Sustaining the Managerial Workforce: How Enacting Empowering Leadership Fosters Managers' Own Work Meaningfulness

ABSTRACT Integrating self‐perception theory with the dual perspectives of work meaningfulness, this study positions managers as a distinct stakeholder category in sustainable HRM and investigates the impact of empowering leadership on managers' own sense of work meaningfulness. We argue that due to the ambiguities surrounding and challenges in sustaining work meaningfulness, managers are likely to reflect on their leadership behaviors to make sense of the meanings of their work. In particular, as empowering leadership—characterized by the distribution of power, autonomy, and support to followers—focuses on promoting intrinsic values and growth for employees, we hypothesize that it can enhance managers' work meaningfulness via managers' increased self‐concordance and perceived social impact. We further propose that managers' self‐reflection amplifies the positive effects of empowering leadership on their self‐concordance, perceived social impact, and, consequently, work meaningfulness. A multi‐wave field survey study with 79 managers (and their 415 followers) in China provides evidence for the effect of empowering leadership on managers' work meaningfulness via self‐concordance and perceived social impact and the moderating role of managers' self‐reflection. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings for managers' well‐being, development, and retention.