Empowering leadership boosts employee innovative job performance: unraveling the role of work stress and regulatory focus

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the relationship between empowering leadership and innovative job performance, with challenge stress and hindrance stress acting as parallel mediators. Additionally, the study examines how promotion focus and prevention focus moderate these dual processes. Design/methodology/approach A two-wave survey was employed to validate the theoretical model, gathering data from 449 employees across various industries in Mainland China with a convenience sampling method. Findings The results demonstrate that empowering leadership enhances employee innovative job performance by increasing challenge stress and reducing hindrance stress, highlighting the moderating role of regulatory focus. Specifically, a high promotion focus strengthens the positive relationship between empowering leadership and challenge stress, while a high prevention focus weakens the negative relationship between empowering leadership and hindrance stress. The moderated mediation effect of regulatory focus is also verified. Practical implications Empowering leaders should be mindful of employees’ dualistic work stress and implement tailored management strategies based on individual regulatory focus to maintain their psychological well-being and enhance innovative performance. Originality/value Grounded in job demand-resource (JD-R) theory and a stress perspective, this study develops a dual-path model to explore the impact of empowering leadership on employee innovative job performance through dualistic work stress. This framework enhances our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of empowering leadership and the antecedent factors influencing employee well-being and innovative performance. Furthermore, by examining the role of employees’ regulatory focus, this study clarifies the boundary conditions of empowering leadership effectiveness, addressing inconsistencies in previous research findings.