Impact of Structural Empowerment on Organizational Commitment: The Mediating Role of Women’s Psychological Empowerment

The purpose of this study is to test the mediation role of women’s psychological empowerment on the relationship between structural empowerment and employee’s affective commitment. Organizational commitment leads to numerous positive consequences for an organization. So, it is vital to identify those factors which affect the commitment of employees. Previous research has demonstrated strong relationship between structural empowerment and psychological empowerment and commitment but not a single study examines all these in one study in Indian nursing context. In this cross-sectional study, the data were collected from 389 women nurses working in public and private hospitals operating in Punjab by adopting a multi-stage random sampling technique. Results of the study depicted that psychological empowerment mediates all the proposed relationship between different dimensions of structural empowerment and affective commitment. Indian nurses experienced high level of structural empowerment which further leads to high commitment. Results of the present study showed that in order to have a harmonious environment in the organization, it is important to create such an environment which foster psychological empowerment among employees as it has many attitudinal (job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job strain and turnover intension) and behavioural (organizational citizenship behaviour, task performance and innovation) consequences.