Evidence map›Paper›PMID 40766015›Full record

ArticleFrontiers in psychology2025

Bringing back psychological empowerment in empowerment-oriented leadership: the development of the Psychological Empowerment Leadership Scale (PELS).

Carsten C Schermuly, Mona Algner, Timo Lorenz

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

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2 · The registry

The trial behind it

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3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Carsten C SchermulyInstitute for New Work and Coaching, SRH University Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Mona AlgnerDepartment of Psychology, Medical School Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Timo LorenzDepartment of Psychology, Medical School Berlin, Berlin, Germany.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Empowering leadership has garnered significant attention over the past two decades, driven by the evolving dynamics of organizations. However, current measures of empowering leadership often fail to align with the psychological empowerment construct (Spreitzer, 1995) - the very construct these leadership practices claim to impact - and exhibit some psychometric flaws. To address these issues, we introduce the Psychological Empowerment Leadership Scale (PELS), designed to assess leader behaviors fostering psychological empowerment across six dimensions. We used automated item selection algorithms to ensure high psychometric quality and tested the instrument's validity and measurement invariance in German and US samples. A second study with two measurement points, assessed the criterion-oriented validity of the PELS. Confirmatory factor analyses support its factorial validity and indicate metric measurement invariance across both countries. The PELS shows strong correlations with psychological empowerment, job satisfaction, and emotional exhaustion, often exceeding previous meta-analyses, thus demonstrating criterion validity. However, its association with innovative behaviors was lower than expected, warranting further research. With only 24 items, the PELS, offers high reliability and stability over time, providing a more efficient tool for assessing empowering leadership and aligning better with contemporary theoretical perspectives. This research refines the conceptualization and assessment of empowering leadership in contemporary organizational contexts.

Indexed as

automated item-selectionempowering leadershipfactorial validityPELSpsychological empowermentpsychometric quality

Identifiers

PMID40766015
PMCPMC12321827

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.