Empowerment

About: Empowerment is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 42112 publications have been published within this topic receiving 752953 citations.

A customer‐oriented framework for empowering service employees

Abstract: While a great deal has been written on the subject of empowerment of employees in the manufacturing industries, its application in the services area is relatively under‐developed. In fact, the special nature of services, and in particular the simultaneity of production and consumption is one of the major reasons for arguing that contact employees should be allowed a degree of discretion when dealing with customers. However, some authors have argued that service employees should have little or no discretion. This suggests that the approach to participation is a contingent one. That is, empowerment is not suitable for all occasions or all types of employees. Outlines a contingency framework for the empowerment of contact service employees. Argues that the appropriate levels and the types of empowerment given to employees depends on a combination of the complexity or variability of customer needs, and the degree of task complexity or variability involved in delivering the customer needs. It is also argued that, in any empowerment framework it is essential that the degree and the type of empowerment is also included.

Exploring associations between employee empowerment and interpersonal trust in managers

Abstract: Purpose – To explore associations between employee empowerment and interpersonal trust in managers.Design/methodology/approach – An online survey designed to assess empowerment and trust was administered to a random sample of 2,000 salaried employees at a Fortune 500 manufacturing organization in the USA.Findings – Results, bounded by sample and focal organizational characteristics, indicated that employees who feel empowered in their work environment tend to have higher levels of interpersonal‐level trust in their managers.Practical implications – Implications for managers are discussed in terms of enabling employee empowerment, strengthening interpersonal trust, and increasing organizational effectiveness.Originality/value – Highlights how increments in empowerment and trust can mitigate effects of organizational complexity, reduce transaction costs, strengthen relational systems within flatter organizational structures, and diminish the need for supervisory oversight, unproductive controls, and measure...

Beyond empowerment: building a company of citizens.

Abstract: We live in a knowledge economy. The core assets of the modern business enterprise aren't its buildings, machinery, and real estate, but the intelligence, understanding, skills, and experience of its employees. Harnessing the capabilities and commitment of knowledge workers is arguably the central managerial challenge of our time. Unfortunately, it is a challenge that has not yet been met. Corporate ownership structures, governance systems, and incentive programs--despite the enlightened rhetoric of business leaders--remain firmly planted in the industrial age. In this article, the authors draw on history to lay out a model for a democratic business organization suited to the knowledge economy. Some 2,500 years ago, the city-state of ancient Athens rose to unprecedented political and economic power by giving its citizens a direct voice and an active role in civic governance. The city's uniquely participative system of democracy helped unleash the creativity of the Athenian people and channel it to produce the greatest good for society. The system succeeded in bringing individual initiative and common cause into harmony. And that is precisely the synthesis today's companies need to achieve if they're to realize the full power of their people and thrive in the knowledge economy. The Athenian model of organizational democracy is just that--a model. It does not provide a simple set of prescriptions for modern managers. What it offers is a window into how sizable groups of people can, in an atmosphere of dignity and trust, successfully govern themselves without resorting to a stifling bureaucracy.

Education and Gender Egalitarianism: The Case of China

Abstract: This study examined Chinese attitudes toward womens careers marriage rights sexual freedom and the importance of having sons using a 1991 national sample of individuals and community-level data and through a series of nested multilevel models. Education influences gender attitudes in multiple ways at both the micro- and macrolevels. Better-educated individuals hold more egalitarian gender attitudes and this positive effect of individual education is larger for women than for men indicating a strong empowerment effect for women. Egalitarian gender attitudes trickle down through education as individuals in communities with high education are socialized toward more egalitarian attitudes. Community education has a larger effect toward the egalitarian direction on the attitude toward the importance of having sons than on the attitude toward womens marriage rights indicating that change in the latter attitude occurred earlier and has now spread via education. These findings show that education is a vehicle of socialization that is used by both the domestic power elite (the Communist Party). and the Western culture. (authors)