Employee Empowerment: Conceptualizations, Aims and Outcomes

Abstract

The focus of this paper is a comparison of how managers and non-managers conceptualize employee empowerment, what they aim to achieve from it and what they actually achieve. It also compares theoretical conceptualizations with those employed in practice. Employee empowerment is a recent addition to the long line of involvement and participation initiatives that have been employed in Western economies. It is a management response to an increasingly complex and competitive external environment and its popularity has been enhanced by the quality movement in general, and by TQM and the EFQM Excellence Model in particular. The paper reports the findings of two in-depth case studies and concludes, among other things, that even in organizations adept in the use of TQM and the EFQM Excellence Model, employee empowerment, in practice, may have little to do with power or its redistribution. However, employees in such organizations do not appear to seek more power in the political sense, but more discretion and responsibility for decision- making within their own work situation, which is very much in keeping with TQM ideology. Thus, organizations seeking to move in that direction should ensure that their conceptualizations of 'employee empowerment' at least deliver on these issues. One category of employee which the research identified as being seriously disempowered, is agency workers who appear not only to feel marginalized, but are perceived as marginal by permanent employees and management. Consequently, employing organizations seem reluctant to invest in their development, thereby making it difficult for these employees to strengthen their powerbase and/or to improve their lot.

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