Emotions Interact with Empowering Leadership to Reduce Counterproductive Work Behaviour

Abstract

Getting a grasp of the psycho-affective processes and social anomie leading to counterproductive work behaviour (Fox & Spector, 2006) represents a major challenge for researchers and organisations. The Cameroonian context is characterised by widespread impoverishment, which incites some officials to divert the objectives of the prescribed work to their personal interest, with no regard to the damage caused to either the organisation or its members (Nyock Ilouga et al., 2018). This study examines the mediating role of emotions in the relationship between empowering leadership and counterproductive work behaviour. 156 civil servants of both sexes were selected to complete a questionnaire which includes both the Empowering Leadership Questionnaire (Arnold et al., 2000) and the Job Affective-relative Work questionnaire (Van Katwyk et al., 2000). Our results suggest that the emotions felt by employees mediate the effect of perceived empowering leadership on the counterproductive behaviour that employees engage in at work.