The Power Behind Empowerment: Implications for Research and Practice

The 1990s have been called theempowerment era, yet growing evidencesuggests that empowerment programs often fail to meetthe expectations of both managers and employees. Toprovide a better understanding as to why empowerment programs often fail andto suggest how such failures may be averted, we examinethe power behind empowerment. Ironically, although powerand empowerment are inextricably linked, much of the work on empowerment in the businessliterature has been devoid of any discussion of power.We present a four-dimensional model which shows themultifaceted way in which power works. In it, we observe the similarities and differences in the waysthat different theorists have approached the study ofpower, notably those ascribing to mainstream , critical, and Foucauldian perspectives. We then use this power model as a lens with which to examineempowerment practices in business. This analysissuggests a number of possible reasons for the failure ofbusiness empowerment programs and provides directions for future research and practice which mightaddress these shortcomings.     

Predicting Psychological Empowerment Among Service Workers: The Effect of Support-Based Relationships

Data from 292 service workers in 21 privateclubs show that supportive peer and customerrelationships are predictive of higher levels ofemployee experienced empowerment. Both organizationaland employee customer relationships accounted forsignificant variation in the dimensions of empowerment:meaningfulness, influence, and self-efficacy. Peerhelping and supportive customer relationships were thetwo most influential predictors of all threeempowerment dimensions. Implications for future researchand for management practice are discussed.     

Participative Decision-Making: An Integration of Multiple Dimensions

Few topics have resulted in as much theory,empirical study, controversy, and practical applicationas participative decision-making (PDM). Although mostpast empirical research has assumed that thedecision-making process in PDM was unidimensional, this paperexplores a multidimensional view and examines theintegration of degree of participation anddecision-making processes and their relationship withsatisfaction and performance. The results suggest that thedegree of involvement in generating alternatives,planning, and evaluating results are relatedsignificantly to satisfaction and that degree ofinvolvement in generating alternatives and planning arerelated significantly to performance.     

Task Interdependence as a Moderator of the Relation Between Group Control and Performance

Data were collected from the managers of 77groups in a large service organization and a largemanufacturing organization. The results revealed thatthe relation between group control over decision making and group performance became more positive withincreased levels of task interdependence. The mainimplication of the findings is that increasing groupcontrol over decisions may result in high performance only for groups that are highly taskinterdependent. The performance of groups that are lowin task interdependence may suffer when provided withgroup-level control of decisions.