Do Empowered Front‐Line Employees Perform Better? A Non‐linear Approach and the Role of Service Complexity
研究了授权对一线员工绩效的非线性影响，发现低授权时绩效负相关、高授权时正相关，且服务复杂性会改变这种关系。
This study re‐examines the influence of front‐line service employee empowerment on their performance, following a non‐linear approach and integrating the role of service complexity. For that purpose, data were collected through a quantitative survey on 240 front‐line employees in two major UK cities (London, Leeds). The study's results indicate that empowerment has a significant impact on their performance and that this impact is non‐linear (quadratic). Specifically, the relationship between empowerment and performance is negative for low‐level empowerment and positive for high‐level empowerment. In addition, the study's results show that the nature of this relationship is different for different levels of service complexity. Specifically, for low‐complexity services, the relationship between empowerment and performance was found quadratic, whereas for high‐complexity services the relationship was found positive and linear. Based on the study's main conclusions important implications for both academics and practitioners are presented.