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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1448820
This article is part of the Research Topic Creative Organization Development through Leadership View all 9 articles

Impact of Empowering Leadership on Adaptive Performance in Hybrid Work: A Serial Mediation Effect of Knowledge Sharing and Employee Agility

Provisionally accepted
SeungSeok Kim SeungSeok Kim 1Dong-Yeol Yoon Dong-Yeol Yoon 2*
  • 1 Hyundai Motor Group (South Korea), Seoul, Republic of Korea
  • 2 The Department of Business, Konkuk University, Seoul, Seoul, Republic of Korea

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    With the advent of the pandemic era, many organizations have implemented a hybrid work model to manage office-and remote-based work. The proliferation of hybrid work demands leaders to demonstrate a different style of leadership than that in the past and to delegate authority, providing autonomy and responsibility to employees. Furthermore, both within and outside the organization, members must adapt and respond to rapidly changing environments and demonstrate adaptive performance to generate better outcomes. This study identifies the relationship between empowering leadership and adaptive performance in hybrid work, based on the social exchange and selfdetermination theories. Furthermore, it validates the mediation effect of knowledge sharing and employee agility and serial mediation effect. We analyzed data from 290 IT manufacturing employees working in hybrid work in South Korea. The findings reveal that empowering leadership positively influences adaptive performance and that knowledge sharing and employee agility partially mediate this relationship. Moreover, knowledge sharing and employee agility serially mediate the impact of empowering leadership on the adaptive performance of employees. These research findings provide theoretical and practical implications for organizations in hybrid work.

    Keywords: Empowering leadership, Adaptive performance, Knowledge sharing, Employee agility, serial mediation effect

    Received: 13 Jun 2024; Accepted: 03 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Kim and Yoon. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Dong-Yeol Yoon, The Department of Business, Konkuk University, Seoul, 143-701, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.