Date of Award
2025
Degree Type
Open Access Dissertation
Degree Name
Psychology, PhD
Program
School of Social Science, Politics, and Evaluation
Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair
Stewart I. Donaldson
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Michelle Bligh
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Rebecca J. Reichard
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Daryl C. Cameron
Terms of Use & License Information
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Rights Information
© 2025 Sarah G Shults
Keywords
empathy climate, engagement, motivation to empathize, network ties, scale validation
Subject Categories
Organizational Behavior and Theory
Abstract
In the current fast-paced, collaborative, and volatile work environment, leader empathy is emerging as a critical leader capability for leaders across all levels. Leader empathy refers to a leader’s ability to understand and relate to the feelings and experiences of another individual or group of individuals while also recognizing that the experience is not their own. In 2018, the European Union cited leader empathy as the top leadership skill; in 2020, Forbes named leader empathy as one of three critical leadership competencies; and in 2023, Harvard Business Review listed it as one of eight essential leader qualities. Leader empathy is critical to leader and organizational success for the associated benefits afforded to individuals and organizations, two of which are its direct effects on leaders’ networks and engagement. Leader empathy has a significant positive direct effect on the overall size, strength, and diversity of leaders’ networks and on leader engagement. In the modern workplace environment, well-networked and engaged leaders are non-negotiable for organizational success. Larger, stronger, and more diverse networks provide empathetic leaders with easier access to the necessary resources and support required to move work forward at the pace today’s economy demands. Similarly, engaged leaders are more creative, resilient, and aware of market dynamics, which enables them to make better decisions, maximize resources, lead through change, and ultimately drive performance and profitability. Considering these and other benefits afforded to empathetic leaders and organizations led by empathetic leaders, developing leader empathy is a top priority for researchers and practitioners alike. Despite interest in developing leader empathy, there remains a gap in the literature on the relationship between climate and leader empathy. Understanding this relationship is valuable because the perceived environment informs the choice to empathize. This gap may be due to a lack of a clear and accepted definition of empathy climate and a validated scale to measure it. Over three studies, this dissertation directly targets this gap by completing the scale validation for a previously proposed empathy climate scale by assessing the scale’s test-retest reliability and incremental and predictive validity. All three studies analyzed responses from participants recruited through Prolific and leveraged single-rater self-report surveys. Study 1 (N = 236) used nested multiple regression analysis and found support for the scale's test-retest reliability. Test re-test reliability is particularly important for a climate measure as climates are relatively fixed unless leaders act to change them. Study 2 (N = 250), which leveraged hierarchical regression analysis, found support for the scale’s incremental validity relative to a measure of compassion climate. This is relevant because, despite significant differences, compassion and empathy are often treated interchangeably. Finally, Study 3 (N = 352) assessed the scale’s predictive validity using full information maximum likelihood path model analysis and an ego-centric network analysis approach. Specifically, Study 3 tested if empathy climate predicted leader engagement serial mediated by the motivation to empathize and the number of strong or weak network ties. Network ties refer to the relationships that define a leader’s network, and strong and weak network ties vary in terms of time, intimacy, liking, and reciprocal services. Diversity of network ties moderated the relationship between the number of weak network ties and leader engagement. Despite not finding support for serial mediation, neither the number of strong nor weak network ties positively related to leader engagement, I found relatively good support for the scale’s predictive validity. Empathy climate was significantly positively related to motivation to empathize, the number of strong network ties, and leader engagement. Additional exploratory analysis further bolstered the scale’s predictive validity. I ran two exploratory path models again using full information maximum likelihood. The exploratory models replaced the number of strong and weak network ties with overall network size, strength, diversity, and overall network strength. Empathy climate predicted all three network attributes and motivation to empathize fully or partially mediated these relationships. I found support for serial mediation in the second exploratory model, which only included overall network strength. Altogether, the findings from Study 3 complete the scale validation process by demonstrating the scale’s ability to predict leader motivation to empathize and highlight the importance of leader empathy as a tool to help leaders build more advantageous networks and stay engaged. In totality, the findings of this dissertation carry implications for both researchers and practitioners, generating valuable insights and avenues for future research. This research provides a tool for future empathy researchers to account for the previously unexplained climate related variance in their studies, offers insights into how empathy influences network structures and contributes empirical evidence differentiating empathy from compassion. This research also identifies motivation to empathize as a novel leader engagement antecedent. For practitioners, the empathy climate tool equips them with the ability to assess if the climate supports leader empathy before making an investment in leader empathy training. In summary, this research offers meaningful insights for researchers and practitioners and future research opportunities, such as replicating Study 3 using a whole network analysis approach.
ISBN
9798288800375
Recommended Citation
Shults, Sarah Gray. (2025). Assessing the Relationship Between Empathy Climate, Motivation to Empathize, Network Ties, and Leader Engagement in Pursuit of Validating an Empathy Climate Scale. CGU Theses & Dissertations, 992. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/992.
