Yating Wang

Many studies have revealed the benefits of empowering leadership for organizational effectiveness, including positive implications for empowered individuals. Our study contributes to this discussion by integrating the empowering leadership literature with self-regulation theory to examine the double-edged effect of top managers’ empowering leadership on middle managers. We propose that middle managers with higher performance goal orientation will perceive performance pressure when empowered by top managers, which depletes their self-regulatory resources and subsequently triggers abusive behaviour towards subordinates. Conversely, middle managers with higher learning goal orientation will perceive top managers’ empowering leadership as opportunities for development, which promotes job engagement and subsequently increases autonomy-supporting leader behaviour. Across a scenario‐based experiment and a field study, we found that top managers’ empowering leadership led to middle managers’ abusive supervision via perceived performance pressure and ego depletion, especially among middle managers with higher performance goal orientation. Although middle managers with higher learning goal orientation interpreted top managers’ empowerment as developmental opportunities and became more engaged, this engagement did not translate into greater autonomy-supporting leader behaviour. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications for leadership research, organizational ethics, and managerial practice.