Purpose

The mechanisms through which superiors’ leadership styles and subordinates’ internal cognitions affect subordinates’ actual behaviour and attitudes are relatively unexplored in most contexts. This paper aims to bridge the gap by exploring the mediating effect of teachers’ cognitions (psychological empowerment) in the relationship between principals’ leadership style (empowering leadership) and teachers’ behaviour (job crafting) and attitudes (work alienation and organizational commitment).

Design/methodology/approach

Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was used on data obtained from 624 teachers of primary classes in Indian private schools.

Findings

Psychological empowerment partially mediates the relationship between empowering leadership and job crafting and job crafting partially mediates the relationship between empowering leadership and work alienation and affective commitment. Work alienation partially mediates the relationship between job crafting and affective commitment. Empowering leadership has a direct effect on job crafting.

Research limitations/implications

Due to the lack of longitudinal data, causality cannot be established. Also, there are concerns about the factor structure of scales.

Practical implications

Principals demonstrating empowering leadership can help teachers become more proactive and feel more empowered, less alienated and more committed. More proactive teachers and less alienated teachers are more likely to engage in self-initiated professional development and collaboration, thereby improving the teaching-learning process. Though this study was done in the school context, it is believed that the findings can plausibly apply to managers/leaders who work with complex, ambiguous work and knowledge workers.

Originality/value

First, the study extends the research on job crafting by studying the relationship between leadership style (empowering leadership) and job crafting. Second, the identification of the mechanisms through which leaders (principals) can help subordinates (teachers) find meaning in work (reduction in alienation) and develop commitment is an original contribution.