Lecture 11

Employee Empowerment

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 The growing interest in
empowerment
 Growing interest in the importance of effective management
of employees particularly in the face of increasing
international competition (Spritzer 1995; McDuffie 1995;
Conger and Kanungo; Walton 1985; Peters and Waterman
1982; Beer, Spector, Mills and Walton 1984; Schuler and
Jackson 1987 ).
 Walton (1985) comments on the movement away from
‘control’ towards a proactive and strategic ‘commitment’
style of management. This has largely been embraced by
Human Resource Management.
 Central to the commitment style of management is
employee empowerment.

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 What is empowerment?
 The term empowerment evokes a wide range of concepts:
redistribution of power and authority; maximising
employees contribution to the success of the firm; full
participation of workers in decision making; self-
motivation; synergistic interaction among individuals,
emphasising co-operation; and enabling (Herenkohl,
Judson and Heffner 1999).
 Employee empowerment refers to employees being more
pro-active and self-sufficient in assisting an organisation to
achieve its goals.

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 Working Definition of
empowerment
 Spreitzer (1995)
 Meaning
 Competence
 Self-determination
 Impact

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 Antecedents of employee
empowerment
 Locus of control
 Self-esteem

 Access to information

 Rewards

 Trust

 Job design

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 Spreitzer (1995) Assumptions
 Empowerment is not an enduring personality trait
generalizable across situation, but rather a set of cognitions
shaped by the work environment (Thomas and Velthouse
1990).
 Empowerment is a continuous variable.
 Empowerment is not a global construct generalizable
across different situations, but rather specific to the work
domain.

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 Spreitzer (1995) hypotheses
 Hypotheses 1a: The are four distinct dimensions of
psychological empowerment.
 Hypothesis 1b: Each dimension contributes to an overall
construct of psychological empowerment.
 Hypothesis 2 a: Self esteem is positively related to
psychological empowerment.
 Hypothesis 2b:Locus of control is positively related to
psychological empowerment.
 Hypothesis 2d: Access to information about the mission of
an organisation is positively related to psychological
empowerment.
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 Spreitzer (1995) hypotheses
 Hypothesis 2f: An individual-performance-based reward
system is positively related to psychological
empowerment.
 Hypothesis 3a: Psychological empowerment is positively
related to managerial effectiveness.
 Hypothesis 3b: Psychological empowerment is positively-
related to innovative behaviours.

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 Results
 Results provide initial support for hypotheses 1a and 1b.
The four factors were significantly correlated with each
other.
 Antecedents Both self-esteem and access to information
were significantly related to empowerment.
 Locus of control was not found significantly related to
empowerment - measurement limitation.
 Information about performance and rewards were
significantly related to psychological empowerment.
 Consequences Relationships were found between
managerial effectiveness and innovative behaviour
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 Behavioural effects of
empowerment
 Empowerment affects both initiation and persistence of
subordinates’ behaviour.
 Empowerment processes may allow leaders to mobilise
organisational members in the face of organisational
challenges.
 These processes may enable leaders to set higher
performance goals, and may help employees to accept
these goals.
 Empowerment practices may also be useful in motivating
subordinates to persist despite difficult organisational
obstacles.

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 The outcomes of employee
empowerment
 Employee empowerment is a principle component of
managerial and organisational effectiveness and the
creation of innovative and quality behaviours (Spreitzer
1995).
 Experiences in team-building within organisations
suggests that empowerment techniques play a crucial part
in group development and maintenance of teams (Kanter
1979).
 Analyses of power and control within organisations reveal
that effectiveness grows with superiors’ sharing power
and control with employees (Conger and Kanungo 1988).

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 Empowerment and performance
 Kirkman and Rosen (1999) reported positive relationships
between team empowerment and productivity, pro-
activity, customer service, job satisfaction and
organisational commitment.
 Thomas and Tymon (1993) found that empowerment
enhanced job satisfaction at an individual level.
 Deci and Ryan (1985) observed that perceived autonomy
produced greater initiative among individuals.
 Bateman and Crant (1993) linked empowerment with
greater pro-activity.

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 Empowerment management
practices
 Organisation design selection and training procedures to ensure
technical and linguistic skills.
 Organisational culture should emphasise self-determination,
collaboration over conflict/competition, high performance
standards, non-discrimination and meritocracy.
 Loosely committed resources at the local level.
 Open communication and extensive network-forming.
 Leaders should express confidence in subordinates
accompanied by high performance expectations. They should
foster opportunities for employees to participate in decision
making, improve employee autonomy, and create inspirational
and meaningful goals.

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 Critical Management Theory
 Critical management theory examines the question
of the ultimate function of management.
 Asserts that the penultimate function of
management is the conversion of labour power
into actual effort.
 Extraction of effort versus resistance of workers.
 To secure appropriate forms of behaviour from
workers, management must control labour.
 Control: the power of directing and commanding.

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 Underlying assumptions.
 The labour process generates a surplus.
 The logic of accumulation forces capital to
constantly revolutionize the production process.
 Control of the labour process is imperative as
market mechanisms alone cannot regulate the
labour process.
 Social relations between capital and labour can be
antagonistic.

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The nature of the Labour Process
 The struggle to transform labour power into
actual labour creates the need for capital to
seek some control over the conditions of
work and improve their side of the wage
effort bargain.
 Such a situation creates a variety of forms

of resistance, accommodation and

cooperation.
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 HRM a critical analysis
 Critical management theorists would interpret HRM as a
tool of managerial control.
 HRM assumes that the individual is a malleable resource.
 Management utilise a series of hard and soft HRM programs
to extract extra-ordinary contributions from workers.
 Why use HRM?
 The purchase of labour is not purely a market transaction,
but a dynamic and continual process.
 Given the complexity of the production process: quality
enhancement and innovation; innovative, creative and
cooperative behaviours are important .

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 Why use HRM? Continued…..
 Management are having to continually reconstitute
methods of control to maintain the subordination and
productive effort of employees (Friedman 1985; Edwards
1979).
 Management have to continuously reinforce and realign
doctrines of control contingent on environmental and
technological evolution (Jermier 1998).
 Taylorism (Braverman 1974).
 The nature of the production process: Quality enhancement
and innovation.

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 HRM: How can it be used?
 HRM a managerial discourse that attempts to foster and
cultivate employee cooperation and minimise resistance.
 HRM a management vehicle to shape and configure
malleable HR’s in the interests of the firm.
 Managerial control to regress opposition and resistance
and achieve strategic goals of the firm.
 HRM can be viewed by critical management theorists as
the utilisation of emancipatory rhetoric to cultivate illusory
feelings of unity between management and employees and
the promulgation towards a unitary view of the firm.

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HRM: How can it be used? Cont.
 The institutionalisation of HRM as a positivist and
humanistic doctrine is an immensely powerful tool
to elicit extraordinary contribution from a highly
committed and motivated workforce.
 The colourful and emotive imagery of managerial
concern for employee welfare, development and
emotional security, inculcated within the
legitimacy of the unitaristic umbrella are powerful
tools to minimise opposition and tighten the reigns
of control.
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 Unitarism
 Unitarism assumes that management is the only credible
source of loyalty within the firm.
 Unitarism also seems to ignore the interests of other
important stakeholders.
 Although HRM advocates the empowerment and
participation of employees, the degree and type of
participation are managerially defined.
 Accommodation of multiple loyalties can be problematic
(Horwitz 1988).

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 Sewell (1998) ASQ
 Management rhetoric of empowerment, autonomy, quality
and flexibility may be constructs representing the
tightening of managerial control.
 Despite the rhetoric of trust and commitment management
are actually concerned with the realisation of the full
potential of labour.
 HRM incorporates a series of HRM functions to mould
employee behaviour with the strategic goals of the firm.
 A powerful tool to shape and configure employee
behaviour is that of organisational culture.

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 Sewell (1998) ASQ cont.
 HRM encapsulates the adage ‘how do you
control without controlling?’
 Panopticon (Foucault (1977)

 Panopticon, an illustration of normative and

subversive techniques to establish social

control.

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 Organisational culture: critical
analysis. Willmott (1992)
 Willmott purports that organisational culture aspires to
extend managerial control.
 Promoting employee commitment to a ‘monolithic
structure of feeling and thought’.
 Corporate culturism expects employees to internalise new
values that the firm expects and regards as morally
pertinent (eg. quality).
 Employees are expected to devote themselves to the values
of the firm.
 Employees are immersed in the logic of the market.
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 Willmott (1992) Cont.

 The central premise is that employees internalise the

values of the firm and identify themselves in terms of
those values.
 Hence, if the employees fall short of these values then they
would feel a sense of shame, anxiety and guilt.
 Organisational culturism can be an effective method of
control given asymmetrical information between
management and employees.
 Organisational culturism expands practical freedom of
workers within a specified domain.

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