Abstract
In this chapter, as a critical contemporary management approach and a vital factor for organizations to gain competitive advantage, the concept of empowerment of employees is evaluated. The main purpose of this chapter is to investigate the antecedents and consequences of employees' empowerment. To achieve this, a meta-analysis was conducted including 216 independent studies. Among these are: organizational culture, organizational support, supervisor support, organizational justice, human resources practices, job characteristics and employees' personality characteristics. Moreover, by scanning the literature, the consequences of empowerment were remarked as, task performance, organizational citizenship behavior, organizational commitment, job satisfaction and creativity. Throughout the meta-analysis, positive relationships were witnessed between empowerment and these consequences. Moreover, empowerment was found to decrease turnover intentions and occupational stress of employees.
TopBackground
Empowerment in General
Although there is not a consensus on the definition of empowerment among researchers, empowerment refers to the degree of taking initiative and reacting to overcome work related problems (Quinn and Spreitzer, 1997). In another definition, empowerment means employees’ improving themselves in accordance with the job demands and acting extra roles besides what has been expected from them in the workplace (Thorlakson and Murray, 1996). In today’s knowledge-based economy (Drucker, 1992), empowerment is needed to adapt to the environment for several reasons. Among these are, developments in information and communication technologies (Powell and Dent-Micallef, 1997), increased level of competition among organizations (Dobrev and Carroll, 2003), increasing need of democracy in organizations (Mantovani, 1994) and qualification-based expectations of employees (Holzhausen, 2000). To understand the empowerment concept, it should be analyzed in more details as a concept of employee empowerment.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Employee Creativity: Employees’ actions and solutions which are new and original to certain problems.
Organizational Citizenship Behavior: A type of behavior in which employees exert extra role performance and cooperate with the organizational rules, procedures, goals and objectives.
Organizational Support: The degree to which an organization worries about its members and tries to do best for them.
Supervisor Support: The degree of supervisors’ taking care of their subordinates.
Empowerment: The process of employees’ making decisions on their own and taking responsibilities about their tasks and duties.
Occupational Stress: The reactions of employees to the environmental stimulus on the job.
Turnover Intentions: Having the feelings of leaving the organization.
Organizational Culture: The atmosphere in which all the organization related elements live together.