment (i.e., the empowering behaviour or motivation of distributed leaders), influences the individual’s emotional state and internal motivation through the individual’s perception of the empowering behaviour exhibited by the distributed leader is also confirmed by not only the present study abut also the previous literature (Cristofaro, 2020).

With regard to H2, distributed leadership has a significantly positive impact on psychological empowerment. Empowering leadership can help employees align their goals with the goals of the organization, and empowering leaders trust their employees and allow them to participate in organizational decision-making (Zhang & Bartol, 2010). Distributed leadership can enhance employees’ perceptions of empowerment by allowing them to play a leadership role and participate in decision-making, thus improving their sense of meaning at work and their positive perceptions of work. This finding is consistent with the research results reported by Dierck et al. and various domestic scholars. Dierckx et al. (2008) found that responsibility, as an important component of distributed leadership, is an important predictor of employees’ psychological empowerment. In the distributed leadership model, employees can enjoy more autonomy and support, and they thus take on additional responsibilities. The stronger the employee’s sense of responsibility is, the stronger the employee’s perceptions of empowerment. In addition, distributed leadership can improve employees’ psychological empowerment by enhancing their self-confidence and trust (Xiang, 2010). Hence, a leadership style in which workers believe that they are heard and comprehended in a confidence-building and supportive context can reinforce their sense of psychological empowerment. The research results reported by Zhu et al. (2014) also support the conclusions of this study.

Regarding H3, Table 6 reveals that psychological empowerment is positively related to employee innovative behaviour, thus confirming the findings of Stanescu et al. (2021), who reported that psychological empowerment is positively related to the innovative behaviour of employees. Previously, Spreitzer (1995) reported that psychological empowerment is a crucial factor with regard to innovative behaviour. Hence, when workers believe that they are able to affect organizational decisions, they tend to generate, advocate and adopt innovative thoughts (Zhang & Bartol, 2010). Therefore, by improving employees’ perceptions of empowerment, employees can be encouraged to take the initiative and exhibit creativity as well as to solve problems actively at work (Jong & Ruyter, 2004).

Tables 6 and 7 reveal that H4 was further supported; that is, psychological empowerment mediates the relationship between distributed leadership and employees’ innovative behaviour, thereby supporting H4. In the field of business organization management, these findings are novel; no literature on this topic has yet been published. However, several studies have demonstrated that the relationship between leadership styles and employees’ innovative behaviour is mediated by psychological empowerment; for example, empowering leadership improves teachers’ innovative behaviour by increasing teachers’ psychological empowerment, a relationship which is not influenced by team psychological safety (Zhu et al., 2019). Mehmood et al. (2019) reported that entrepreneurial leadership has an indirect impact on employee’s innovative behaviour via psychological empowerment. In addition, transformational leadership has been shown to influence employees’ behaviour, a relationship which is mediated by psychological empowerment (Bartram & Casimir, 2007). These research results also support the conclusions of this study. The novel finding that psychological empowerment serves as a mediating factor in the relationship between distributed leadership and employees’ innovative behaviour enriches the research on distributed leadership.

H5 was further supported by the data examined in research. Organizational innovation climate positively moderates the relationship between psychological empowerment and employee innovative behaviour. Conversely, when the level of organizational innovation atmosphere is lower, the relationship between the psychological empowerment of staff and employee innovative behaviour is weaker. When employees are respected and supported by the organization during the entire process of innovation, ranging from the generation of innovative ideas to their implementation, they are more willing to take innovative actions with the aim of achieving organizational goals (Bos-Nehles & Veenendaal, 2019). The performance of employees in the workplace depends on many factors, such as the nature of the work, the organizational environment, the workload the face, the rewards they can receive and the level of fairness with which they are treated (Naqshbandi & Kaur, 2014). Therefore, when organizations establish a good, innovative working environment for employees, this approach can enhance the impact of employees’ psychological empowerment on their innovative behaviour. Furthermore, to establish a s environment that is conducive to employees’ innovation, employees must be valued and supported by their leaders. Moreover, leader support enhances employees’ confidence in their ability to complete organizational tasks (Schermuly, 2016); that is, leader support enhances employees’ psychological empowerment, which further promotes innovative behaviours. In other words, the organizational innovation atmosphere moderates the mediating effect of psychological empowerment, a finding which is consistent with the conclusions shown in Table 7; thus, H6 is verified. These two findings enrich our theoretical understanding of the relationship between psychological empowerment and innovative behaviour.

This paper uses structural equation modelling (SEM) to validate the theoretical model of the relationship between distributed leadership and employee innovative behaviour. Based on empirical analysis, we find that organizational innovation climate has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between psychological empowerment and innovative behaviour. This study thus fills a gap in the literature concerning the relationship between distributed leadership and innovative behaviour. Enterprises can benefit from this study by improving the leadership style of their leaders by establishing an innovative organizational climate that can offer their employees more autonomy to engage in more innovative behaviours.

Implications for theory

This study links distributed leadership in the context of modern enterprise management, thus providing a new theoretical vision for the rapid development of enterprises in the future.

Previous research on distributed leadership has focused mainly on the fields of education and health. In the context of business organization management, this paper highlights the direct positive impact of distributed leadership on employees’ innovative behaviour. In addition, distributed leadership indirectly affects employees’ innovative behaviour by affecting employees’ psychological empowerment. The conclusions of this study verify the results reported by previous studies and provide stronger support for future research on distributed leadership in the context of business organization management.

Implications for practice

This research provides evidence on distributed leadership and employees’ innovative behaviour in the context of enterprises which can help the enterprises to address the problem of limited cognition of leadership by adopting the style of distributed leadership through this paper which evident the approach’s significance in the context of enterprises.

This study focuses on on-the-job employees without focusing on their positions in the organizational hierarchy. Therefore, future researchers can consider employees’ positions and their role in the innovation process.

The data referenced in this study will be made accessible upon request.

CFI:

Comparative fit index

TLI:

Tucker–Lewis index

RMSEA:

Root mean square error of approximation

CI:

Confidence interval

This research was supported by the assistance and cooperation of the families, teachers, and learners who made this study possible.

The researchers received no financial assistance for this study.

Authors and Affiliations

1. School of Accountancy and Finance, Walailak University, Tha Sala, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Thailand

   Liao Dongxian & Hira Batool

2. Guangxi Yanyuan International Cultural Exchange Center, Guangxi, China

   Liao Dongxian

Contributions

DXL was responsible for the theoretical framework, research design, survey investigation, data assessment, and analysis. HB proofread the entire manuscript. HB deals with the correspondence with the journal.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hira Batool.

Competing interests

No competing interests are declared.

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