Abstract: Authorized leadership is a new type of leadership based on a series of theories such as social cognitive theory, self-management theory and cognitive behavior modification theory. It is the management decision and leadership style made by the leader on the basis of trust to the employee. In addition, employee innovation behavior will also be affected by authorization leadership. Authorized leadership can not only exercise the autonomy and enthusiasm of subordinates, improve the relationship between superiors and subordinates, but also have an important impact on employees′ work and innovation performance. As a management style, authorized leadership can promote the improvement and promotion of the exchange relationship between leaders and employees through communication and authorization on the basis of trust and equality, thus having a positive impact on employees′ work and innovation performance. Due to their rich knowledge, experience and skills, knowledge workers have a better foundation of necessary knowledge reserve for innovation, as well as a stronger demand for innovation, which has a very significant impact on the acquisition and sustainable development of enterprise competitive advantage. Empowering leaders emphasize the significance of work to knowledge workers, which can help them better understand and identify their work and stimulate their enthusiasm for work; empowering leaders grant decision-making power to their subordinates, which is conducive to improving the sense of ownership of knowledge workers; empowering leaders often express high performance confidence to knowledge workers, which not only inspires morale, but also reminds them to focus on work making goals and improving self-confidence in dealing with setbacks; empowering leaders actively break hierarchy restrictions, endow subordinates with more power and responsibility, create a more flexible and open environment, which is conducive to stimulating innovative behavior of knowledge-based employees. Trust is the key influencing factor of various contracts or relationships, which guides or influences the attitudes and behaviors of both parties. Organizational trust represents the recognition and trust of employees for the sincerity and reliability of the organization or leaders. The sources of employees′ trust in leaders are: the emotional connection formed in the interaction between employees and leaders, that is, the trust based on emotion; the trust based on the rational cognition of employees according to their own abilities and personal characteristics of supervisors, that is, the trust based on cognition. Comparatively speaking, the trust based on emotion is more inclined to perceptual knowledge, while the trust based on cognition is a product of rational analysis. Leadership authorization behavior is conducive to the establishment of a good and high-quality trust relationship between leaders and knowledge-based employees. Leaders give knowledge workers enough power, support, respect and trust through authorization. Accordingly, knowledge workers will give leaders enough trust and loyalty when they perceive the support and trust of leaders. Under authorized leadership, knowledge workers and leaders can have more equal and comprehensive communication, which is not only conducive to the formation of emotional trust based on the communication between knowledge workers and leaders, but also conducive to the formation of cognitive trust based on leaders. A high level of trust between superior and subordinate can not only greatly save the cost of organization management and supervision, but also produce better results than supervision, promote employees to implement higher enthusiasm investment, which is more conducive to the development and innovation of the organization. On the basis of higher emotional trust, employees are more obedient to the decision-making and management of leaders, have higher work enthusiasm for the tasks assigned by leaders, and hope to do a good job to repay the trust of leaders, so as to be more likely to stimulate employees′ innovative behavior. In the process of interaction between knowledge workers and leaders, if knowledge workers feel that leaders are trustworthy, honest and capable through cognition, and care and respect for themselves, they will be willing to spend more time and energy to do things expected by the organization and leaders, such as more efforts to engage in innovation work and improve innovation performance. The sense of organizational support refers to the employees′ awareness of the organization′s support for their work, interest concerns and recognition of their values. Organizational support can meet the needs of knowledge workers to be respected and concerned, and then make them have a sense of responsibility to care about organizational interests and achieve organizational goals, and achieve the integration of organizational roles and social roles; organizational support can also improve the trust of knowledge workers in organizational reporting and organizational commitment. Therefore, under different levels of organizational support, the effect of authorized leadership on the two kinds of trust of knowledge workers will be different. When the level of organizational support is high, knowledge-based employees perceive that their abilities and efforts are concerned, supported and recognized by the organization, so that they have more confidence in the leadership and will have a higher level of emotional trust. At the same time, they believe that when they encounter difficulties that cannot be solved independently in the process of innovation, leaders and organizations will provide them with corresponding help and increase the possibility of innovation. Therefore, authorized leadership will also make knowledge-based employees have stronger cognitive trust.On the contrary, when the level of organizational support is low, even if leaders adopt the way of authorized leadership, knowledge-based employees will think that their innovation efforts are not recognized by the organization and the corresponding resource support, which will weaken the impact of authorized leadership on knowledge-based employees′ emotional trust and cognitive trust. In this paper, we mainly studies how authorized leaders influence the two kinds of trust of knowledge workers, which are emotion based trust and cognition based trust, and forming an intermediate trust mechanism to further influence the innovation behavior of knowledge workers. In addition, we further study the moderating role of Perceived organizational support (POS) in this intermediate trust mechanism. By pairing investigation and data collection and processing, the empirical study found that authorized leadership can positively affect the emotional trust of knowledge workers to leaders, this style of leadership that emphasizes authorization can positively affect the cognitive trust of knowledge workers to leaders. Finally, an intermediate trust mechanism will be formed, which will positively affect the innovation behavior of knowledge workers. Perceived organizational support (POS) positively moderates the relationship between authorized leadership and emotional trust of knowledge workers, and it positively moderates the relationship between authorized leadership and cognitive based trust of knowledge workers.

Key words:  authorized leader, knowledge worker, innovative behavior, trust mechanism