Organizations increasingly emphasize innovation and recognize the critical role of employee empowerment in fostering it. Departing from prior research, this study examines how empowering leadership coming from different hierarchical levels—close (direct supervisors) and distant (senior managers)—distinctly influences employee psychological empowerment and, in turn, supervisor's perceptions of innovative performance. Drawing on leader distance theory and signal detection theory, we theorize and find empirical support for the notion that empowering leadership from close leaders directly enhances psychological empowerment, thereby promoting innovation. In contrast, empowering leadership from distant leaders needs to surpass a certain threshold before it can positively influence psychological empowerment and perceptions of innovative performance. Furthermore, we theorize the implications of what we refer to as dual-source leadership – or the collective implications of close and distant leader empowering leadership. Our findings suggest that high empowering leadership from either source alone is as effective in fostering psychological empowerment and innovation as when both sources exhibit high levels. These results offer new insights into the nuanced dynamics of hierarchical leadership and their implications for innovation.
Perrigino and Raveendhran's (2025) theory of strategic boundary control for remote work offers a strong framework for aligning human resource management (HRM) systems with the design of work-nonwork boundaries. We argue that this theory is fundamentally an ostensive account: it specifies the intended architecture of boundary control configurations but is silent on how these designs are performatively enacted once employees interact with the technologies that implement them. Drawing on routine dynamics and technology-in-practice research, we contend that the effects of any boundary control configuration on organizational performance are mediated by how employees appropriate, adapt, and circumvent the underlying technology. We extend the theory by proposing three boundary conditions, each tied to a distinct performative response. First, behavior-oriented control's benefits are contingent on technology re-adaptability: strict monitoring and connectivity mandates can trigger psychological reactance and technostress that inadvertently enable cyberslacking. Second, output-oriented control's benefits depend on task-technology fit: when monitoring platforms poorly suit employees' actual tasks, autonomy encourages job crafting through unsanctioned tools, eroding the visibility such control requires. Third, technical controls' benefits depend on Shadow IT's accessibility: overly rigid restrictions push employees toward unauthorized applications to sustain collaboration and social connection, undermining the controls meant to focus attention. Together, these boundary conditions show that employee enactment is a critical determinant of whether formal boundary control systems succeed. We conclude that effective HRM design cannot rely solely on top-down specification; it must anticipate the adaptive, performative ways employees enact workplace technology.
