Feeling empowered, acting beyond duty: A moderated-mediation model linking transformational leadership to organizational citizenship behavior

Drawing on the social exchange theory (SET), this research investigates the indirect relationship between transformational leadership (TL) and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), mediated by employees' psychological empowerment (PE), intrinsic motivation (IM) and moderated by perceived organizational support (POS). Thus, we outline how leaders can empower and motivate their followers by fostering POS, thereby prompting employees to reciprocate through increased OCB. Data was collected from 290 employees in Pakistan's banking sector using an online questionnaire administered through Google Forms. The hypothesized relationships were verified using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results indicated a positive association between TL and OCB. Additionally, PE and IM significantly mediated the effect of TL on OCB, while POS enhanced OCB by amplifying the influence of TL on employees' IM and PE. This study contributes to the literature and offers practical insights for bank managers by clarifying when (high POS), why (rooted in SET's reciprocity principle), and how (through the mediation of PE and IM) TL promotes OCB. Previous research has lacked evidence that TL indirectly influences employee OCB through the parallel mediation of PE and IM.