Employee Empowerment

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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 2bLocus 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 HRs 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.