Employee Empowerment, Self-Determination Theory, And Employee Engagement: A Mediation Model

Even though employee engagement has been touted as a strategy to increase organizational performance, productivity, and employee retention, scant empirical data on the drivers of employee engagement exists. The current study used secondary data from the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) to examine the perceptions of employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) regarding employee empowerment practices performed by their managers, satisfaction of their basic psychological needs (relatedness, competence, autonomy) and employee engagement. A rigorous psychometric assessment of the variables for each construct was performed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Bifactor-CFA models accounting for both general and specific factors were applied to examine the direct and indirect effects of the relationships between employee empowerment practices, basic psychological needs, and employee engagement. The results were significant, suggesting there is a direct relationship between employee empowerment practices and employee engagement and basic psychological need fulfillment and employee engagement. Additionally, the results indicated a partial mediation between basic psychological needs and employee engagement when employee empowerment practices were introduced.