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Teachers’ perceptions
of school leaders’ empowering
behaviours and psychological
empowerment: Evidence
from a Singapore sample
Ai Noi Lee and Youyan Nie
Abstract
Using a convenience sample of 289 teachers in Singapore, this study examined: (1) whether there
were significant differences between teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate super-
visor’s empowering behaviours; and (2) teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate
supervisor’s empowering behaviours in relation to teachers’ psychological empowerment. Results
indicated that teachers perceived their principals and immediate supervisors as exercising
empowering behaviours in their daily practices, but they also perceived their principal and
immediate supervisor differing in magnitude in some specific dimensions of empowering beha-
viours such as delegation of authority, providing individualised concern and support, articulating a
vision and fostering collaborative relationships. Results also indicated that teachers’ perceptions of
principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours were positively associated with
teachers’ psychological empowerment, and that they added unique variance to each other in
predicting teachers’ psychological empowerment. This study suggests the importance of consid-
ering teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours as
two distinct constructs in empirical research so that their unique predictive power could be more
aptly captured. From a practical standpoint, it suggests the importance for school leadership
developers to enhance school leaders’ awareness and capacity in exercising empowering beha-
viours towards their teachers in their daily practice. Essentially, schools may stand to gain from
developing empowering leaders at different levels of management to promote teachers’ psycho-
logical empowerment.
Keywords
School leader empowering behaviours, psychological empowerment, teacher empowerment,
school leadership, Singapore context
Corresponding author:
Ai Noi Lee, Nanyang Technological University, 1 Nanyang Walk, Singapore 637616, Singapore, 637616, Singapore.
Email: ainoi@yahoo.com
Educational Management
Administration & Leadership
1–24
ªThe Author(s) 2015
Reprints and permission:
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DOI: 10.1177/1741143215578448
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Introduction
The growing interest in adopting teacher empowerment as a school management strategy has
prompted scholars and practitioners to look more closely into how school leaders may empower
teachers more effectively (e.g. Blase and Blase, 1996, 1997; Giba, 1998; Lee and Nie, 2013; Muijs
and Harris, 2003; Short, 1994; Short and Greer, 1997; Vecchio et al., 2010; Wan, 2005; Yu et al.,
2002). Generally, empowering school leaders are observed to be more capable in creating work
conditions which could enhance teachers’ psychological empowerment, which in turn could result
in teachers being more intrinsically motivated and professionally committed to their work roles
(Bogler and Somech, 2004; Davis and Wilson, 2000; Marks and Louis, 1997; Sagnak, 2012;
Simkins, 2005; Sweetland and Hoy, 2000; Vecchio et al., 2010; Wohlstetter, 1995). Despite the
call for developing school leaders’ capacity in exercising empowering leadership practices to facil-
itate teacher empowerment, it is, however, observed that previous research has tended to focus pre-
dominantly on the empowering behaviours of the principal at the top level of management to the
extent that the empowering behaviours of teachers’ immediate supervisor (i.e. head of department)
at the middle-management level have often been neglected (Blase and Blase, 1997; Davis and
Wilson, 2000; Lee and Nie, 2013; Short and Rinehart, 1992). As a result, it is uncertain whether
there would exist differences in teachers’ perceptions towards their principal’s and immediate
supervisor’s empowering behaviours and how they may in turn affect teachers’ psychological
empowerment at work.
Therefore, the present study aimed to: (1) differentiate between teachers’ perceptions of prin-
cipal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours by examining whether significant dif-
ferences might exist between teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s
empowering behaviours; and (2) examine the relationship between teachers’ perceptions of prin-
cipal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours and teachers’ psychological empow-
erment. This study could contribute to a better understanding of how school leaders may empower
teachers by using their specific empowering leadership behaviours to influence teachers’ psycho-
logical empowerment.
School leader empowering behaviours
School leadership is widely recognised as an important research area in the field of educational
management and administration (e.g. Darling-Hammond, 2003; Dimmock and Tan, 2013; Fullan,
2006; Gronn, 1996; Hallinger and Heck, 1998, 2002; Leithwood and Jantzi, 2000). Although exist-
ing school leadership research has identified a number of effective school leadership styles such as
transformational leadership, instructional leadership, authentic leadership, servant leadership and
distributed leadership (e.g. Dimmock, 2011; Gronn, 1996; Hallinger and Heck, 2002; Jantzi and
Leithwood, 1996; Ng and Ho, 2012; Owusu-Bempah et al., 2014; Shatzer et al., 2014; Yu et al.,
2002), most of the empirical studies did not explicitly clarify which are the ‘empowering’ elements
in these different styles or practices of school leadership. As a result, it is unclear which specific
behaviours of school leaders are perceived as ‘empowering’ by the teachers, especially in inducing
a sense of empowerment (or psychological empowerment) among the teachers to motivate them to
perform their best at work.
On the other hand, from a review of empowerment research in educational organisations, it is
found that empowering school leaders are generally more capable of fostering work conditions
which could enhance teachers’ psychological empowerment and their subsequent work outcomes
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(Blase and Blase, 1997; Davis and Wilson, 2000; Lee and Nie, 2013; Rinehart et al., 1998).
However, given that most of the existing empirical studies have often used a composite scale of
empowering leadership (Davis and Wilson, 2000; Vecchio et al., 2010), our understanding of the
relationships between specific dimensions of school leaders’ empowering behaviours and teachers’
psychological empowerment tends to be limited. Nevertheless, among the limited studies of
empowering school leadership, Blase and Blase (1997) identified eight dimensions of principals’
behaviours and characteristics by which they empirically linked with teachers’ sense of empower-
ment in schools in the US. The eight dimensions identified were: (1) demonstrating trust in teach-
ers; (2) developing shared governance structures; (3) encouraging/listening to individual input;
(4) encouraging individual teacher autonomy; (5) encouraging innovation, creativity, risk-
taking; (6) giving rewards; (7) providing support; and (8) demonstrating care, enthusiasm, opti-
mism, honesty and friendliness (principal’s personal characteristics).
More recently, Lee and Nie (2013) identified seven dimensions of school leaders’ empowering
behaviours in their development and validation of the ‘School Leader Empowering Behaviours’
(SLEB) scale based on an extensive review of empirical studies across diverse work settings. The
seven dimensions of the SLEB scale include: (1) delegation of authority; (2) providing intellectual
stimulation; (3) giving acknowledgement and recognition; (4) articulating a vision; (5) fostering
collaborative relationships; (6) providing individualised concern and support; and (7) providing
role-modelling. Appendix 1 presents the definitions of the seven dimensions of the SLEB scale.
In their validation of the predictive power of the SLEB dimensions in relation to Spreitzer’s
(1995) four-factor psychological empowerment scale using a sample of Singapore teachers, Lee
and Nie (2013) demonstrated that teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s
empowering behaviours in terms of these seven dimensions were positively correlated with each of
the four dimensions of teachers’ psychological empowerment (i.e. meaning, competence, auton-
omy, impact).
In the present study, we adopted Lee and Nie’s (2013) SLEB scale to assess Singapore teachers’
perceptions of their school leaders’ empowering behaviours, because the SLEB scale has been
validated in the Singapore education context as a common measure for assessing teachers’ percep-
tions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours. We therefore defined
school leaders’ empowering behaviours as a set of behaviours exercised by school leaders aiming
at enhancing teachers’ psychological empowerment in the empowerment process.
Teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s
empowering behaviours
Leadership in organisations is fundamentally an influencing process, which depends on how lead-
ers interact with their subordinates (Bass et al., 1987; Bush, 2008; Kark et al., 2003; Shamir et al.,
1993; Yukl, 2002). Thus, a number of leadership scholars have opined that leadership can be
considered to be a process of ‘being perceived as a leader’ (e.g. Hall and Lord, 1995; Jantzi and
Leithwood, 1996; Leithwood and Jantzi, 1997), which is largely a cognitive process such that the
effectiveness of a leader’s behaviours may be contingent upon how the subordinates perceive and
interpret the authenticity of the leader’s behaviours (Hall and Lord, 1995; Leithwood and Jantzi,
1997; Randolph and Kemery, 2011; Zhu et al., 2004). As such, in teacher empowerment research,
this also highlights the importance of understanding not only how school leaders may empower
teachers but that a more accurate assessment of the effectiveness of collective school leadership
Lee and Nie: Teachers’ perceptions of school leaders’ 3
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would likely depend on how teachers may perceive and interpret their school leaders’ behaviours at
different levels of management (Lee and Nie, 2013, 2014).
Especially, most school organisations are traditionally hierarchical in structure and manage-
ment (Busher and Harris, 1999; Tschannen-Moran, 2009). As noted by a number of organisational
scholars, differences in status, rank, authority, social standing and power in hierarchical organisa-
tions can often translate into physical, social and psychological distances, which may affect the
degree of social intimacy and social contact that develops between individuals and their respective
leaders at different levels of management (e.g. Antonakis and Atwater, 2002; Chun et al., 2009;
Shamir, 1995). School leadership is seldom a single-leader phenomenon, because the principal,
being the head of school, is often assisted by the various heads of department at the middle-
management level who usually serve as individual teachers’ immediate supervisors (Heng and
Marsh, 2009; Ng and Ho, 2012). Brown et al. (2000) also noted that middle-level leaders, being
teachers’ immediate supervisors, are usually the ones closest to the teachers at the classroom front-
line and they also tend to work more closely with the teachers on a daily basis in solving problems
arising from classroom instruction and student management. As a result, in the context of teacher
empowerment, middle-level school leaders may more often have more opportunities to exercise
their empowering behaviours towards the group of teachers they supervise and mentor as com-
pared to the principal (Brown et al., 2000; Lee and Nie, 2013; Ng and Ho, 2012).
In recent years, many scholars have observed that the traditional managerial roles of middle-
level school leaders have evolved and changed from mainly the technical and tactical functions,
e.g. the planning of teachers’ timetables and duties, introducing new curriculum, etc. to leading
roles which require increased leadership competence in shared vision building, relationship build-
ing and change management (e.g. Brown et al., 2000; Bush, 2008; Heng and Marsh, 2009; Koh
et al., 2011). For instance, in a study conducted by Ho and Chen (2009), they reported that princi-
pals in the Singapore schools indicated they often worked closely with their middle-level leaders
(i.e. heads of department), such as in leading the teachers in the implementation of the use of IT for
teaching and learning. More importantly, their study also reported that leadership performance of
the principals was significantly and positively correlated to the leadership performance of their
heads of department, which suggests a close relationship and possible alignment between school
leaders at different levels of management in ensuring the effectiveness of collective school lead-
ership. Moreover, with an increasing interest in how leadership can be shared or distributed within
the schools to provide for a more sustainable means of building the type of school climate that
could create high-performing schools, the crucial roles played by the school leaders at different
levels of management in the teacher empowerment process thus deserve to be given more attention
in both research and practice (Hallinger and Heck, 1998; Ho and Chen, 2009; Lee and Nie, 2013;
Ng and Ho, 2012). Furthermore, with the increased importance of middle-level leaders in collec-
tive school leadership and management, especially in bridging the link between the principal at the
top hierarchical level and teachers at the lower hierarchical levels (Chen et al., 2013; Ng and Ho,
2012; Retna and Ng, 2006), there is an imperative need to examine teachers’ perceptions towards
their principal’s and immediate supervisor’s behaviours in the teacher empowerment process to
determine if there might exist differences between teachers’ perceptions of their principal and their
immediate supervisors (Chen et al., 2013; Heng and Marsh, 2009; Lee and Nie, 2013). A better
understanding of how teachers may perceive the empowering behaviours of their school leaders
at different levels of management can provide more insights into the better alignment of empow-
ering leadership practices across levels of management for promoting teacher empowerment more
effectively as a school practice (Lee and Nie, 2013).
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Given the fact that middle-level leaders often have to work closely with their principal in
empowering the teachers in the school workplace (Chen, et al., 2013; Ng and Ho, 2012), it is likely
that teachers’ immediate supervisors could be greatly influenced by the empowering leadership
behaviours of the principal. Particularly in schools with a strong organisational culture, the prin-
cipal might expect their own leadership style to be modelled by middle-level leaders in their deal-
ings with the teachers (Yang et al., 2010). Or, very often, middle-level leaders may view it as the
‘norm’ to emulate their principal’s leadership style (Mayer et al., 2009). As posited by the social
learning theory, most human behaviours are learned through observation and modelling (Bandura,
1977, 1986, 1999). Thus, in the present study, we postulated that teachers’ perceptions of their
principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours in terms of their respective com-
posite scores of SLEB would not differ significantly. We also postulated that there would be no
significant difference between teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s
empowering behaviours in terms of the factor/dimension ‘providing role-modelling’. This is
because teachers’ perceptions of their principal’s as well immediate supervisor’s authenticity in
leading by example and ‘walking the talk’ in the teacher empowerment process are critically
important to influence how teachers may assess the effectiveness of their school leaders’ empow-
ering behaviours.
Hypothesis 1: Teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering
behaviours would not differ significantly in terms of the composite score and the dimension
‘providing role-modelling’ of the SLEB scale.
On the other hand, we speculated that both the principal and immediate supervisor might dis-
play empowering behaviours towards their teachers and so they might likely differ in terms of
magnitude in certain dimensions of the SLEB scale due to their differential leadership role func-
tions at different levels of management. For instance, teachers might perceive their principals to
significantly engage more in articulating a vision and providing collaborative relationships than
their immediate supervisor. This might largely be due to the fact that, typically in most schools,
the principal does not usually involve themselves directly in teachers’ day-to-day classroom
processes. Instead, the principal is usually seen as a ‘big-picture focused’ leader whose roles fre-
quently include providing a clear vision, setting clear directions and communicating organisational
policies and decisions to the teachers at staff meetings, and to motivate teachers across various
departments to move in the same direction and work together towards achieving school goals
(Darling-Hammond and McLaughlin, 1995; Hallinger and Heck, 2002; Yu et al., 2002). Hence,
the principal might also be perceived by teachers to engage more in creating structures and provid-
ing resources for teachers to collaborate with one another through team-building activities during
large-group gatherings or school annual retreats.
In contrast, middle-level leaders as heads of department might more often be seen to take the
lead in departmental functions with a smaller group of teachers in their respective departments.
In this regard, teachers’ immediate supervisors may be more able to delegate work and duties
which suit the needs of individual teachers working with them and also to provide teachers with
individualised concern and support as well as with opportunities for professional development and
more personalised coaching. Being closer to the teachers in their daily work practice, teachers’
immediate supervisors may also have more opportunities to stimulate teachers’ innovative think-
ing and encourage them to initiate classroom-based innovations. Moreover, when teachers contrib-
ute quality work or have made any accomplishments to contribute to school goals, teachers’
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immediate supervisors may be more likely to know what work has been contributed by the teachers
and to give more timely recognition and acknowledgement to those teachers.
Hypothesis 2: Teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering
behaviours would differ significantly in six out of seven dimensions of the SLEB. Teachers
would perceive their principal to significantly engage more than their immediate supervisor
in ‘articulating a vision’ and ‘providing collaborative relationships’, but they would perceive
their immediate supervisor to significantly engage more than their principal in ‘delegation of
authority’, ‘providing intellectual stimulation’, ‘providing individualised concern and sup-
port’, and ‘providing acknowledgement and recognition’.
Teachers’ psychological empowerment
Teachers of the 21st century are knowledge workers and autonomous teaching professionals
(Bogler and Somech, 2004; Tschannen-Moran, 2009; Wan, 2005). In fact, a basic assumption of
teacher empowerment is that teachers’ judgements and actions are partly self-determined and they
can effect change in themselves and their situations through their own efforts (Bandura, 1999, 2001;
Conger and Kanungo, 1988; Gagne and Deci, 2005; Spreitzer, 1995, 1996). As such, teachers’ psy-
chological empowerment is often defined as an individual teacher’s psychological state which man-
ifests itself as four cognitions: meaning,competence, autonomy and impact (Spreitzer, 1995, 1996).
In essence, psychological empowerment is closely associated with an individual’s intrinsic work
motivation, and the four cognitions of psychological empowerment reflect an active orientation
towards one’s work role (Spreitzer, 1995, 1996; Thomas and Velthouse, 1990).
To elaborate further on the dimensions of psychological empowerment, meaning refers to a fit
between the needs of one’s work role and one’s beliefs, values and behaviours (Hackman and
Oldham, 1980); competence refers to self-efficacy specific to one’s work, or a belief in one’s capa-
bility to perform work activities with skill (Bandura, 1977; Gist, 1987); autonomy refers to a sense
of choice in initiating and regulating one’s actions (Deci et al., 1989); and impact refers to
the degree to which one can influence strategic, administrative or operating outcomes at work
(Ashforth, 1989).
In the context of teacher empowerment, this also suggests that in order to determine the effec-
tiveness of the school leaders’ influence, there is a need to take into account the motivational influ-
ence of the school leaders’ empowering behaviours on teachers’ psychological empowerment
(Blase and Blase, 1997; Conger and Kanungo, 1988; Lee and Nie, 2013). However, it is observed
that teacher empowerment studies have tended to examine school leaders’ empowering behaviours
and teachers’ psychological empowerment in separate studies (Ghani et al., 2009; Sagnak, 2012;
Vecchio et al., 2010), which thus failed to capture the motivational influence of school leaders’
empowering behaviours on teachers’ psychological empowerment. Though limited, Davis and
Wilson (2000) reported that perceived principal empowering behaviours predicted teachers’
overall work motivation in the form of psychological empowerment. Specifically, their results
indicated that the perceived principal empowering behaviours predicted teachers’ sense of auton-
omy and impact, but not meaningfulness and competence (Davis and Wilson, 2000). In another
study, Moye et al. (2005) reported that teachers who found their work personally meaningful and
who reported significant autonomy and substantial influence in their work environments had
higher levels of interpersonal trust in their principals.
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In the present study, we therefore speculated that teachers’ psychological empowerment would
likely be affected by their day-to-day interactions with their principal’s and immediate supervisor’s
empowering behaviours.
Hypothesis 3: Teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering
behaviours, in terms of the seven factors and composite score of the SLEB scale, would cor-
relate positively with teachers’ psychological empowerment.
Hypothesis 4: Teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empower-
ing behaviours, in terms of their respective composite scores of the SLEB scale, would
add additional unique influence to each other in predicting teachers’ psychological
empowerment.
Method
Sample
A convenience sample of 289 teachers from Singapore schools voluntarily participated in this
study.
1
The 289 teachers were full-time and fully trained teachers from at least 76 schools in
Singapore. Table 1 presents the demographic data of the sample.
Measures
SLEB. The seven-factor SLEB scale developed by Lee and Nie (2013) was adopted for use in mea-
suring teachers’ perceptions of the empowering behaviours of their principal and immediate super-
visor, respectively. All 21 items in the 7-factor scale were used in the present study as no item was
deleted or revised due to its sound psychometric properties.
2
Appendix 1 presents the items of the seven factors of SLEB.
Psychological empowerment. The 12-item psychological empowerment scale developed by Spreitzer
(1995) was used. The mean was 5.12, standard deviation was .77 and the Cronbach alpha coeffi-
cient was .73.
Data collection
A cover letter was attached to each questionnaire to explain the objectives of the study and assured
anonymity and confidentiality of participation. Informed consent was obtained from each partici-
pant. To standardise all the data used in the full questionnaire, a 7-point Likert scale was adopted
(1 ¼strongly disagree to 7 ¼strongly agree). Participants were asked to provide their demographic
data and separately rate their respective school principal and their immediate supervisor by
responding to the same set of SLEB items in the questionnaire. Participants also responded to items
which measured teachers’ psychological empowerment. The completed questionnaires were
collected in sealed envelopes from the participants within three weeks of the survey being
administered.
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Analyses and results
Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of the SLEB scale
Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted on the SLEB scale. Table 2 presents
the exploratory factor analyses of the principal’s and immediate supervisor’s SLEB scale.
The seven factors of the principal’s SLEB accounted for 88.0%of the total variance. The seven
factors of the immediate supervisor’s SLEB accounted for 88.2%of the total variance.
Based on the confirmatory factor analyses, Table 3 presents the fit indices of the first-order
seven-factor structure as well as a second-order one-factor structure of the principal’s and imme-
diate supervisor’s SLEB scales respectively.
Our results indicated that there existed a first-order seven-factor structure as well as a second-
order one-factor structure.
Table 1. Demographic data of teacher participants (N¼289).
Item Category %
Gender Female
Male
75.4
24.6
Race Chinese
Malays
Indians
Eurasians and other minority races
68.4
18.6
9.8
3.2
Age 30 years or less
Between 31 and 40 years
Between 41 and 50 years
51 years and above
16.1
56.4
20.4
7.1
Highest qualification attained Master’s degree and above
Bachelor’s degree
Diploma
Secondary school certificate
7.3
82.2
9.8
0.7
Type of school teaching in Primary
Secondary
62.3
37.7
Number of years in teaching (teaching experience) 3 years or less
Between 4 and 10 years
Between 11 and 20 years
21 years or more
16.9
44.2
29.7
9.2
Number of years working in the current school 3 years or less
Between 4 and 10 years
Between 11 and 20 years
21 years or more
30.6
52.5
14.8
2.1
Number of years which participant had worked
with their current principal
1 year or less
Between 1 and 3 years
Between 4 and 10 years
11 years or more
15.5
55.9
27.9
0.7
Number of years which participant had worked
with their current immediate supervisor
1 year or less
Between 1 and 3 years
Between 4 and 10 years
11 years or more
23.8
48.6
25.4
2.2
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Means, standard deviations, Cronbach alpha coefficients and inter-factor correlations
Table 4 presents the means, standard deviations and Cronbach alpha coefficients of each of the
seven factors and composite scores of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s SLEB.
Table 2. Factor loadings of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s SLEB
Scales (N¼289).
Item Factor loadings
Factor My principal/my immediate supervisor ...
Principal’s
SLEB
Immediate
supervisor’s
SLEB
Delegation of authority
(3 items)
Gives me the authority to make changes necessary
to improve things.
.960 .942
Gives me the authority I need to make decisions
that improve work processes and procedures.
.911 .936
Delegates authority to me that is equal to the level
of responsibility that I am assigned.
.855 .831
Providing intellectual
stimulation (3 items)
Asks questions that prompt me to think. .994 .922
Stimulates me to rethink the way I do things. .953 .924
Challenges me to re-examine some of the basic
assumptions about my work.
.901 .923
Giving acknowledgement and
recognition (3 items)
Always gives me positive feedback when I perform
well.
.809 .878
Gives me special recognition when my work is very
good.
.834 .911
Personally compliments me when I do outstanding
work.
1.034 .906
Articulating a vision (3 items) Paints an interesting picture of the future for our
school.
1.050 .995
Is always seeking new opportunities for the school. .772 .917
Inspires staff with their plans for the future. .649 .539
Fostering collaborative
relationships (3 items)
Fosters collaboration among staff members. .918 .874
Encourages staff members to be team players. .973 .981
Gets staff members to work together for the same
goal.
.904 .921
Providing individualised
concern and support
(3 items)
Treats me as an equal. 1.054 .898
Takes the time to discuss my concerns patiently. .771 .701
Stays in touch with me. .855 .956
Providing role-modelling
(3 items)
Works as hard as anyone in my school. .949 .959
Sets a good example by the way they behave. .955 .929
Leads by example. .895 .858
Note: EFA loadings >.40. In EFA, Promax rotation was used and the factors were rotated obliquely. As such the factor
loadings were standardised regression coefficients, which could be greater than one.
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The mean score of each factor was calculated by taking the mean of the number of items which
constituted each factor. Given that in Table 3 the results of the confirmatory factor analyses
indicated that the first-order seven-factor SLEB structure could be collapsed into a second-order
one-factor structure, a composite score was created for each of the principal’s and immediate
supervisor’s SLEB scale in this study. The composite scores for the principal’s and immediate
supervisor’s SLEB were each scored by calculating the mean of the seven factors of the principal’s
and immediate supervisor’s SLEB respectively.
Table 5 presents the inter-factor correlations of teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and imme-
diate supervisor’s empowering behaviours in terms of the seven factors and composite scores of
the SLEB scale.
Paired samples t-tests
To test Hypotheses 1 and 2, a series of paired samples t-tests was conducted for the seven factors
and composite scores of teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s SLEB.
The results of the paired samples t-tests and their effect sizes, Cohen’s d, (Cohen, 1988) are pre-
sented in Table 4.
Results indicated that there were no significant differences between the composite scores and
three of the factors of the principal’s and immediate supervisor’s SLEB: ‘giving acknowledgement
and recognition’, ‘providing intellectual stimulation’ and ‘providing role-modelling’. However,
results of paired samples t-tests indicated that there were significant differences between four of
the seven factors of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s SLEB. These four factors were ‘pro-
viding individualised concern and support’, ‘delegation of authority’, ‘articulating a vision’ and
‘fostering collaborative relationships’. Teachers generally perceived their principal to significantly
engage more in ‘articulating a vision’ and ‘fostering collaborative relationships’ than their imme-
diate supervisor. Teachers also perceived their immediate supervisor to significantly engage more
in ‘providing individualised concern and support’ and ‘delegation of authority’ than their princi-
pals. As such, Hypothesis 1 was supported but Hypothesis 2 was not supported.
Table 3. Fit indices of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s SLEB scales (N¼289).
Principal’s SLEB Immediate supervisor’s SLEB
Model Model
Fit index*
First-order
seven-factor
Second-order
one-factor
First-order
seven-factor
Second-order
one-factor
X
2
368.230 452.071 394.232 442.843
df 168 182 168 182
p .001 .001 .001 .001
X
2
/df 2.192 2.484 2.347 2.433
TLI .958 .948 .955 .952
CFI .969 .959 .967 .962
RMSEA .064 .072 .068 .071
Note: *Recommended guidelines for model fit indices (Hair et al., 2006; Hu and Bentler, 1999; Kline, 2005): X
2
/df <3;
TLI ¼>0.90; CFI ¼>0.90; RMSEA < 0.08.
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Table 4. Means, Standard Deviations, Cronbach Alpha Coefficient, Paired Samples t-tests and Effect Sizes of Teachers’ Perceptions’ of Principal’s and
Immediate Supervisor’s Empowering Behaviours (N ¼289).
Factors and Composite Score
of SLEB
No. of
items
Teachers’ Perceptions’ of
Principal’s Empowering
Behaviours
Teachers’ Perceptions’ of
Immediate Supervisor’s
Empowering Behaviours
Paired
Sample t-test
Degree of
Freedom
Effect
Size
MSD
Cronbach alpha
coefficient, aMSD
Cronbach alpha
coefficient, atdfCohen’s d
Delegation of authority 3 4.64 1.38 .93 5.12 1.19 .93 7.473** 285 .371
Providing intellectual
stimulation
3 4.88 1.27 .95 4.86 1.26 .94 .331 288 .016
Giving acknowledgement &
recognition
3 4.94 1.23 .91 5.05 1.21 .91 1.528 285 .090
Articulating a vision 3 5.26 1.20 .89 4.96 1.17 .89 5.203** 288 .253
Providing collaborative
relationships
3 5.43 1.13 .95 5.27 1.15 .96 2.933** 287 .140
Providing individualised
concern and support
3 4.43 1.44 .92 4.93 1.28 .92 6.272** 286 .367
Providing role-modelling 3 5.27 1.36 .93 5.20 1.34 .92 .861 287 .052
SLEB Composite 21 4.98 1.05 .92 5.05 1.03 .93 1.465 288 .067
Note. ** p< .01. Each factor of the principal’s and immediate supervisor’s SLEB was scored by calculating the mean of the items that composed each factor/. The composite
scores for the principal’s and immediate supervisor’s SLEB were each scored by calculating the mean of the seven factors of the principal’s and immediate supervisor’s SLEB
respectively. Effect size using Cohen’s d(Cohen, 1988): small, .2; medium, .5; large, >.8.
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Table 5. Inter-factor Correlations Among the Seven Factors and Composite Scores of Principal’s and Immediate Supervisor’s SLEB.
Principal Immediate Supervisor
Factor and Composite Score 1 2 3 4 567812345678
Principal 1. Delegation of authority 1
2. Providing Intellectual
Stimulation
.578** 1
3. Giving acknowledgement &
recognition
.640** .629** 1
4. Articulating a vision .553** .653** .561** 1
5. Providing collaborative
relationships
.538** .584** .643** .730** 1
6. Providing individualised
concern and support
.643** .603** .712** .556** .615** 1
7. Providing role-modelling .534** .526** .635** .627** .648** .620** 1
8. SLEB Composite .791** .799** .844** .811** .822** .840** .806** 1
Immediate
Supervisor
1. Delegation of authority .655** .424** .483** .427** .468** .467** .387** .583** 1
2. Providing Intellectual
Stimulation
.410** .606** .426** .485** .496** .421** .318** .552** .518** 1
3. Giving acknowledgement &
recognition
.413** .371** .505** .408** .447** .398** .354** .506** .640** .664** 1
4. Articulating a vision .467** .462** .397** .654** .515** .417** .412** .580** .559** .671** .677** 1
5. Providing collaborative
relationships
.423** .421** .452** .537** .675** .423** .410** .579** .589** .632** .673** .692** 1
6. Providing individualised
concern and support
.404** .401** .420** .443** .485** .508** .362** .531** .701** .612** .751** .653** .720** 1
7. Providing role-modelling .402** .374** .376** .437** .455** .359** .452** .499** .583** .593** .659** .638** .684** .710** 1
8. SLEB Composite .544** .523** .524** .579** .603** .513** .462** .655** .785** .802** .865** .832** .849** .883** .835** 1
Note. ** Denotes correlation is significant at p< .01. Correlations between teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s SLEB factors and composite scores are in
bold.
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Bivariate correlations between teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate
supervisor’s empowering behaviours and psychological empowerment
To test for Hypothesis 3, bivariate correlation analyses were conducted between teachers’ percep-
tions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours and teachers’ psychologi-
cal empowerment. Table 6 presents the results of bivariate correlations which indicated that all the
seven factors and composite scores of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s SLEB were posi-
tively correlated with teachers’ psychological empowerment (p> .01). As such, Hypothesis 3 was
fully supported.
Joint relationship between teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s
empowering behaviours in predicting psychological empowerment
To test for Hypothesis 4, hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine
whether teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours
added unique variance to each other in predicting teachers’ psychological empowerment, after
controlling for each other.
The first model was tested by first controlling for teachers’ demographic factors (i.e. gender,
age, race, educational qualification, school type, years of teaching experience, number of years
of service in the current school, number of years working with the current principal and number
of years working with the current immediate supervisor) in the first step. The composite score
3
of
the principal’s SLEB was then entered into the regression in the second step and then followed
by entering the composite score of the immediate supervisor’s SLEB in the third step. Given that
leadership behaviours in practice are seldom neatly ‘packaged’ into distinct dimensions of beha-
viours (Costello and Osborne, 2009; Villa et al., 2003), the use of a composite score rather than the
Table 6. Bivariate correlations of teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s SLEB
factors with teachers’ psychological empowerment.
SLEB factor and composite
score
Bivariate correlations of teachers’
perceptions of principal’s SLEB
Factors with teachers’
psychological empowerment (r)
Bivariate correlations of teachers’
perceptions of immediate supervisor’s
SLEB factors with teachers’
psychological empowerment (r)
Delegation of authority .641** .555**
Providing intellectual
stimulation
.528** .469**
Giving acknowledgement and
recognition
.532** .433**
Articulating a vision .539** .513**
Fostering collaborative
relationships
.498** .421**
Providing individualised
concern and support
.495** .438**
Providing role-modelling .466** .448**
SLEB composite .648** .560**
Note: ** Denotes correlation is significant at p< .01.
Lee and Nie: Teachers’ perceptions of school leaders’ 13
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individual factors of leaders’ empowering behaviours could provide a fuller representation of the
leaders’ empowering behaviours as a whole.
Similarly, the second model was tested by first controlling for the same teachers’ demographic
factors as in the first step. The composite score of the immediate supervisor’s SLEB was entered
into the regression in the second step and then followed by entering the composite score of the prin-
cipal’s SLEB in the third step. Teachers’ psychological empowerment was entered as the criterion
variable in the regression in both models.
Table 7 presents the results of the hierarchical multiple regression which indicated that teach-
ers’ perceptions of their immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours added 2.7%of unique
variance to teachers’ perceptions of their principal’s empowering behaviours in predicting teach-
ers’ psychological empowerment, after controlling for each other.
On the other hand, teachers’ perceptions of the principal’s empowering behaviours added
12.4%of unique variance to teachers’ perceptions of their immediate supervisor’s empowering
behaviours in predicting teachers’ psychological empowerment, after controlling for each other.
Therefore, Hypothesis 4 was supported.
Discussion
In the present study, the results indicated that school leaders in the Singapore schools generally
demonstrated empowering behaviours with mean scores ranging from 4.43 to 5.43 for teachers’
perceptions of their principal’s empowering behaviours and mean scores ranging from 4.86 to
Table 7. Hierarchical multiple regression results of teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate
supervisor’s SLEB composite scores in predicting psychological empowerment.
Steps and variables entered
Criterion variable:
Teachers’ psychological
empowerment
BSEpR
2
DR
2
Model 1:
Step 1: Enter ‘Teachers’ demographic factors (i.e. gender, age, race, educational
qualification, school type, years of teaching experience, number of years of
service in the current school, number of years working with the current
principal and number of years working with the current immediate
supervisor)’
.000 .116 .116
Step 2: Enter ‘Composite score of principal’s SLEB’ .458 .033 .000 .492 .376
Step 3: Enter ‘Composite score of immediate supervisor’s SLEB’ .169 .044 .000 .519 .027
Model 2:
Step 1: Enter ‘Teachers’ demographic factors (i.e. gender, age, race, educational
qualification, school type, years of teaching experience, number of years of
service in the current school, number of years working with the current
principal and number of years working with the current immediate
supervisor)’
.000 .116 .116
Step 2: Enter ‘Composite score of immediate supervisor’s SLEB’ .408 .037 .000 .394 .278
Step 3: Enter ‘Composite score of principal’s SLEB’ .350 .043 .000 .519 .124
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5.27 teachers’ perceptions of their immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours based on the 7
factors and composite scores of the SLEB.
In addition, results indicated that there was no significant difference between teachers’ percep-
tions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours in terms of the composite
scores of the SLEB. The findings are supported by previous research (e.g. Chun et al., 2009; Yang
et al., 2010), which contended that similar behavioural leadership patterns across levels of manage-
ment can frequently be observed in work organisations with a strong leadership or organisational
culture. For instance, Yang et al. (2010) noted that top-level management may have certain expec-
tations of their lower-level management, and this may cause the lower-level managers to emulate
the upper-level’s leadership behaviours as accepted behavioural norms. In terms of teacher
empowerment, this could be beneficial for empowering leadership alignment or effective coordi-
nation of empowering leadership behaviours across levels of management, because the influence
of the principal at the top level could be exerted by intermediate management or middle-level lead-
ers on the teachers at the lower hierarchical levels (Bass et al., 1987; Mayer et al., 2009; Yang et al.,
2010).
Results indicated that there were no significant differences between teachers’ perceptions of
their principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours in three of the factors of
SLEB: ‘providing intellectual stimulation’, ‘giving acknowledgement and recognition’ and ‘pro-
viding role-modelling’. These findings corroborated with the findings of Lowe et al.’s (1996)
study which reported that providing intellectual stimulation was associated with the effective-
ness of higher-level as well as lower-level leaders. Similarly, providing appropriate role-
modelling is likely to be an important behaviour of empowering school leaders as the present
study also found no significance difference between teachers’ perceptions of their principal and
immediate supervisor in providing appropriate role-modelling. This also suggests that the role-
modelling behaviour emanating from the principal may likely influence the middle-level school
leaders towards adopting similar leadership behaviours in fostering an empowering work cli-
mate (Mayer et al., 2009; Oshagbemi and Gill, 2004; Yang et al., 2010). Interestingly, our study
which was conducted in the school organisations in Singapore and usually consists of mainly
two levels of management, i.e. the principal at the top level of management and the various
heads of department as teachers’ immediate supervisors at the lower level of management, indi-
cated that there was no statistical difference between how teachers perceived their principal and
immediate supervisor in providing acknowledgement and recognition as a form of contingent
reward. This finding differs from Bass et al.’s (1987) as well as Oshagbemi and Gill’s
(2004) studies which found that providing contingent reward was more evident with leaders
at the higher levels of management than with leaders at the lower levels of management in large
business organisations. Nevertheless, future research could further examine if the business
nature of an organisation or organisational structure may influence how subordinates perceive
the empowering behaviours of their immediate supervisor and their leader at a higher level
of management.
In the present study, the results of paired samples t-tests indicated a significant difference
between four factors of the principal’s and immediate supervisor’s SLEB. The results indi-
cated that teachers perceived their principal to significantly engage more in ‘articulating a
vision’ and ‘fostering collaborative relationships’, whereas teachers perceived their immediate
supervisor to significantly engage more in ‘delegation of authority’ and ‘providing individua-
lised concern and support’. It is not surprising that teachers perceived their principal to sig-
nificantly engage more in ‘articulating a vision’ than their immediate supervisor. This is
Lee and Nie: Teachers’ perceptions of school leaders’ 15
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probably because the principal, being the head of the school, may more often be seen at
school-level gatherings or meetings to communicate school goals, foster teamwork structures,
articulate a vision and set direction for the staff to work collaboratively together to achieve
the school’s objectives. Furthermore, teachers also perceived their principal to significantly
engage more in ‘fostering collaborative relationships’ than their immediate supervisor. This
might be due to the fact that the principal has more positional power within the school hier-
archy, which would then enable them to provide the infrastructure and resource support more
easily for the teachers to share knowledge and build collegial relationships. Such support
might be in the areas of, for example, providing space and structured time, and allocating
budgets for professional collaborations within and outside the school as well as building IT
networks for social interactions and knowledge sharing.
On the other hand, our results indicated that teachers perceived their immediate supervisor to
significantly engage more in ‘providing individualised concern and support’ and ‘delegation of
authority’ than the principal. This could be due to the fact that, as teachers’ immediate supervisor,
the middle-level leaders may likely have more opportunities to work directly with teachers at the
classroom level to facilitate the smooth delivery of daily instructional processes or in individual
and team projects initiated by their departments. As such, they may tend to know the individual
teachers’ character, strengths and weaknesses better than the principal. Thus, having a closer work-
ing relationship with the teachers they supervise, it thereby makes it easier for middle-level leaders
to develop a mutual interpersonal relationship and trust with the teachers, which are critical ele-
ments for effective delegation and participative decision-making at the departmental level. The
results therefore supported previous studies on organisational leadership, which indicated that
middle-level leaders, in contrast to top-level leaders, may tend to be also socially and psychologi-
cally close to their subordinates and are therefore more able to show individualised concern and
professional support for their subordinates when needed (Antonakis and Atwater, 2002; Shamir,
1995).
Taken together, the present study indicated that the sample of Singapore teachers generally
perceived their respective principals and immediate supervisors to be empowering in their lead-
ership behaviours. While teachers perceived that their principal at the top level of management
and their immediate supervisor at the middle level of management may demonstrate similar
empowering behavioural patterns in certain dimensions of the SLEB, they also perceived that
they might differ in magnitude or the degree in which they displayed certain dimensions of the
SLEB. So far, this study is one of the few which has systematically examined and compared the
dimensions of SLEB to determine whether the principal and teachers’ immediate supervisor may
differ in their empowering behaviours as perceived by teachers, especially in an Asian educa-
tional context.
This study could also add value to the existing teacher empowerment research by offering
more empirical insights into understanding the relationship between teachers’ perceptions
of school leaders’ empowering behaviours and teachers’ psychological empowerment. For
instance, when teachers perceived their school leaders to demonstrate empowering behaviours,
it could positively influence teachers’ psychological empowerment. Our results indicated that
both the principal and the immediate supervisor of individual teachers could play differential yet
instrumental roles in enhancing teachers’ psychological empowerment as a whole. It thus sug-
gests the importance of developing empowering school leaders across levels of management for
better leadership alignment and coordination in the facilitation of teacher empowerment in the
school workplace.
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Limitations and suggestions for future research
First, given that the present study required the teacher participants to provide ratings to assess their
school leaders’ empowering behaviours, this could likely cause a certain level of sensitivity among
the teachers and may also increase their response bias in favour of their school authority. To reduce
teachers’ sensitivity and uneasiness in participating willingly in this study, a convenience sampling
design was adopted for this study by having the researchers approach the teachers personally
through direct contacts with them at professional training courses and conferences to encourage
their voluntary participation. Nevertheless, future studies could consider using a large sample of
participants with random sampling design to provide a more reliable basis for the generalisability
of findings (Scherbaum and Ferreter, 2009).
Second, this study opted for the use of an anonymous questionnaire to encourage teachers’ vol-
untary participation as well as their genuine responses to the questionnaire, so as to enhance the
validity of the data collected. As it was optional for teacher participants to indicate their name and
school name in the questionnaire, we were unable to know the exact number of schools based on
this teacher sample to better understand the spread of teachers across schools.
Third, both the principal’s and teachers’ immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours were
assessed using teachers’ perceptual ratings at the individual level, which also rendered it a single-
source dataset. A more objective assessment of both the principal’s and teachers’ immediate super-
visor’s empowering behaviours could consider the use of group-level teachers’ ratings or a
combination of teachers’ and school leaders’ self-ratings as multi-source data to provide more con-
fidence in the robustness of the observed findings.
Fourth, teachers’ perceptions of their principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering beha-
viours may change over time. As this study was cross-sectional in nature, future studies could
adopt a longitudinal design by conducting the research at multiple time intervals so as to enhance
the reliability of the results.
Fifth, perceptions of empowerment may vary across different cultural contexts (Fock et al.,
2013). As this study used only a sample of teachers in Singapore, the generalisability of the find-
ings across cultural contexts may need to be interpreted with caution. Future studies could consider
replicating this study in other cultural settings or conducting a cross-cultural comparison study to
examine whether cultural differences may affect teachers’ perceptions of their principal’s and
immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours in different educational contexts, and how it
might further affect teachers’ psychological empowerment.
Conclusion and implications
Despite its limitations, this study has noteworthy significance and implications for research and
practice.
First, as previous empowering school leadership studies tend to use only a single, generic lead-
ership construct without differentiating between teachers’ perceptions of their principal’s and
immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours (Blase and Blase, 1997; Davis and Wilson,
2000; Vecchio et al., 2010), our study suggests that it may be more valuable to consider teachers’
perceptions of principal’s empowering behaviours as well as teachers’ perceptions of their imme-
diate supervisor’s empowering behaviours as separate constructs in future studies. In this way, the
studies could take into account the unique predictive power of teachers’ perceptions of principal’s
Lee and Nie: Teachers’ perceptions of school leaders’ 17
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empowering behaviours as well as teachers’ perceptions of immediate supervisor’s empowering
behaviours to give more meaning to research findings.
Second, this study highlighted that although teachers perceived both their principal and imme-
diate supervisor to be empowering, they also perceived that their principal’s and immediate super-
visor’s empowering behaviours differed in specific dimensions of the SLEB. From the comparison
of the similarities and differences of the specific dimensions of the principal’s and immediate super-
visor’s empowering behaviours, it not only enables a better understanding of the empowering lead-
ership practices across levels of management but also provides useful insights and feedback for
school leadership developers to make changes in leadership development. It also provides useful
insights for school leaders to change their leadership practices towards fostering a more cohesive,
empowering work climate for effective facilitation of teacher empowerment in the school workplace.
Third, this study provides more empirical understanding on the positive relationship between
teachers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours and
teachers’ psychological empowerment. Particularly, the results of this study indicated that teach-
ers’ perceptions of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s empowering behaviours added unique
variance to each other in predicting teachers’ psychological empowerment. This study thus high-
lights the differential yet instrumental roles played by both the principal and middle-level leaders
(as individual teachers’ immediate supervisors) in the teacher empowerment process, and more
importantly, it also suggests an imperative need for increasing the awareness and capacity of
school leaders at different levels of management to exercise empowering behaviours to promote
teachers’ psychological empowerment. In essence, schools stand to gain from developing empow-
ering leaders across levels of management to foster a cohesive, empowering work climate or cul-
ture for more effective empowerment of teachers (Lee and Nie, 2014; Zhu et al., 2014).
Appendix 1. Definitions and items of the seven dimensions of Lee
and Nie’s (2013) SLEB
Dimension 1: Delegation of authority (e.g. Blase and Blase, 1997; Konczak et al., 2000).
It refers to the leader’s provision of delegated authority to enable followers to control their
own work by allowing them to assume the responsibility and authority to make decisions in
their work role.
Item 1: Gives me the authority to make changes necessary to improve things.
Item 2: Gives me the authority I need to make decisions that improve work processes and
procedures.
Item 3: Delegates authority to me that is equal to the level of responsibility that I am assigned.
Dimension 2: Providing intellectual stimulation (e.g. Blase and Blase, 1997; Konczak et al.,
2000; Podsakoff et al., 1990; Yu et al., 2002).
It refers to the leader’s provision of encouragement to followers to take calculated risks,
initiate new ideas and treat mistakes and setbacks as opportunities to learn.
Item 1: Asks questions that prompt me to think.
Item 2: Stimulates me to rethink the way I do things.
Item 3: Challenges me to re-examine some of the basic assumptions about my work.
18 Educational Management Administration & Leadership
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Dimension 3: Giving acknowledgement and recognition (e.g. Blase and Blase, 1997; Podsakoff
et al., 1990; Yu et al., 2002).
It refers to the leader’s provision of rewards such as praise and acknowledgement of effort for
achievement of specified goals with the intention of motivating and shaping the behaviour of
followers.
Item 1: Always gives me positive feedback when I perform well.
Item 2: Gives me special recognition when my work is very good.
Item 3: Personally compliments me when I do outstanding work.
Dimension 4: Articulating a vision (e.g. Blase and Blase, 1997; Podsakoff et al., 1990; Yu et al.,
2002).
It refers to the leader articulating a clear vision to followers, identifying new opportunities for
the organisation or department and inspiring followers with their vision of the future.
Item 1: Paints an interesting picture of the future for our school.
Item 2: Is always seeking new opportunities for the school.
Item 3: Inspires staff with their plans for the future.
Dimension 5: Fostering Collaborative Relationships (e.g. Arnold et al., 2000; Podsakoff et al.,
1990; Yu et al., 2002).
It refers to the leader supporting and stimulating followers to collaborate and work together
as a team.
Item 1: Fosters collaboration among staff members.
Item 2: Encourages staff members to be team players.
Item 3: Gets staff members to work together for the same goal.
Dimension 6: Providing individualised concern and support (e.g. Arnold et al., 2000; Blase and
Blase, 1997; Podsakoff et al., 1990; Yu et al., 2002).
It refers to the leader showing concern for the welfare of followers, taking time to discuss their
concerns and attending to their individual needs.
Item 1: Treats me as an equal.
Item 2: Takes the time to discuss my concerns patiently.
Item 3: Stays in touch with me.
Dimension 7: Providing role-modelling (e.g. Arnold et al., 2000; Blase and Blase, 1997; Podsak-
off et al., 1990; Yu et al., 2002).
It refers to the leader providing an appropriate model to their followers and setting an example
for followers to pursue which is consistent with the values which the leader espouses.
Item 1: Works as hard as anyone in my school.
Item 2: Sets a good example by the way they behave.
Item 3: Leads by example.
Lee and Nie: Teachers’ perceptions of school leaders’ 19
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Notes
1. The 289 teachers were full-time and fully trained teachers from at least 76 schools in Singapore.
2. Please refer to the section ‘Results and Analyses’ for Table 2 which presents the factor loadings of explora-
tory factor analyses and Table 3 which presents the fit indices of principal’s and immediate supervisor’s
SLEB scale resulting from the confirmtory factor analyses. Table 4 presents the Cronbach alpha coeffi-
cients of each of the seven factors of SLEB scale.
3. Given that leadership behaviours in practice are seldom neatly ‘packaged’ into distinct dimensions of
behaviours (Costello & Osborne, 2009; Villa, Howell, Dorfman & Daniel, 2003), the use of a composite
score rather than the individual factors of leaders’ empowering behaviours could provide a fuller represen-
tation of the leaders’ empowering behaviours as a whole.
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Author biographies
Ai Noi Lee graduated with a PhD from the Psychological Studies Academic Group, National Insti-
tute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Youyan Nie is an assistant professor in the Psychological Studies Academic Group, National Insti-
tute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
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